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4.33 AVERAGE
4.33 AVERAGE
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This definitely feels like a middle book!! Super easy to read (even though it was 762 pages 🤣) I still really enjoyed it but am hoping the third book builds on this base and delivers a bit more overall impact.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
hm. this book...made me mad? idk, i feel slightly betrayed lol
I'm still gonna give it 3 stars ig, and it kept my attention and i finished it in like 4 days so i guess i liked it okay.
i have some things to say tho....i hesitate to write this bloated review, esp b/c I havent read the last book yet, but...
this book was so...boring. I don't use the word boring when it comes to describing books lightly, but in this case I must. like, it was a weird mixture of captivating, yet sooo boring. I guess that may be partially due to brandon's writing style, b/c even when nothing is happening it's still written so snappishly that it still moves at a steady pace.
I have to say that prior to starting this series, I have read the entirety of stormlight. and i can see soooo many things in this book(s), from character arcs to plot points, that he really worked on and ironed out and made way more satisfying in stormlight. so maybe my expectations are too high, but I've heard so many good things about this trilogy so this book felt disappointing. and i enjoyed the first book! it definitely had its flaws but overall, I thought it was solid and interesting and really promising. but it feels like he put all of his interesting ideas into the first book, and this one was just floundering. i hate to make this analogy, but the stakes of this book just felt so much lower than the first one. Its like if at the end of the first starwars film, darth vader was killed, and the next movie was just about how the new government was trying to establish itself. again, i hate to make this analogy, because I have faith that the things that brandon is setting up will pay off, and i get that the lord ruler being killed in the first book is because he's not actually the "final boss" or whatever, but this book really fails to continue that thread of danger from an unknown force. don't get me wrong, its there, its just so lost in what is 90% politicking. and that politicking does essentially nothing for the story, except to give our characters time to ruminate and never really interact with each other. i'm gonna start bulletpointing now.
-i spent this entire book waiting with baited breath for elend to die and not only did he not die, he is blessed with not only becoming an allomancer, but becoming mistborn at the very end. i was afraid this was going to happen, and yet i'm still upset. (stormlight spoilers: he must've realized his mistake here and decided it was more interesting to not give adolin powers as a contrast)
-there was a lot of....weird age gap stuff in this. putting aside the fact that vin and elend are respectively 16 and 21 when they first meet in book 1 (why not just make elend younger??) this book introduces an out of no where and absolutely pointless aside relationship between breeze and an 18 year old girl. this wouldn't be such an issue, except its framed as being okay because the girl is actually manipulating /his/ emotions instead of the other way around (guess he can't help himself!) and also in the way that the other charcters react to the relationship. they all acknowledge that its kinda weird and gross, but also find it endearing and ultimately think that is sweet that he finally has someone (???)
-related, there is a conversation early on where the crew joke that vin was attracted to kelsier. where did that come from. that was never a whiff of this in the first book at all. he repeatedly compares her to being the daughter he never had, and for this book to backpedal and imply that is so...strange
-this is a continuing problem from the first book , but the main "crew" have like...no character development and their relationships to each other feel very lacking. we are repeatedly /told/ that vin loves them and trusts them, and that they're good friends, but we barely see any actual conversations or moments of them bonding or w/e
-i know i'm biased because the relationship between them is so forced and immediate and i really think elend is boring and should've died, but i could not care less about his rise and struggles with being king. i was repeatedly being punched in the face from characters proclaiming him as being a "good man"....why is he the moral yardstick? what about him makes him so "good" that they're willing to put him on the throne, just because he's a noble that thinks that slavery is bad?
-brandon, i know that you're a happily married mormon man but why....why does every one of your main female characters have to ultimately get married
-vin literally equating wearing dresses to her feminine side and wearing trousers as her "mistborn/alternative" side was laughable. again, a recurring complaint but bro. c'mon. 'the day he asked her to marry him was the day she stopped wearing dresses'
-i'm supposed to believe that elend is this scholar and strategist but at the end he is 'tricked' into leaving the city w/ vin b/c he doesn't consider that his evil dad may not step in and stop the fighting from the monster army. c'mon.
-maybe its supposed to be 'realistic' but this book really makes it feel like the events of the last book were for nothing. they still put a nobleman on the throne. the skaa slaves were still living in drudgery. i feel like we kinda lost the plot a bit here in that the whole point of the revolution and kelsier's sacrifice was to free them from oppression. instead we got 500 pages of elend failing to be king and vin naval gazing about their relationship. idk, even if she's supposed to be a 'teenage girl' that's such a crutch for making her care more about her love life than the god that she killed
-just....ultimately the 3 army siege plotline is so bloated and pointless. it killed this book.
