Greatpilgrim's Full Review: Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn: The Final Empire
I wasn’t smart – I read Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn the year it came out, when there were no sequels in sight, so I had to wait a year and half to read the second book in this exciting fantasy trilogy.
Having caught sight of The Well of Ascension’s suspicious 600-page length, you may be thinking this is your typical neverending epic fantasy sequel where the author gets so lost in his own wordy RPG that he loses the reader along the way! Well, I too suspected this (only a teeny, tiny bit, but still), and after reading this installment for myself, I wanted to provide a bit of incentive to lure you into this series.
So here ya go, top three reasons to start – and keep going with – the Mistborn Trilogy:
1. It’s fast-paced and fun. Sanderson’s plots are tight and cinematic, quite unlike Robert Jordan’s or G.R.R. Martin’s huge epics (I know, those two should not be mentioned in the same breath!), and has more of the caper/swashbuckling feel of Scott Lynch’s novels than traditional Tolkien-based fantasy.
2. It’s fresh and offbeat. The premise of this series is that the Dark Lord has won, and a thousand years later some thieves and ruffians decide, hey, wouldn’t it be fun to try and pull off the Caper of the Millennium with this guy and steal his source of wealth? Except, like, it was never really about the money, it was all about reclaiming freedom.
3. It’s FINISHED! The third book, Hero of Ages, is due out later this year! And seems to actually conclude the series!
That’s something to keep in mind when reading The Well of Ascension, which suffers a bit from middle-child syndrome in its connectively functional plot. It picks up a year after Mistborn, as the pieces of the Lord Ruler’s empire are reassembled by the ragtag team of rebel skaa (serfs) and lords who took over Luthadel. Newly crowned King Elend finds that being a good man does not always make a good ruler, for his lack of authoritative command draws not one but several armies to lay siege to the city in hopes of taking it over and seizing the stock of precious atium that was the Lord Ruler’s wealth and power.
In the midst and shadows of these maneuverings is Vin, the teenaged Mistborn left in Kelsier’s wake after defeating the Lord Ruler, and now a master at using the magical allomantic metals in ways and degrees beyond what anyone has ever explored before. It’s not her power, though, but her arrogance masking a lack of inner confidence that will expose her weaknesses in the course of the battles…though wise scholar Sazed has stirred up a dangerous belief in Luthadel that she is the Lady Heir, the good-luck charm of the city, perhaps even the Hero of Ages: the powerful savior who the Lord Ruler failed to become...but Vin is perhaps even more incapable of handling this power than Kelsier or the Lord Ruler ever were.
~My take~
From the starting gate, The Well of Ascension has a clear advantage in its plot and worldbuilding, as Sanderson has already put in place a terrifically interesting and unusual setting that is ready and waiting for the events of the second book. The cultures unveiled in Mistborn are manipulated in this novel with almost devious undercuts of showing what happens when you derail a dictatorship and are left with a vacuum of power in its wake. I saw vague but chilling parallels to Saddam Hussein’s ruler and overthrow, but any resemblance is thoroughly drenched in the unique political and magical intrigues of the Final Empire’s alliances.
Having established a ruthlessly sardonic take on expected fantasy tropes, Sanderson weaves a gripping and fairly well-paced plot into the soaring magical elements of his Mistborn and allomancy-wielding characters. The Well of Ascension takes after its predecessor in expanding upon a unique magic system that overlays (instead of dominating) the realism and drama of the unfolding story threads. The Final Empire is a gritty but not excessively dark realm, and Sanderson’s portrayal of the exuberant way Vin can exploit her abilities, enhanced by the hint of new frontiers of magic she has yet to master, is beautifully contrasted with the flaws of character and appeal of darker Mistborn sources which tug at her power insistently.
The nice thing about a second book is that you’ve had time to grow accustomed to the author’s rhythms and methods, so slipping in to The Well of Ascension’s flow was quite easy for me. Don’t expect flowery purple prose or lengthy descriptions; Brandon Sanderson will have none of that. His storytelling remains tight, intense, and firmly in the here-and-now: a satisfying if somewhat unexpected change of pace for fantasy. This is not quite epic fantasy – more like caper/futuristic/heroic fantasy, if that makes any sense. (If you absolutely MUST label it, I mean.) And Sanderson is a master at combining fun swashbuckling scenes of dueling and power struggles with timeless themes of ethics and personal responsibility in a volatile sea of options.
~But only four stars?~
Yes, I wasn’t AS thrilled with The Well of Ascension as I was with Mistborn. My biggest quibble was with the characters, who were developed with some uncomfortable and not-entirely-consistent traits in this sequel. Elend doesn’t feel like the sarcastic scholarly noble from the first book, for instance; some of the rebellion leaders (Dockson and Ham, etc.) have unexpected motivations (good and bad); and in the most surprising twist of all, Kelsier is badmouthed right and left by the characters! I’ll reserve judgment till the final book, but Vin’s journey toward the “dark side,” though it’s definitely not cliched like most fantasy, hasn’t quite convinced me yet either.
My other nitpick was the length – I didn’t think the story merited 600 pages of text, since much of the action seemed simply connective rather than particularly propulsive. The Well of Ascension would have been just as fine or even better as a 500-page novel, with a bit more ruthless editing of unnecessary or detracting scenes.
~Bottom line~
I was secretly hoping that the second book of the trilogy would somehow be even better than Mistborn, so it’s a bit disillusioning to find that even as superb an author as Brandon Sanderson can fall victim to sequelitis. Rising above all minor flaws, however, The Well of Ascension toys with transcendent themes within a creative conception of magic and envisions a broken empire whose victors are destroying the pieces rather than knitting them back together. That the story can do this WHILE leading the reader through an entertaining landscape of unusual fantasy should be incentive enough to give this impressive sequel a try. (But I wouldn’t do it without reading Mistborn first!)
Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale spinner, author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple ...More at HotBookSale
From the author of the acclaimed Elantris comes the first novel in his Mistborn trilogy--a story which dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a s...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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