#anyway i also love that Vin (even tho she's still technically a normal Mistborn) is so much more ingenius? powerful? creative? with Alloman

[tbookblurbs]

The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Era 1, #2)

4/5 - Docked a point for dragging, fantastic political debates, succeeds at the tried and true end-of-second-book disaster

Spoilers below!

I really love this book just for the character growth that everyone is undergoing. Lots of introspection and learning acceptance of one's self, but also, many of them need to abide by the principle of "I think you're just thinking about yourself too much". However, given that they're like always in life or death situations, I'm letting it slide.

My main gripe with this book is that I feel like the politicking takes too long. It's a lot of hemming and hawing for the first 1200 pages and then in true Brandon Sanderson fashion, you have to strap in for the rollercoaster in the last 25%. Not a bad book and all necessary plotlines, I just wish they could have been slimmed down a bit. My eyes tend to glaze over when there are too many similar battles scenes and there were a lot of those in this book.

I also know that some people have very strong feelings about Zane - doing this as a reread, I actually liked him a lot more as a hint of what's to come. The first time I thought he was annoying and a distraction, I can be honest, but now I appreciate his character for allowing Vin to really struggle with her understanding of herself.

One of the big positives for me is (potentially controversially) the miscommunication between Elend and Vin. The miscommunication trope gets a lot of heat for being unrealistic and/or annoying, but personally I can't think of anything more human than assuming the other person means one thing and they mean another and not having the time or seeing the need to clarify those things. That happens literally every day in my Outlook inbox. The disconnect here makes their reconciliation feel all the more earned and such a relief at the back end of the story. Plus, both of them needed to question these things a little bit. A big pet peeve of mine is when characters fall in love and that's just that, happy ending, no questions asked. This is especially irritating to me when, like Vin and Elend, they are each others' first loves. It just feels more believable to me when they struggle with themselves and their differences.

Favorite subplots include TenSoon/OreSeur and Sazed and Tindwyl. Sazed POVs introduce a very stabilizing presence into the novel and he looks at things so differently from everyone else in the novel. I didn't cry this time around (I was close though) when Tindwyl died, but reading how Sazed loses faith in everything is still so painful. He's usually the heart and soul of realistic optimism in the group, much like Elend is their unrealistic optimist. Seeing him lose that in his grief is just like a stab to the chest.

As a side note, the concept of Ruin changing words on paper and altering people's memories is such a creative way of having your "evil" force seem all encompassing. I'm obsessed with the Shards in this series.