The Hero of Ages - Read it yet, anyone?

[Draz74]

I finished Brandon Sanderson's new novel, The Hero of Ages, conclusion of the Mistborn trilogy, the day after it came out. But I haven't heard much yet about other people having read it.

Anyone here read it yet? Ready to discuss it?

Personally I'm still processing my thoughts about it, so I'm not ready to discuss anything in particular yet. But here are some thoughts overall:

It was quite good. But really complicated, at least if you try to figure out all the "why's?" behind the story. Like, the theological stuff that happened before the first book began.

And it didn't really have all that much character development. Well, Sazed and Spook were developed a lot. But Elend's and Marsh's development didn't seem like real changes to me, and Vin and TenSoon hardly had any development at all. I guess that's OK, though; Sanderson must have figured he had developed some of those characters in earlier books enough to let them "coast" through the third book, in favor of worrying more about resolving the plot.

Overall, though, because of the character development issue, I think the Well of Ascension is my favorite of the three. The romance between Vin and Elend, the friendship between Vin and OreSeur, and Elend's "Becoming a Real King" quest are just awesome.

P.S. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, look it up! I highly recommend trying these books. Sanderson may have become most famous just for getting hired to finish the Wheel of Time series, but his original stuff is great!

[Douglas]

I finished it late night on release day.

Major spoilers:
It amazes me just how well everything fits together. Throughout the entire series, every time something new, surprising, and possibly even deus-ex-machina-like (not too many of those) is revealed, I just think for a moment and realize that it's been hinted about quite a number of times before, and several previously inexplicable things suddenly become perfectly explained. For example, the Kandra only taking payment in atium, the Lord Ruler only ever releasing small amounts of it, and just how well he hid the rest all become perfectly logical when it is revealed that atium is actually part of Ruin's power, and the Kandra are cooperating with the Lord Ruler to hide it from him.

As for character development, I felt that Elend, Vin, and most of Kelsier's original crew were fully mature by the end of Well of Ascension. Further development for them was completely unnecessary and could have gotten in the way of the plot. Sazed had some unresolved issues and Spook was still essentially a kid at the end of WoA, but everyone else was mature and stable and trying to change that for too many of them would likely have come across as forced and unrealistic. Plus, by this point in the trilogy, the struggle against Ruin and the impending end of the world dominates the plot too much to allow much room for character development.

I was a bit surprised when Sazed turned out to be the Hero of Ages, but it made perfect sense - the gender neutral pronoun in the Terris Prophecies, the disguised mention of the Hero having both Preservation and Ruin's power combined with him being a Feruchemist, the most balanced of the metallic arts, the explicit "on his arms" wording of the Prophecy, the knowledge of the Keepers making up for his inexperience with such power, and more.

The final explanation of how and why the Well of Ascension, Ruin's imprisonment, and the Pits of Hathsin came to be was excellent.

One of the things I liked most about the series was how the magic systems were set up. All effects achievable by any of the three metallic arts are very simple (with the exception of advanced Hemalurgy, such as the creation of Koloss and Kandra), explicitly rule-based, and yet very powerful and with potentially complex but perfectly logical interactions. Also, it's been confirmed in Brandon's Q&A thread on his forum that atium doesn't really belong in the list of 16 allomantic metals - and this fact is hinted at by inconsistencies with the rest of the magic system. If you look at the list of metals and which one of any given base/alloy pair is the pulling metal and which is pushing, atium and malatium violate the rule. Then again, so do zinc and brass. I think I'll go and post a question about that now.

[Draz74]

Incidentally, the book has now made the New York Times Bestseller List, #21. Cool, huh?

@Douglas:


Major spoilers:
It amazes me just how well everything fits together. Throughout the entire series, every time something new, surprising, and possibly even deus-ex-machina-like (not too many of those) is revealed, I just think for a moment and realize that it's been hinted about quite a number of times before, and several previously inexplicable things suddenly become perfectly explained. For example, the Kandra only taking payment in atium, the Lord Ruler only ever releasing small amounts of it, and just how well he hid the rest all become perfectly logical when it is revealed that atium is actually part of Ruin's power, and the Kandra are cooperating with the Lord Ruler to hide it from him.

Agreed. My favorite was when I realized how each of the first two books tell you a major clue in their very first post-Prologue lines.

Final Empire: "Sometimes I'm not sure I'm really the Hero of Ages." (Paraphrased) - Alendi.

Well of Ascension: "I write these words in metal, for nothing not engraved in metal can be trusted." - Kwaan.

The second one especially was genius. I got kind of annoyed when we learned that Ruin could alter writing, thinking, "Wow, the author really should have given us a clue about it before he sprung it." And then I realized he did. Boy did he ever.


