The Well of Ascension

I'm still trying to decide if I want to go back to the list format (Top 10 Best Fight Scenes in The Matrix, etc). For this review I'm going with the best/worst format (i.e. The Best Fight Scene in The Well of Ascension, the Worst Speech in The Well of Ascension, etc).

1. Best Fight Scene: Now that Kell is dead, Vin gets most of the fight scenes in this here second book of the Mistborn Trilogy. Unfortunately, only one of them is good (Vin smashes the skull of a thug with her head), and it's not the best. The problem with Sanderson's fight scenes is that they're magic based, and it's really tedious to read about Pulls and Pushes for pages (which is why, in The Way of Kings, it's Dalinar and Kaladin's fights and not Szeth's which are interesting). I like my magic mysterious and grand.

I really liked it when quiet, timid, manhood-less Sazed became the Hulk and defeated the ten-foot tall koloss, but the best fight goes to Elend. I still hate Elend (I'll explain why in one of the Worsts below), but there's one moment in The Well of Ascension when I started cheering for him. He was desperate, his city was being attacked by three armies, the Assembly he created deposed him as King, so he goes to the camp of his former friend to talk him out of invading. His diplomacy gets him nowhere, but he observes the monster koloss carrying pouches, and taking pouches from the koloss they kill. So this scholar with little battle training takes on the smallest kollos he can find, killing him. The kollos have a tradition of giving an excuse to their fellow whenever they kill of one their comrades. "He ate my horse," Elend says. That was enough for the other monsters, they let him take the pouch.

2. Best Character Moment: Again, Vin loses out. She's a seventeen year old girl confused about love. He wants to be with Elend, but they're so different. She's a fighter, he's a scholar and politician. Then there's this other boy, who, despite being crazy, seems to be perfect for her. Zane is a Mistborn like her, a fighter, and powerful. She doesn't know that he's been manipulating her all novel long. And so she chooses him over Elend. But at the last moment, she realizes something. Elend trusts her. So she abandons her plan to leave Zane. (Zane tries to kill her, she kills Zane.)

TenSoon is Zane's shapeshifter. He kills OreSuer, Vin's shapeshifter, and impersonates him. This is part of Zane's plan to manipulate Vin. When Vin chooses Elend (after first choosing Zane), Zane tries to kill her and almost succeeds. But because Vin treated TenSoon like a person (instead of like a tool), he turns on Zane. But this isn't the best Character Moment in the novel. Sazed wins this round. Part of the oppressed people of Terris, he is a eunuch. Fellow Keeper Tindwyl confesses her love for him, and even though he thinks he's not worthy of her (he's a "half man" he says), he knows he loves her back. And then she dies when the enemy finally invade their city. Unfortunately, Sazed survives. And then he finds out that he's been manipulated by some mystic power, him and Tindwyl. And he, the man who's memorized three hundred religions, loses faith.

3. Worst Plot Twist: I'm not even going to consider other options, it's Elend's resurrection and transformation into a Mistborn. If Elend had died, I would have turned from semi-liking him to loving him. Like some sort of Kell the Second. Instead I'm reading the first chapter of The Hero of Ages and he's fighting kollos like Vin. I'm so annoyed I'm almost tempted to just read the Wikipedia summary of the third book.

The best twist belongs to Sazed. In the fist part of The Well of Ascension he finds a testimony written in steel. Anything not written in steel can't be trusted. He makes a rubbing of it, then goes to the city to join Vin and their other friends. In the last part of the novel, after Tindwyl dies, Sazed goes back to where he made the rubbing. The rubbing doesn't match the steel version anymore. Literally, anything not written in steel can't be trusted. Some mystic force changed the rubbing, can change any writing on paper, making it look like there's a power at the Well of Ascension that has to be given up. It turns out to be some sort of force that's been imprisoned.

4. Best Death: The worst death has to be Clubs's. They were running away and he got cut from behind. Dockson's death was good. He was talking to himself, looking at maps, still trying to organize resistance against the kollos and then the kollos came into the room he was in. The best death should have been Elend's.

But since Elend didn't die, the best death goes to Zane. All book long God has been telling him to kill every one he meets. He thinks he's insane. He thinks only Vin can save him, because she's the only person God doesn't tell him to kill. And after she kills him, God tells him why: he was never insane. God, that mystic forces, has been using him all along.

The worst part of the Well of Ascension? There are no more skaa heroes. Kell is dead, so is Dockson and Clubs. Marsh is a traitor. Breeze, it turns out, is a full nobleman, not a half-breed skaa bastard. Vin used to be skaa, but she married a nobleman (a worse betrayal than Marsh's attempt to kill Sazed). And they elevated Elend, a nobleman, to Mistborn status. That sucks. Noblemen should die.