Sometimes I know exactly what to say about these things. Other times, and they feel increasingly common (though perhaps that’s my imagination instead? I hope so), I’m a little bit stuck. Is it that the middle of the night makes me too tired for inspiration? Is it that inspiration itself is rarer on some days than others? Is it simply that the book is too easily spoiled if I give very much depth to a plot review, and so I’m going to have to actually stare at the themes for a little while instead, and should maybe ought to quit whining about it and move along? Well, okay, that’s pretty clearly it, but in my defense it is the middle of the night too.

The Hero of Ages concludes Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy in grand apocalyptic style. Another year has passed since the events at the Well of Ascension, and circumstances are more dire than ever. In truth, I read a lot of books that describe the end of a world, usually but not exclusively Earth. Sometimes, there are comets. I’m just saying, I know from apocalypse, and out of all such books I’ve read, this is the one that best demonstrated the hopelessness and wanton destruction of a world going through its last throes. I had to slow down now and again just to keep from letting myself get washed away by the currents of despair. But what’s cool is, the book is kind of about that: the capacity for trust in the face of destruction, faith in the face of despair. Also, it’s still about cool powers of jumping around and stabbing every enemy in sight, and sometimes seeing the future, so it’s not like that part of the series has taken a backseat as it progressed; if anything, the magic system has only grown in complexity.

Although the circumstances were not optimal, I’m glad I got a chance to see this author thrust into the limelight, and I’m looking forward to whatever he writes next. (Okay, technically, it’s already written. But I will totally read it, honest! Just not sure how soon.)

I was already reading this book when the Robert Jordan book came out, which explains both why I have skipped my allotment of graphic novels and why I read two books in a row by the same author. At least it isn’t the same series? Anyhow, The Well of Ascension chronicles the continuing adventures of… well, I guess I never talked about the characters in the first Mistborn book, did I? So, anyway, there’s this skaa thieving crew and our heroine, Vin, and they achieved a pretty big victory at the end of book one. And now, as book two opens, they and their noble allies must face new dangers in the form of invading armies, untraceable spies in their inner circle, and a growing certainty that the world is still in the same grave danger that the Hero of Ages was supposed to have defeated a thousand years before.

Sanderson has done a pretty good job of maintaining sense of wonder, by delving more deeply both into mistborn abilities and into the history of the Hero of Ages and the Final Empire. As in the previous book, each chapter starts with an excerpt of writings from a thousand years prior when this chain of events first began. Unlike last time, however, the writings are more or less in order of the story they are telling; it was all I could do not to ignore the book and jump ahead to read the entire ancient record at once, and then come back. All of which to say: see? totally sense of wonder. The mood of the book is by turns ratcheting tension, romantic angst, a little bit of creeping dread, and occasional doses of intense action, all of which build toward a pretty explosive last hundred pages. I was out at dinner Tuesday night and just itched to read the last 20 pages instead of interacting with my companions. I didn’t, but probably only because Skwid was there to answer my minor spoiler and relieve the tension just enough to hold out until I got home.