by Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Adult high fantasy
My Rating: ★★★★★
Description:
The end is coming. The malevolent force known as Ruin has finally escaped from his imprisonment, after tricking Vin into releasing him at the Well of Ascension. The mists kill at random, striking down hundreds. Ash falls from the sky, poisoning the land.
Vin and Elend must find a way to save their world from Ruin -- but is it already too late?
My Review
I cried reading The Hero of Ages, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This is actually the most I've cried reading any book I've ever read, and I consider that a big recommendation in its favor. Out of the three Mistborn books, this one has to be my favorite. It has a wonderfully paced plot, amazing character development, and the most wonderful and emotionally devastating conclusion to the trilogy that anyone could have asked for.
The Characters
The characters, of course, are amazing. The character arcs that were started in previous books is threaded through the plot of this book, and nothing about them disappointed. I'm always so impressed by the amount of though that Sanderson puts into his characters -- they clearly aren't secondary to the plot, which is something fantasy writing tends to be guilty of.
We also get to see a bunch of different POVs in this book -- Elend and Vin still get POVs, as well as Sazed, but Spook also gets his own POV, storyline, and character arc in this book as well, which I really liked.
Plot/Pacing
For a start, the pacing was perfect. Both The Final Empire and The Well of Ascension had rather slow starts -- at least for me. But The Hero of Ages kept a good pace throughout the whole book. The plot was good as well, building off of the concepts laid down in the previous books and then defying every expectation for the payoff.
The stakes were insane. The series started out with huge stakes, and each book kept adding to those stakes, so by this book, we're not just dealing with one ruler, or one city -- we're dealing with the fate of the entire world. And that world is ending. Fast. It was both terrifying and completely enthralling. I love the types of stories like this, with characters struggling against incredible odds.
Worldbuilding
The worldbuilding was also phenomenal. There are new concepts added in this book, and new layers added to the already complex magic system. However, none of these new layers were random -- all had clearly been foreshadowed since page one of The Final Empire. We get to see the magic system that gives the Steel Inquisitors their powers (which is horrifying, by the way), and we also get to see the kandra culture, which was super interesting, too.
And of course, the ending. The ending was perfect, and beautiful, and at the same time also one of the most emotionally devastating endings I've ever read. Don't expect to close this book with dry eyes. I know I didn't.
Overall, I absolutely loved The Hero of Ages, and though I'm so sad that this series is over, it couldn't have ended more perfectly.
Content
Recommended for ages 16 and up.
POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of suicide, suicidal thoughts.
Violence can get brutal at times, with descriptions of blood, wounds, and large-scale battlefields. There are a lot of deaths, and some characters are killed in really brutal ways. Some of these are definitely gory. Several disturbing descriptions of the Steel Inquisitors and the process of how they're created.
There wasn't much sexual content in this book, beyond a few references to couples sleeping together, and kissing.
Several instances of swearing.
Characters drink alcohol.
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