I enjoyed Mistborn too, though I got increasingly dissatisfied with the sequels. What I thought was different about the magic system was that it was so obviously using video game logic. I thought of the book as an attempt to translate one medium to another, as some rap artists have said sampling was a way of translating cutting from the movies. I don't believe in originality, but I don't play video games and I did like the novelty of having the characters essentially learn how to combine sequences to get the result they wanted.