History Literature / TheAlloyOfLaw

Waxillium Ladrian is a lawman out in the Roughs, the untamed land beyond the mountains. On the day he receives a summons back home (which he intends to ignore), the insane outlaw Bloody Tam tricks him into shooting his girlfriend, Lessie.

* BatmanGambit: Wax successfully pulls one off to defeat [[BigBad Miles]] in the end: by getting him to deliver one of the [[EvilGloating villainous monologues]] he so enjoys, and then to beat him up, he distracts Miles from noticing that time around him is moving much faster than normal thanks to Marasi, allowing Wayne to bring in a large number of police officers to arrest him without anyone alerting him.

* CreepyGood: [[spoiler:Ironeyes]] is terrifying to look at, and his idea of setting up a meeting is to Pull on Marasi's curiosity so she chases after him in a back alleyway, and then deaden all her emotions so she won't run. But all he wants is to pass on information they'll need.

* DifficultButAwesome: The Pulser power (burning Cadmium), which slows time for everything in a pretty wide area...including yourself. For the user, everything outside that area just seems to radically speed up. At first blush it seems useless. [[spoiler: In fact, it's an ideal means of keeping people in place and is crucial to capturing Miles.]]
* DoesNotLikeGuns: Wayne, [[spoiler:because, before he reformed, [[AccidentalMurder he once accidentally killed a man]] when he tried to rob him]].

* LivingDollCollector: Bloody Tam, the serial killer at the beginning, makes carefully composed scenes using corpses.

* MagicAIsMagicA: As in the original Mistborn Trilogy, the magic is very clearly defined. Each Allomantic or Feruchemical effect is very clearly defined and functions the same always. What metals can be burned by individuals is clearly defined. The only unique variation to this, [[spoiler: Miles's ability to burn gold to heal due to him possessing both gold Allomancy and gold Feruchemy, which compound off of each other]], is treated as a simple unique effect of two abilities feeding off of each other, [[NewRulesAsThePlotDemands and was always part of the world, if not mentioned before]] - mostly because apart from the Lord Ruler himself there were no people combining these two types of abilities.

* SuperBreedingProgram: Hypothesised to be the reason for [[spoiler: kidnapping allomancer females]].

* XanatosGambit: Turns out that Mr. Suit was running a masterful one throughout the whole book. [[spoiler: Miles' robberies of valuable aluminum were intended to sabotage House Tekiel's security and insurance businesses. Unable to pay the steep penalties for all the robberies, the House crashes, letting Suit buy them out cheaply using House Ladrian's embezzled funds. If Miles succeeds, Suit controls both his gang and the security business. If Miles is captured and a majority of the stolen property returned, the security and insurance companies are returned to full power under Suit's control, putting him in even better position. This doesn't even include the side-project of acquiring many women of allomantic heritage, which is also successful and only Wax seems to be paying attention to it, presuming his missing sister is included.]]

* AbnormalAmmo: The Vanishers have aluminum bullets, designed to be used against an Allomancer, since the bullets would not be affected by allomancy. Later Wax get a few special bullets of his own, each bullet designed to work against a specific type of Allomancer by behaving differently then a normal bullet when the Allomancer uses their allomancy on it.
* AceCustom: Wax starts the story with his two Sterion revolvers, then ends it with those and the Vindicator, all specially designed revolvers.

* AntiMagic: Aluminum acts as anti-magic to allomancy, resisting its effects. This leads to Aluminum being highly valued resource worth stealing.
* ArtifactTitle: This book contains three Twinborn and one Misting, but no Mistborn, unless one counts the brief appearance of [[spoiler:Ironeyes]] in the epilogue.

%%* BatmanGambit: Wax successfully pulls one off to defeat [[BigBad Miles]] at the end.

* BlessedWithSuck: Being born a Cadmium Misting means one is technically an Allomancer, but only having the ability to slow down time around oneself, an ability almost entirely useless.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: InvertedTrope; Aluminum is an expensive and rare commodity worth complex robbery schemes to pull off in the series. However, in real life it's a worthless shiny foil.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Fittingly, the high value of aluminum. In the series it's a precious commodity, while in the modern world it's little more then [[WorthlessYellowRocks worthless shiny foil]]. However, aluminum was actually highly valued in the past, before better smelting techniques were invented [[note]]While aluminum is the most common metal in Earth's crust, it's mostly in form of bauxite. Before the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-Héroult_process Hall-Héroult process]], the only way to get aluminum was via finding rare deposits of raw aluminum. The development of the Hall-Héroult process allows aluminum smelting from bauxite, making it much cheaper.[[/note]]. And due to its AntiMagic properties, in this world it has an ''extremely'' practical use in addition to its rarity.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: InvertedTrope; Aluminum is an expensive and rare commodity worth complex robbery schemes to pull off in the series. However, in real life it's a worthless shiny foil. Though, see AluminumChristmasTrees.

* ChekhovsGun: When Marasi and Wax are trying to looking for a motive, Wax mentions the extensive genealogical resources in his uncle's library, and they discover that all of the kidnapped hostages were descended from the Lord Mistborn. [[spoiler:It turns out that his uncle was using those same records to scout said hostages]].