Book #10: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

This is the second Mistborn book in the trilogy. For some reason it felt like it took me AGES to get through this book--I kept having to put it down and didn't have any long periods to read, which was annoying, because it was really good. Every time I stopped I wanted so badly to know what was coming. It was so exciting and seemed like SO MUCH was going on that I kept flipping to farther on in the book to cheat and try and find out what was going to happen. (I know, it's a terrible habit of mine. I am not patient enough to just power through it and find out what happens at the end!) That is something that stands out about Sanderson's fantasy (and probably all high fantasy) as opposed to more mainstream sci-fi novels (like Hunger Games, for example): they are so ambitious, and have such huge landscapes for the plot, and just get more and more overwhelming with everything that's going on in each successive novel. But it's not a bad thing--it just makes everything bigger and on a grander scale and more important as it goes along.

In the first Mistborn, Vin goes from being a street urchin kid to basically the most powerful Mistborn in the world, and being the main person to overthrow and kill the immortal Lord Ruler. In this book, Vin and her compadres are trying to keep the country together and to deal with the threats from the threatening armies who are marching towards Luthadel to try and take it by force. But on top of that, the "Deepness"--a threat that is, according to legend, going to destroy the world--seems like it is coming back, but they don't know what it is or how to stop it. Vin is trying to protect Elend from being killed, keep Luthadel from being massacred, and save the whole world from the Deepness by discovering the Well of Ascension. CAN SHE DO IT? This book focused a lot more on Vin and Elend and their relationship and the two of them working together to accomplish all their goals, whereas the first book was more about Kelsier and the whole crew's goal of overthrowing the Lord Ruler. I feel like I liked the feel of the first book better--it had kind of an Ocean's Eleven feel--but since Kelsier died in that book and the natural turn of events involved a lot of political maneuvering in this book, I guess it was inevitable. But I feel like I got to know Elend better in this book and I like him a lot more than I did in the last one--but he doesn't exactly feel real. He's a completely one-sided character: pure of heart and of mind, totally incorruptible no matter how much power he has or who he's with. I don't know.

This book had an AWESOME turn of events at the very end, changing what you thought about everything and perfectly setting up the third novel in the trilogy. I am really excited to read the third one, although I have a few other library books I need to work through first before I get to it.