As for character development, I felt that Elend, Vin, and most of Kelsier's original crew were fully mature by the end of Well of Ascension. Further development for them was completely unnecessary and could have gotten in the way of the plot. Sazed had some unresolved issues and Spook was still essentially a kid at the end of WoA, but everyone else was mature and stable and trying to change that for too many of them would likely have come across as forced and unrealistic. Plus, by this point in the trilogy, the struggle against Ruin and the impending end of the world dominates the plot too much to allow much room for character development.

I agree, but that doesn't change the fact that Well of Ascension is a better read, in my book, because of its character development.


I was a bit surprised when Sazed turned out to be the Hero of Ages, but it made perfect sense - the gender neutral pronoun in the Terris Prophecies, the disguised mention of the Hero having both Preservation and Ruin's power combined with him being a Feruchemist, the most balanced of the metallic arts, the explicit "on his arms" wording of the Prophecy, the knowledge of the Keepers making up for his inexperience with such power, and more.

Huh, I hadn't caught some of those points. Cool!


The final explanation of how and why the Well of Ascension, Ruin's imprisonment, and the Pits of Hathsin came to be was excellent.

Really? What "final" explanation is that? Because I still found some points about these processes pretty confusing. In particular, I couldn't find anywhere an explanation of why Ruin had "donated" much of his power to the existence of Atium and the Pits.


Also, it's been confirmed in Brandon's Q&A thread on his forum that atium doesn't really belong in the list of 16 allomantic metals - and this fact is hinted at by inconsistencies with the rest of the magic system. If you look at the list of metals and which one of any given base/alloy pair is the pulling metal and which is pushing, atium and malatium violate the rule. Then again, so do zinc and brass. I think I'll go and post a question about that now.

Yeah, I noticed that about Atium and Malatium before (not about brass and zinc, though). Never would have guessed it was actually a feature. Hmm ... that goes well with the way that the metal that embodies Preservation (the one that turned Elend into a Mistborn) is likewise not one of the 16 allomantics (apparently). But it doesn't make sense in several other ways. If Atium isn't really one of the 16, then are there still 4 undiscovereds at the end of the trilogy? And how can there be Atium Mistings like Demoux? (Particularly, 1/16 of all Mistings!)

Yeah, thinking it over, I still think there are some small plot holes in the "16 metals" system.

I've been putting off reading the Q&A thread, though, trying to get my own ideas settled before I taint them. Oh wait, too late I guess. :smallwink: Guess I'll have to go read it now ...

[Douglas]

Really? What "final" explanation is that? Because I still found some points about these processes pretty confusing. In particular, I couldn't find anywhere an explanation of why Ruin had "donated" much of his power to the existence of Atium and the Pits.
It's mostly scattered through some of the chapter epigraphs from Sazed. Neither Preservation nor Ruin can create on their own. They can only create by working together. Ruin's condition for working with Preservation to create the world was that he would get to destroy it eventually. Most of what they made was composed of equal parts Preservation and Ruin, but Preservation wanted to create humankind - a race significantly more of Preservation than Ruin. This creation, by its very nature, required a sacrifice of more power from Preservation than from Ruin, and left Preservation very slightly weaker than Ruin - before creating humanity, the two were exactly equal in power.

In the short term, this meant almost nothing. In the long term, it meant that Ruin would eventually be able to overpower Preservation. Now, Preservation had agreed to Ruin's condition of being allowed to destroy it all eventually, but that was purely out of necessity and he decided to break that agreement. The power differential caused by humanity's creation meant that doing so would require some very careful planning and great sacrifice, however.

By sacrificing most of his mind and consciousness, Preservation was able to create the Well of Ascension, imprison Ruin there, and steal away and hide part of Ruin's power. The creation of the Pits of Hathsin was entirely involuntary on Ruin's part. This ended with Ruin imprisoned, a chunk of his power cut away and hidden in the Pits, and Preservation with very little control over his own power. Preservation knew he would be unable to do much after this act, so he made the Terris Prophecies to give hints to humanity about what needed to be done. He also put much of his power into the mists where it would, eventually, be able to invest itself in a human once Preservation died. I think there was also some other purpose for the mists, but I don't remember it atm.

For some number of millennia, the cycle of heroes rising to claim the fragment of Preservation's power that distilled at the well every 1000 years and using it to renew Ruin's prison continued. During this time, Ruin was almost entirely blocked from affecting the world, but Preservation was no more than a shadow of his former self and was unable to renew the prison himself. The power to do so was there, but the required degree of control of it was not.

The prison eventually weakened enough to allow Ruin to distort the prophecies and encourage a primitive use of hemalurgy that would allow him to manipulate some people. This, along with Ruin's unexpected augmenting of the mists and the resulting threat to light-dependent crops, led to the fiasco of Alendi, Kwaan, and Rashek. Alendi had a hemalurgical spike of some sort, and almost certainly would have followed the distorted prophecies' command to give up the power and thereby release Ruin. Kwaan, Rashek, and some intervention by Preservation managed to prevent this, but Rashek's inexperience with the power led to his "fixes" being decidedly mixed blessings.

