Reviews with content warning for Rape - The Well of Ascension

I hate how much I was disappointed with this one! I enjoyed the first one, but this one felt REALLY needlessly long to me :/ In classic Sanderson fashion, a lot of time and pages were devoted to hammering in allusion and cultivating relationships, espionage, tensions, but it was done over and over again for the same tensions and relationships, I found myself just quickly skimming and tuning out and not missing anything. I don't mind long books, but I think this could have used some editing down. Aside from that, everything was classic Sanderson. Great characters, straightforward writing, good story beats and twists... I wasn't quite as engaged in this story as the first one, but it certainly positioned it for an interesting finale.

Content Warnings

bookswithjk's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Good follow up to The Final Empire, although I feel like this book is leading the story down a path similar to his Reckoners series, where the main villain is defeated in the first book and the next two books set up a much bigger adversary.

While I do agree that the book can get tedious in the first part, especially with the politics, I did enjoy the story. The italicized bits above each chapter really help to keep my interest; primarily because I really want to know who is speaking in those sections.

Content Warnings

angelareads's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

caidyn's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional 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

4.5

This review can also be found on my blog!

CW: character deaths and violence

Damn. The enjoyment continues with this series! And, there will be spoilers for the first book in here! That’s your spoiler warning because I’m not going to go through and mark each one.

This picks up after Vin defeats the Lord Ruler. Elend is king. Vin is still protecting everyone. And now armies are coming to retake the city and to put someone else as king and to take power away from the new regime.

While this book was just as tightly plotted as the first book, I just didn’t enjoy it as much. As I said, it was good. Damn, it was good. However, I felt like there were two different stories in this book that didn’t exactly meld together well.

First, there’s the defense of the city with Vin and Elend and the rest of the crew who are trying to keep power in memory of all that Kelsier did. That involves the armies coming, the deception, and the tricks that come into it.

Then, there’s another story, one that’s harder to wrap your head around (at least, it was for me) that involves the Well of Ascension and the mist. That mainly involves Sazed, honestly. This was the part that didn’t work as well for me. Sure, it was interesting. I love mythology and it was very interesting to see the progression of it, however it just didn’t make me go wow about anything. In fact, towards the end, it felt very convenient.

There were also new characters introduced in this book and some old ones get expanded on! I really enjoyed that because Sanderson is amazing at character development. Even though some of them don’t matter as much by the end of the story.

And, adding onto that, there were quite a few character deaths or very near misses that nearly killed me. These characters are amazing and I’m here for them (especially my favorite one, who nearly died). I’m definitely excited to read the next and final book in this series, even though I’m incredibly nervous about who will make it out alive.

Content Warnings

More...