The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 3.75/5 stars
☆☆★★★

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson is the second book in the Mistborn trilogy. In this book, Kelsier's crew defeats the Lord Ruler and has to clean up the mess it made.

The Well of Ascension has all of the characters you loved from the last book except for Kelsier, who dies in the first book at the end as a symbol of hope and a god-figure to the skaa to keep on fighting for their freedom. It's interesting to see these characters in a new light - they're aren't just a thieving crew anymore. They now have new, real responsibilities trying to keep the city of Luthadel together.

I feel like only giving this book ~3 stars is blasphemy, but I don't know how else to rate it satisfactorily for me. I DID LOVE THIS BOOK, I SWEAR! While the story was great and progressed pretty well, I also feel like this could be around 300 pages less than it is. Maybe it was just that this took me a whole month to read, but the story seemed to drag on a lot. It was mostly just "Oh no, Elend's going to get overthrown! What do?!" That's it. I mean, obviously, there was a bit more going on, but that what the whole middle of the book seemed to be. Also this book focused mainly on politics, which is alright, but I'm here more for the fighting, character development, and allomancy. 

The character development was amazing for most of the crew because, as I said earlier, they're put in a whole new situation they're not used to and have to deal with the problems they now face. Their personalities, for the most part, stayed the same though. Elend seemed to become a lot weaker and Vin a lot more self-doubting. I really didn't care for Elend in this book, which is bad, since he's like the second main character now. Sazed is still my favorite character, being super smart and calm and collected. He's basically everything I'm not, so I love him and want to be him. His "romance" with Tindwl was very nice. It was so nice to see him with another of his kind and have him fit in so well and be so happy. I love Sazed so much. 

The love triangle (sort of) between Vin, Zane, and Elend annoyed me. This reminds me of the books I read back when I was 11 years old. I didn't come here for a love triangle. The romance here didn't really captivate me, which I guess is good in a sense, because it'd be highly unrealistic if Elend and Vin weren't facing any problems romantically due to everything going on. I loved how mysterious Zane was (and his talking to God???), but in the end, I really wasn't rooting for him.

The allomancy was lacking. It was just a lot of pushing and pulling. It was more fun when Vin was learning all this new stuff and trying everything out. She had all these interesting new battles where she fumbled because she didn't know what she was doing. Now she's pretty much mastered allomancy and that new, mysterious quality of it was gone and a bit disappointing and lackluster. I'm still not really sure what the new compound, duralumin, is really supposed to do? Even though she used it throughout the whole book?

The koloss and the mists were really cool to me. It's a high fantasy book, so I expect some weird, scary creatures! Thanks Sanderson! When I read about the koloss, I kept picturing the troll from the first Harry Potter movie?? I'm not sure that's what Sanderson had in mind when he created the koloss, but they're so similar I can't help myself. The mists, on the other hand, are starting to freak me out. They're coming out during the day and there are reports of people dying in the mists now, and oh man. I really wish that storyline was pursued further,

The ending! Oh man! The ending was amazing and twisty and definitely has me excited and terrified for the next book. There was so much happening at the end though, that I do feel emotionally drained and will have to read some lighter books before moving on to the last book.