The Hero of Ages

The Hero of Ages

by Brandon Sanderson

Tricked into releasing the evil spirit Ruin while attempting to close the Well of Ascension, new emperor Elend Venture and his wife, the assassin Vin, are now hard-pressed to save the world.

So, I am aware that it has taken me a long time to come up with the review for this one but I guess I just wasn’t ready to let go of the Mistborn trilogy just yet. Oh, well, let’s just dive into this one, alright?

Oh and before I forget, this will probably contain some spoilers because I don’t think it’s possible for me to write a review without them, sorry! I will still try though!

“If you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll end up miserable.”

I was introduced to Sanderson’s writing style last year and even his first novel knocked me out with its brilliance and I still wasn’t prepared for Mistborn, I think. By the time I finished The Hero of Ages, I understood one thing. This man knows his world, his plot and his shocking reveals, that’s not to say that his characters are bad but if we compare them, the characters or rather the way he writes their dialogue isn’t as brilliant as everything else he does. Oh, boy, I didn’t meant to get into it right now.

“Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”

So, The Hero of Ages, the last in the Mistborn trilogy. I think when I read Elantris, I had a vague idea of Sanderson’s attention to tiny details and how important they turned out to be. But nothing prepared me for the sheer scope of this in every Mistborn novel. Especially in The Hero of Ages. All of the details that I had overlooked came together to shock me to my core. All of my assumptions and guesses didn’t come close. Unfortunately I was exposed to one rather important spoiler but that still didn’t prepare me for their deaths. My guesses as to who the Hero of Ages would be were totally off base mostly because for one, I was mostly considering two of the other characters to be the Hero and then to read it was someone else entirely. That was something. I wouldn’t reveal who the Hero of Ages is because I don’t want to ruin your experience but this book is absolutely addictive.

“The nature of the world is that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.”

I will miss all the characters and I wish some of them had been given more time and attention because I think those were missed opportunities to make this tale into an even more epic one. From Kelsier, who will forever be one of the best characters to Vin, who grew up so much and witnessing her struggles of understanding who she is in the world was absolutely amazing. There’s Elend whom I wasn’t terribly of in the beginning but he grew on me as the pages flew by, there’s also Sazed who continuously intrigued me from the moment he was introduced and his POV in the books were absolute treats, okay? All the other characters, including Breeze, Allriane, Spook (I have issues with this one), Beldre, etc. so good and I wish we had more of their POVs.

Overall, I think The Mistborn trilogy as a whole is such an epic journey and The Hero of Ages is such a stunning conclusion that it opened my eyes to what I had been missing while I was reading everything else. I will definitely be re-reading this one soon.