The Well of Ascension

OK, this probably won't be much of a review because I pretty much just skimmed through 500 pages of this book.

I started skimming through because by about page 200, or around Chapter 20 or so, I was getting really bored. I'm usually extremely spoiler-sensitive, but this time I felt like I needed to know something to spur me on. So I just kinda skipped through huge chunks of the book to intentionally spoil myself about something to motivate myself to continue.

But nope, basically nothing new happened. So I just skimmed all the way to the end, and precious little has changed from the beginning.

I did, however, appreciate the characterisation of Vin. I don't think she had a ton of character growth in this instalment, but I like that she's both strong and vulnerable at the same time. I liked Sazed and his plotline. I was deliciously creeped out and on edge with Marsh and really wanted to know where his allegiances are going to lie.

But I think the problem with this book is that we get hooked by a lot of questions posed in the beginning, but nothing happens to resolve almost any of those big questions by the end. Such as who was the apparent spy or kandra amongst Vin's friends? Because I skimmed, I have no idea whether this was resolved or not but it seems that all the old hands are still well and alive and apparently not a spy - Ham, Dockson, Breeze, Clubs, Spook. So I can only assume that it was either not answered explicitly, or that it was resolved without taking any casualties from the band. What happened to Marsh? We don't know. He tried to kill Sazed but then got hammered (but non-fatally) over the head by Ham, and basically nothing happens. It seems like we're asked these big questions, we just uncover like 30% of the answer and the book ends that way.

Thankfully, I'm also reading Way of Kings at the same time by Sanderson. Although it's a 1000-page instalment of another series, there's something happening in every chapter. Not so much this one. I'm starting to think I just maybe gravitate towards Stormlight more than Mistborn.