Mistborn: The Final Empire

Decided to try this out because it was heavily recommended in the Fantasy community. Anyways, here goes.

What I did like:
1. A majority of the cast. They're colorful and rather well-realized characters that I enjoyed reading about. Vin works extremely well as a protagonist that navigates into this new environment.
2. The Magic System. I had already known before getting into this that allomancy as a magic system is top-tier but I wasn't expecting it to be that good. Oftentimes when a magic system has established rules, it becomes pretty restricting in ways the characters can use them and sometimes when it does show that there's other ways to use it, it's usually in the climax or last seventy pages of the book and becomes some sort of “aha moment.” In Final Empire, the characters regularly use allomancy in creative ways. There's also a subversion of the “aha moment” in the final battle.
3. The worldbuilding. This one's pretty well-realized and while there's not that many of the places that's being explored, it does pretty well with the ones that it does.
4. That last 150 or so pages. The first two thirds of the book is normally paced which and then at a certain point, there's an event that turns the tables and the plot becomes fast-paced. A lot of things happen

What I didn't like:
1. Okay so I like the majority cast. I DID NOT like Elend. I really wish I did. I love characters who have a sense of compassion and justice, especially in a world that can be pretty bleak and hopeless and finds being morally gray or evil as the kind of norm, so I found it a shame that I could not connect to Elend as a character. He was pretty fine in his first few appearances but later on, reading him felt like the book wanted to hammer down that he's a morally good person and so it would go, “He's a compassionate character — QUICK, MAKE HIM SAY THIS AND DO THIS.”
2. A lot of actions being done behind the scenes. I suppose this was on me for expecting much since after all, most of the book is from Vin and Kelsier's POV, but there's a decent chunk of the heist plan that made me go, “Oh that's pretty difficult — it's gonna be interesting how it'll be pulled off” only for that to be done or resolved behind the scenes. This mostly the case for other members of the crew, so I probably should've seen that coming, but still, it was pretty disappointing the first few times when what could've been an interesting struggle to see play out just play out behind the scenes and end with someone saying, “Oh, has smoothed this one out.”
3. Romance. This portion could've done a bit more development to feel more natural. For me, at least. This can be pretty subjective from person to person.