The Well of Ascension
I probably should have written this before I finished the third book.
At this point, the trilogy is all kind of blurring together, and the
second book was definitely upstaged by the third one. It's a little hard
to talk about The Well of Ascension without leaking into The Hero of Ages, but I'll try.
The Well of Ascension definitely started out a lot slower than the first book. It took nearly 150 pages for me to really become engaged with the story. Sanderson has spent a lot of time fleshing out his world at this point, so mostly we're meeting new characters. But since everyone spends the majority of the book besieged inside a city while I was (mistakenly) waiting for them to escape and head north, it was hard for me to keep going.
It certainly didn't help that the cover depicts a scene from the third book.
Mostly this book suffers from the same things as almost every second installment in a trilogy. The pacing is a bit off and most of the book exists to set up the finale. Which can make it hard to keep caring.
Not to say that this book was bad or boring. There's a lot of interesting things that happen. Sanderson takes some time to really delve into the cultures of a few creatures he introduced in the first book, which I appreciated. And we got some more women to hang out with Vin and help mentor her. But I ended up barreling through this book in an effort to just get to the final installment, where I knew all the action would be. I was far less interested in the politics of this world (which basically boils down to idealism vs realism) and in Vin and Elend's strained relationship than I was in the magic and seeing more allomancy.
Ultimately this book was fine, but definitely the weakest of the three. (Though I very rarely like the middle of trilogies, so this could just be me)
The Well of Ascension definitely started out a lot slower than the first book. It took nearly 150 pages for me to really become engaged with the story. Sanderson has spent a lot of time fleshing out his world at this point, so mostly we're meeting new characters. But since everyone spends the majority of the book besieged inside a city while I was (mistakenly) waiting for them to escape and head north, it was hard for me to keep going.
It certainly didn't help that the cover depicts a scene from the third book.
Mostly this book suffers from the same things as almost every second installment in a trilogy. The pacing is a bit off and most of the book exists to set up the finale. Which can make it hard to keep caring.
Not to say that this book was bad or boring. There's a lot of interesting things that happen. Sanderson takes some time to really delve into the cultures of a few creatures he introduced in the first book, which I appreciated. And we got some more women to hang out with Vin and help mentor her. But I ended up barreling through this book in an effort to just get to the final installment, where I knew all the action would be. I was far less interested in the politics of this world (which basically boils down to idealism vs realism) and in Vin and Elend's strained relationship than I was in the magic and seeing more allomancy.
Ultimately this book was fine, but definitely the weakest of the three. (Though I very rarely like the middle of trilogies, so this could just be me)
Comments
Post a Comment