-killing kelsier at the end of the first book was such a bold move: to get rid of this charismatic, or at least compelling, main character was an interesting choice and then this book suffers because of it simply because he at least propelled the plot forward. no such big swings in this one.
-i almost forgot about zane. he was sort of interesting, if only because he could hear "god"'s voice (also his name made me laugh. Zane. just the perfect edgy boy name, only could've been worse if it was like Blaze or smth) but then he kinda was only there for there to be a brief love triangle and to make vin doubt herself. his motivations were just...too perfectly in line with the plot's conflict of needing vin to have self doubt. again, the stuff going on w/ him is something i'm sure gets explained in later book(s), but i found it one of the few slightly compelling parts of the story and then he died. ok.
-not necessarily a bad thing, but the "twist" at the end seemed pretty clear?
there are tidbits in here that are really good and i want to find out more about, but overall i just feel like the spark and intriguing parts of this series got absolutely lost. i'll read the third one because otherwise finishing this feels like a waste, but it has to be better than this one so at least there's that.
I'm still gonna give it 3 stars ig, and it kept my attention and i finished it in like 4 days so i guess i liked it okay.
i have some things to say tho....i hesitate to write this bloated review, esp b/c I havent read the last book yet, but...
I have to say that prior to starting this series, I have read the entirety of stormlight. and i can see soooo many things in this book(s), from character arcs to plot points, that he really worked on and ironed out and made way more satisfying in stormlight. so maybe my expectations are too high, but I've heard so many good things about this trilogy so this book felt disappointing. and i enjoyed the first book! it definitely had its flaws but overall, I thought it was solid and interesting and really promising. but it feels like he put all of his interesting ideas into the first book, and this one was just floundering. i hate to make this analogy, but the stakes of this book just felt so much lower than the first one. Its like if at the end of the first starwars film, darth vader was killed, and the next movie was just about how the new government was trying to establish itself. again, i hate to make this analogy, because I have faith that the things that brandon is setting up will pay off, and i get that the lord ruler being killed in the first book is because he's not actually the "final boss" or whatever, but this book really fails to continue that thread of danger from an unknown force. don't get me wrong, its there, its just so lost in what is 90% politicking. and that politicking does essentially nothing for the story, except to give our characters time to ruminate and never really interact with each other. i'm gonna start bulletpointing now.
-i spent this entire book waiting with baited breath for elend to die and not only did he not die, he is blessed with not only becoming an allomancer, but becoming mistborn at the very end. i was afraid this was going to happen, and yet i'm still upset. (stormlight spoilers: he must've realized his mistake here and decided it was more interesting to not give adolin powers as a contrast)
-there was a lot of....weird age gap stuff in this. putting aside the fact that vin and elend are respectively 16 and 21 when they first meet in book 1 (why not just make elend younger??) this book introduces an out of no where and absolutely pointless aside relationship between breeze and an 18 year old girl. this wouldn't be such an issue, except its framed as being okay because the girl is actually manipulating /his/ emotions instead of the other way around (guess he can't help himself!) and also in the way that the other charcters react to the relationship. they all acknowledge that its kinda weird and gross, but also find it endearing and ultimately think that is sweet that he finally has someone (???)
-related, there is a conversation early on where the crew joke that vin was attracted to kelsier. where did that come from. that was never a whiff of this in the first book at all. he repeatedly compares her to being the daughter he never had, and for this book to backpedal and imply that is so...strange
-this is a continuing problem from the first book , but the main "crew" have like...no character development and their relationships to each other feel very lacking. we are repeatedly /told/ that vin loves them and trusts them, and that they're good friends, but we barely see any actual conversations or moments of them bonding or w/e
-i know i'm biased because the relationship between them is so forced and immediate and i really think elend is boring and should've died, but i could not care less about his rise and struggles with being king. i was repeatedly being punched in the face from characters proclaiming him as being a "good man"....why is he the moral yardstick? what about him makes him so "good" that they're willing to put him on the throne, just because he's a noble that thinks that slavery is bad?
-brandon, i know that you're a happily married mormon man but why....why does every one of your main female characters have to ultimately get married
-vin literally equating wearing dresses to her feminine side and wearing trousers as her "mistborn/alternative" side was laughable. again, a recurring complaint but bro. c'mon. 'the day he asked her to marry him was the day she stopped wearing dresses'
-i'm supposed to believe that elend is this scholar and strategist but at the end he is 'tricked' into leaving the city w/ vin b/c he doesn't consider that his evil dad may not step in and stop the fighting from the monster army. c'mon.
