5 Star Book Review: The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)

Author| Brandon Sanderson
Edition| Mass Market Paperback
Genre| Fantasy
Rating| 5 Stars
Other Reviews| The Final Empire

This review is SPOILER FREE.  If you want my full thoughts, with spoilers included, leave me a comment and I'll post one.  I would love to talk about these books for ever and ever.

Without giving too much away, this takes place about a year after the first one.  It's very different, too.  The characters have matured and, reflecting on The Final Empire I almost can't imagine them like that.  What a testimony to Sanderson's writing, that characters have grown so much.  Another big difference lies in the central theme.  No longer is this a heist story, rather a war story.  Additionally, where the first is a bit of a conversation about religion, this one is a conversation about politics.

I loved this book so much.  I can't say I loved it more than the first book because I loved them equally in different ways.  The character development, for one, blew me away.  Those of you who aren't fans of Breeze, by the end of the book I swear you'll be sold.  Besides him, Sazed and Elend have the most drastic of changes.  I can't believe they're the same people!  Vin, too, goes through a lot, but I feel like it's a more predictable trajectory.

This book ends with one heck of a cliffhanger (it had me turning to the page with Sanderson's picture and cursing him out of love...) and can't stand on its own.  Which makes sense, since it is a trilogy.  Like with Final Empire this one had some pretty mind blowing surprises about 70% of the way through that continued to build and finally, in the climax, shatter my mind.  My.  Mind.

Five star reviews are hard to write because it's literally me just gushing and gushing.  So I won't say anymore.  Hopefully you're planning on picking the first book up because it's well worth it.  It does take a while to read, though, so be warned that other reading might get shoved to the side.  This one took me almost two weeks (although they were especially busy weeks, I grant you).

Anyways, happy reading!