Before I say anything about the series itself, I want to applaud GraphicAudio's audiobook cover of the Mistborn trilogy.
I have listened to ~20 audiobooks this year, and it is unparalleled in quality.
Every character has a recognizable, unique voice, the sound effects put you in the middle of a scene, and the occasional, quiet background music hits just right.
In fact, the themes that play were composed specifically for this trilogy.
You can access the audiobooks for free (for now) on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yGj_sqdFXM.
The Final Empire is the first of a fantasy trilogy. The premise is a twist on the trope of a hero coming to save the world.
What if instead, the hero failed and the world fell to darkness?
This hero, who was supposed to wield an extraordinary power for good, ended up taking it for himself to conquer the world.
This conquerer became the Lord Ruler, who in his mysterious rise to power gained immortality and established an empire to last the ages: The Final Empire.
Over a thousand years the Lord Ruler destroyed the practice (and almost the living memory) of every existing religion and formed his own, where he was worshipped as God (a sliver of infinity) who destroyed a mysterious force known as "The Deepness" at the Well of Ascension.
Whatever that is.
1,000 years later, the working class, or Skaa, are for the most part slaves to the ruling class, which are the Nobility.
Not all Skaa, however, are subservient to the nobility.
A minority live outside the structure of this binary caste system.
Underground Skaa thieving crews settled in hideouts and dens, primarily concentrated in the Lord Ruler's home and capital, Luthadel.
Even more rare than the thieving crews are Skaa rebels, groups working under the radar to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the Lord Ruler.
Over the millenia, Skaa rebellions have come and went. They were always meager and pathetic compared to the might of the Final Empire.
This weakness was prominent in many ways. Almost every Skaa lived a life of abject poverty. They had no money or resources to build a decent army.
The Skaa have been oppressed for a thousand years, so few could be persuaded to join what surely would be a pointless rebellion.
But the power disparity between Nobility and Skaa does not end there.
Yet another enormous privelege is enjoyed by the ruling class, superfluous though it may be.
This privelege is the gift of allomancy: the ability to ingest and internally "burn" allomantic metals to activate their powers.
This power was said to be mysteriously granted to the nobles loyal to the Lord Ruler when he defeated The Deepness.
It is genetic, and has passed through the blood of the nobility for a thousand years.
However, in modern times phenotypical allomancy is more uncommon than common in nobility due to the dilution of bloodlines.
Despite, a nobleperson who is not an allomancer may still strongly carry the gene.
It is not uncommon for Nobles to sleep with their Skaa slaves. However, there is an expectation for them to "take care of" anySkaa women they bed.
The reason for this is to avoid the rare instance of producing a Skaa allomancer. This is exceedingly rare: roughly 1 in 10,000 Skaa are assumed to be allomancers.
There are two types of allomancers. The immensely more common type of allomancer is called a misting. A misting can burn one type of metal.
A Skaa allomancer is almost always a misting.
For example, a "thug" is a misting who can burn pewter, which enhances physical strength, endurance, constitution and healing.
The much rarer variant of allomancer is called a mistborn. A mistborn can burn every type of allomantic metal.
So the natural question is: how many allomantic metals are there?
It is generally known that there are 10 metals: 8 "basic" metals, and 2 "higher" metals. They are:
Insert table of metals
The metal-enthusiast might notice that each pushing metal is an alloy of its complementary pulling metal.
Typically, an allomancer will activate a metal by ingesting a vial with flakes of the metal.
Once ingested, they can "sense" the reserve of the metal (to the extent where they know how much they have left) and burn it at will.
A mistborn's metal vial would contain all 8 basic metals.
It turns out that allomancy is not the only metallic art.
The reader learns later in the book about ferrochemy, which is another metallic power unique to another subrace of humans known as the Terris.
Unlike allomancy, ferrochemy's power is drawn from within: a ferrochemist will "store" an attribute into metal:
Insert table of metals
A ferrochemical resevoir is referred to as a "metal mind." Metal minds are typically wearable: such as a ring, bracelet, or earring.
For a ferrochemist to tap a bronze mind to draw wakefulness, a ferrochemist must store wakefulness in bronze.
They must make physical contact with the bronze mind, and enter a coma-like state. The longer they "sleep", the more wakefulness is stored.
As long as the bronze mind hasn't been emptied, the ferrochemist will not incur tiredness and can stay awake for days or more.
The Lord Ruler sought to breed out the ferrochemical gene from the Terris people, and was largely (though not entirely) successful.
Ferrochemists hide their powers so as to not be destroyed, and so the unique ability of the Terris may survive.
While allomancy is uncommon, it's existence is fairly well-known throughout the Final Empire.
On the other hand, few know of the existence of ferrochemy.
So that was a lot, and I've only covered the setting and the nature of allomancy and ferrochemy.
This detailed attention to describing the metallic arts was not for the sake to merely summarize.
The precise attention to detail from Sanderson has imbued these abilities with an extremely well-defined nature.
This means that the rules for allomancy and ferrochemy are clear and leave little to no room for interpretation.