The Well of Ascension: Mistborn Book 2 by Brandon Sanderson

The Well of Ascension is the second book in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. And it’s brilliant.

I’ve never really been convinced in the point of writing a review for book two of a series. If you liked book one, you’ll probably read book two, right? I loved the first one, this is my review, so I dove right into the second.

But maybe you thought the first one was so good that the sequel was bound to be a letdown, so why set yourself up for disappointment without at least reading a review. For those four or five of you, here is a review.

The Well of Ascension continues the story soon after the events of The Final Empire – here’s a Wikipedia link, in case you forgot what happened. Vin, Elend and the gang are in charge and living in Luthadel. Unfortunately, the death of the emperor has left something of a power vacuum. Elend’s dad, Lord Venture, turns up outside the city with a massive army. Then another army under another wannabe king, Lord Cett, also turns up. Then an army of Koloss led by one of Elend’s former mates. All three armies hold each other to a stalemate but the situation won’t hold forever. Our plucky heroes are pretty much doomed.

The Well of Ascension has a fair amount of political manoeuvring going on. Then some awesome action sequences, mysteries, battles and more. It’s a great book. It also becomes clear that Sanderson had a plan for the whole trilogy when he started. Some mysteries from book one are explained, while others are introduced. And, given the title of the book, one thing we finally learn about is the Well of Ascension.

The characters continue to develop with satisfying arcs. The story is well paced. I would like to say this is classic Sanderson, but this is only the second book of his I have read. I’m already a huge fan.

I won’t elaborate any further as I suspect you already know if you will like The Well of Ascension or not. As you can probably guess by now, I loved it.