The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
The unthinkable has been done. The Lord Ruler, a guy who violently governed the globe for a thousand years while professing to be god incarnate, has been defeated. Vin, a former street person who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the realm, and the idealistic young nobleman she loves have been given the enormous responsibility of creating a new world because Kelsier, the hero who planned that victory, is now also dead.
She feels very uneasy about the fact that she is now revered by a young, emerging religion as Kelsier’s protege and Lord Ruler’s killer.
Even more concerning, ever since the Lord Ruler passed away, the mists have been acting strangely and appear to be home to a strange vaporous thing that stalks her.
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
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Vin’s Mistborn skills may stay sharp by stopping assassins, but that is the least of her issues. Vin and the other members of Kelsier’s crew, who are leading the revolution in Luthadel, the main city of the former empire, must master a completely new set of practical and political skills to assist. With three armies battling for control of the city, one of which is made up of fierce giants, and no evidence of the Lord Ruler’s hidden stockpile of atium, the rarest and most potent allomantic metal, things aren’t going to get any simpler. An old legend appears to provide some hope as the siege of Luthadel closes in. Even if the Well of Ascension does exist, no one is aware of its location or the kind of power it bestows.
Because Brandon Sanderson is able to avoid predictability, one of the main risks when writing a sequel, The Well of Ascension succeeds. To extend their plots, many authors write essentially similar sequels, which detracts from their stories and causes their series to stale. This downward spiral is avoided and then by Brandon Sanderson. The good guys prevail, the slaves skaa are liberated from their cruel overseers, and our heroine finds true love. The Lord Ruler is dead. Of course, the result is still a completely disordered and chaotic world. Would it make sense for everything to magically fall into place after almost an eternity of persecution and censorship by the Lord Ruler?
How does a world bounce back from such a state of affairs? The book as a whole echo with that query. Because of this, Sanderson has been able to shift the emphasis of the Mistborn series from tyranny and rebellion to political intrigue and survival. It’s a welcome change for the show while yet maintaining its distinctive character. It would be an extreme understatement to call the sense of scale in The Well of Ascension’s plot “epic.” The death of the aforementioned Lord Ruler now makes it possible for the many warlords and tyrants to battle it out for control of the Final Empire’s numerous dominions.
It would be an extreme understatement to call the sense of scale in The Well of Ascension’s plot “epic.” The death of the aforementioned Lord Ruler now makes it possible for the many warlords and tyrants to battle it out for control of the Final Empire’s numerous dominions. Since Luthadel is no longer the Lord Ruler’s seat of authority, various armies, including Straff Venture, are competing for control of the vast city and its atium supply. Of course, their troubles don’t end there. Elend Venture, the newly crowned king of Luthadel, finds it difficult to simply hang onto the throne, much less prevent the advancing army from destroying their newly acquired independence, as dissension and despair run rampant among the remaining nobles. All the while, the foretold evil known as The Deepness slowly starts to reemerge onto the unwary earth. The protagonists are thrown into the thick of this catastrophe and forced to deal with what seems like an insurmountable problem.
