Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - The Well of Ascension

Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

30 reviews

peasandpancakes's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

Loved this book. Perfect amount of slower and faster chapters. I cannot wait to start the last book in this trilogy to find out what happens next.

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rikuson1's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.5

I Really Liked It 😊
-★★★★✮- (4.50/5.00)
My Grading Letter Score = 90% (A)

When I finished The Well of Ascension, the first words that came out of my mouth were "simply incredible." But at first the pacing of this book at the start, I completely understand why some people would consider this weaker than The Final Empire if we are discussing overall pacing because The Well of Ascension was constantly going from slow to fast to slower to faster. For me, I'm not really someone who heavily focuses on pacing if what is being provided to me is engaging and if it's building up to something that is paid off when it's due, which this book mostly everyone agrees it does just that. So, regarding pacing consistency, sure, you can go ahead and give The Final Empire the upper hand when it comes to that. But honestly, outside of that, I most definitely feel like The Well of Ascension is tied with The Final Empire in almost every other criteria, and/or The Well of Ascension did it better.

The two categories I feel The Well of Ascension did better were characterization and character development. Every single character that was focused on in The Well of Ascension, for the most part, felt like they were given the time they needed to be fleshed out enough to be commended at least above what the characterization execution was provided to us in The Final Empire and goes for the development they went through in this book. World-building, Lore, Action, and Prose are all categories that can be debated which one did it better. I don't really care since I enjoyed all of these things in both of these books.

Verdict
At first, I was Team Final Empire, until around Chapter 47 when my favorite fight scene in the series so far occurred did I start to lean over to Team Well of Ascension, after that the pacing slowed back down and then I started to lean back over to The Final Empire and then the last fifty pages of this book leveled me out. It brought me to the conclusion of thinking that I like both of these books equally critically, to be honest. If I was held at gunpoint and forced to choose one over the other, I might say The Well of Ascension, since the hype of just finishing it is still on me and I love great characterization which this book gave me a whole lot of. But I love both of these books equally and I'm glad I did not come out of it thinking less of it in comparison to its predecessor, a successor should be as good or better than what came before it and I feel The Well of Ascension accomplished just that. So regardless of what the majority of people state or what the rating score in comparison says about this book.

I Really Liked It.

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tilo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I am unsure if I have ever experienced a book like this one, where with every new chapter a new information is dropped that almost always completely twists one of the many exciting narratives. From the first page on, I was surprised and as it kept going I could not fathom all the plottwists coming. And none of them seemed over the top nor misplaced, as the world, its history and its characters, whom I am attached to deeply now, are so well construed that it read so fluently.
Not to mention, the amazing and captivating writing style!
Due to the ending, I am both extremely curious and mortified to find out what is waiting in Book Three.

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kidprezident's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-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

4.5

This review will contain spoilers! I got spoiled in a review for this book so please be careful!

I really loved this book! I really liked the way Brandon writes Vin and her insecurities - that they have nothing to do with how capable she is. I find that really relatable and honestly really commendable coming from a male author. He obviously did his research on how women think and tried to reflect that accurately (maybe even had a sensitivity reader? I think I remember him saying that in the intro). Overall, I really liked that Sanderson explored the characters outside of and in reaction to the problems around them.

I thought I wouldn’t like Sazed having a romance but whew his hand shaking when he tells Tindwyl to “stay. Please” rivals that of the Pride & Prejudice 2005 hand stretch thing that Mr. Darcy does. Even more in love with him but I’m not sure how I feel about Tindwyl. I think she was an interesting character but I don’t think she really made that much of a difference in the story. Even she says herself that Elend would have eventually found his way without her. The whole romance subplot with Sazed was cute but was not necessary to the plot. However, I could see Tindwyl’s death becoming part of Sazed’s character arc later on. I’m not fond of the “killing off the woman for man pain” trope but I think that’s where this is going.

Speaking of Sazed, I absolutely loved being able to see his perspective in this book. It made me love him even more as a character (although I do wish he would stop referring to himself as half a man or not a true man). He is definitely my favorite character in the series and I’m glad we’ve gotten to see him shine a little bit more in this one.

However, the plot moves extremely slowly in this book. I was nearly half way through before anything of any real significance happened. The first half of this book made me extremely tired of reading drawn out fight scenes. They seemed a little too drawn out and filler-ish. This was mostly Vin’s sparring with Zane that I think could have been handled better.

Brandon was getting very close to ableism with his characterization of Zane and Cett. Having a character who is unequivocally “insane” and hears voices might have needed a sensitivity reader (although there was some foreshadowing at the end of Zane’s life about him not actually having been insane). Cett is described as a “cripple” which could have just still been acceptable use at the time in 2007; I’m not too sure about when this word fell out of favor. Sanderson, as an able bodied person, may not have known not to use this word either.

By the middle of the book I was kind of getting annoyed with Vin and her questioning Elend when all he’s done is care about her. I understand her apprehension about being used as a tool but I dunno, she’s always viewed it as working for the betterment of the skaa rather than being used as a tool. Zane seemed to change that for her but I’m glad she made her way back by the end of the book.

At first, I didn’t like the idea of a “good king” that seemed to be floating around in the beginning of this book as Elend finds his footing. I assumed that the narrative was assuming that the reader was promonarchy like many other fantasies do but I appreciate that Sanderson, by the end of the book, emphasized that change, especially big political moves like the ones Elend was trying to make, can only be done slowly.

The end of the book was super cool and well written and it was the first time in this book that I actually found myself worried for the characters. The rest of the fighting in this book seemed to be, as I said before, just filler. There were no real stakes. However, during the last ⅓ the stakes are HIGH.

I really thought Sazed was going to die there for a while.

However, I found it kind of unbelievable that Vin and Elend would leave the city so easily. But we gotta move the plot on somehow and Brandon at least tried to give some explanation for it.

Overall, this book was entertaining and I loved getting to know the characters’ internal workings more. Breeze especially was fascinating. I think this book relied too much on people just sitting around and talking but when things happened, they were really intense. Second books are always difficult so I can appreciate what Sanderson did here. I’m looking forward to finishing out the original trilogy. :)

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blythemind's review

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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mkaiww's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

The middle of the book drags and I was planning on taking a break from the series after this book but after the ending I was permanently hooked on the cosmere

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