-maybe its supposed to be 'realistic' but this book really makes it feel like the events of the last book were for nothing. they still put a nobleman on the throne. the skaa slaves were still living in drudgery. i feel like we kinda lost the plot a bit here in that the whole point of the revolution and kelsier's sacrifice was to free them from oppression. instead we got 500 pages of elend failing to be king and vin naval gazing about their relationship. idk, even if she's supposed to be a 'teenage girl' that's such a crutch for making her care more about her love life than the god that she killed
-just....ultimately the 3 army siege plotline is so bloated and pointless. it killed this book.
-killing kelsier at the end of the first book was such a bold move: to get rid of this charismatic, or at least compelling, main character was an interesting choice and then this book suffers because of it simply because he at least propelled the plot forward. no such big swings in this one.
-i almost forgot about zane. he was sort of interesting, if only because he could hear "god"'s voice (also his name made me laugh. Zane. just the perfect edgy boy name, only could've been worse if it was like Blaze or smth) but then he kinda was only there for there to be a brief love triangle and to make vin doubt herself. his motivations were just...too perfectly in line with the plot's conflict of needing vin to have self doubt. again, the stuff going on w/ him is something i'm sure gets explained in later book(s), but i found it one of the few slightly compelling parts of the story and then he died. ok.
-not necessarily a bad thing, but the "twist" at the end seemed pretty clear?
there are tidbits in here that are really good and i want to find out more about, but overall i just feel like the spark and intriguing parts of this series got absolutely lost. i'll read the third one because otherwise finishing this feels like a waste, but it has to be better than this one so at least there's that.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
It took until 75% of this book for it to really pick up and become interesting. In the end the twists are definitely worth it, and are good enough to boost this from 3.75 to a 4.25. Overall I still feel (like in book 1) the trauma these characters have endured (particularly Vin) and how it impacts them is not very well written and i don’t feel like their actions and internal monologues feel true for someone with their past experiences
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book really won me over as I read!!! I can definitely say the second half was stronger for me than the first half - not that the first half was bad, but I struggled more with the plot then until developments in the second half got me more engaged.
Stuff I didn’t like (not much!):Miscommunication as a central problem Vin and Elend had to overcome; this just felt a bit too forced at times like WHYY aren’t yall talking about some of this stuff, but considering their characters it does work ENOUGH to not be unbearable, so this is more of a complaint than a story flaw . The whole spy in our ranks thing felt a bit random, I enjoyed it being something the heroes had to deal with but they also ignored it so often that it felt out of place sometimes. With how this ended up being revealed, I think it works well enough. Zane as a character I just didn’t care about enough, I didn’t see him as a worthy love interest opposite Elend and while his reasoning for trying to turn Vin kinda made sense, it didn’t land well enough for me. Overall he’s fine, but I didn’t feel he added much .
Things I did like (A LOT!!): Thecity-under-siege element was really well done, I liked how the rope kept getting pulled tighter and tighter with Elend developing as a character alongside the strong political thriller elements here. What REALLY made this shine for me is how the secondary plot of figuring out the deepness/well of ascension/prophecy sits below the siege plotline and then comes to the forefront in the end. This was MASTERFUL to me!!!! You never quite get enough of it as the story goes on, and just like the characters I felt it sitting in the back of my head while faced with more pressing matters of invading armies and political intrigue. The way the plot continues to build after Vin establishes Elend’s empire was exceptional, I loved how the war concluding felt like a bait conclusion to the book as bigger events start to come together. Sazed seeing so many moments of the prophecy being realized into trusting his gut that he needs to stop Vin and THEN Marsh reappearing to stop him for reasons he doesn’t even seem to understand was CRAZYYYYYY and so so so well done. The descent to the Well really got me, with the realization that the mist spirit was trying to help and that Vin’s actions she thought were selfless, things she had been told and believed she had to do, were actually wrong and releasing some HORRIBLE evil upon them was SHOCKING!!! Reading that “I am FREE!” line gagged me so bad. I’m glad Elend isn’t dead, but curious to see how his mistborn vibes play out because I’m still not sure about that development .
Overall, while this started a bit rockier than Final Empire, it continued to heat up and I was really impressed with the level of writing / the huge twists at the end that rivaled those in the first book’s climax. I’ve really enjoyed how Mistborn 1 and 2 have had these wild but very believable twists, and I’m looking forward to reading The Hero of Ages SOMEWHAT soon!!
Stuff I didn’t like (not much!):
Things I did like (A LOT!!): The
Overall, while this started a bit rockier than Final Empire, it continued to heat up and I was really impressed with the level of writing / the huge twists at the end that rivaled those in the first book’s climax. I’ve really enjoyed how Mistborn 1 and 2 have had these wild but very believable twists, and I’m looking forward to reading The Hero of Ages SOMEWHAT soon!!
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A little slower in places than the first, but a good entry. Great ending that lines up with the typical three-book trilogy.