When the time of the books came along, Preservation was ready for the final stage in his plan - to invest all of his power in a human after his own death, thereby accomplishing two things: the restoration of full control of the entirety of Preservation's power by replacing Preservation's crippled mind with a fresh human one; and the establishment of control of that power by a being whose nature is partly of Ruin, which would allow it to use the power in a way that Preservation himself could never do - to kill Ruin. Destruction, even with the aim of protecting something else, was so antithetical to Preservation's nature that he would never be able to do it despite his power being technically capable of it.


Yeah, I noticed that about Atium and Malatium before (not about brass and zinc, though). Never would have guessed it was actually a feature. Hmm ... that goes well with the way that the metal that embodies Preservation (the one that turned Elend into a Mistborn) is likewise not one of the 16 allomantics (apparently). But it doesn't make sense in several other ways. If Atium isn't really one of the 16, then are there still 4 undiscovereds at the end of the trilogy? And how can there be Atium Mistings like Demoux? (Particularly, 1/16 of all Mistings!)

Yeah, thinking it over, I still think there are some small plot holes in the "16 metals" system.
I haven't gotten an official answer from Brandon yet, but some other posters seem pretty confident in their statements that the brass/zinc thing is a mistake. It might just be in the one table I checked, and I haven't bothered to search the text of the actual book yet. Assuming they're correct, that would make atium the only exception to that rule.

I would guess that, since Preservation made the Pits of Hathsin, he was able to choose the form that Ruin's body condensed into there. Thus, he deliberately made it a substitute for one of the real allomantic metals, providing an easy way to use it up piecemeal.

Brandon has hinted on his forums, and possibly elsewhere, that atium has a number of completely unknown properties.

Also, he has stated explicitly that there are 16 alloys of the Preservation metal that would each make someone a particular kind of Misting.

He's also said in the Q&A thread that Sazed's note to Spook about there being 2 unknown metals may have meant 2 unknown base metals. There are two additional trilogies he would like to write in the Mistborn world, so all of these may eventually be explored in those books. The two unknown enhancement metals (the group aluminum and duralumin are in) have been revealed to be chromium and nicrosil - chromium does the same thing as aluminum except for another person, and nicrosil acts like duralumin for someone other than the burner. The main character of one of those two trilogies would be a nicrosil Misting.

[Draz74]

OK, I've read the Q&A thread now.



It's mostly scattered through some of the chapter epigraphs from Sazed. Neither Preservation nor Ruin can create on their own. They can only create by working together. Ruin's condition for working with Preservation to create the world was that he would get to destroy it eventually. Most of what they made was composed of equal parts Preservation and Ruin, but Preservation wanted to create humankind - a race significantly more of Preservation than Ruin. This creation, by its very nature, required a sacrifice of more power from Preservation than from Ruin, and left Preservation very slightly weaker than Ruin - before creating humanity, the two were exactly equal in power.

In the short term, this meant almost nothing. In the long term, it meant that Ruin would eventually be able to overpower Preservation. Now, Preservation had agreed to Ruin's condition of being allowed to destroy it all eventually, but that was purely out of necessity and he decided to break that agreement. The power differential caused by humanity's creation meant that doing so would require some very careful planning and great sacrifice, however.

By sacrificing most of his mind and consciousness, Preservation was able to create the Well of Ascension, imprison Ruin there, and steal away and hide part of Ruin's power. The creation of the Pits of Hathsin was entirely involuntary on Ruin's part. This ended with Ruin imprisoned, a chunk of his power cut away and hidden in the Pits, and Preservation with very little control over his own power. Preservation knew he would be unable to do much after this act, so he made the Terris Prophecies to give hints to humanity about what needed to be done. He also put much of his power into the mists where it would, eventually, be able to invest itself in a human once Preservation died. I think there was also some other purpose for the mists, but I don't remember it atm.
OK, I got most of that, but I must have missed the part where Preservation actually created the Pits and the Atium as part of the Betrayal and Imprisonment. (And the prophecies -- that's spelled out clearly in the Q&A thread, but before that, I actually thought the prophecies were independent of both powers.)


For some number of millennia, the cycle of heroes rising to claim the fragment of Preservation's power that distilled at the well every 1000 years and using it to renew Ruin's prison continued. During this time, Ruin was almost entirely blocked from affecting the world, but Preservation was no more than a shadow of his former self and was unable to renew the prison himself. The power to do so was there, but the required degree of control of it was not.

The prison eventually weakened enough to allow Ruin to distort the prophecies and encourage a primitive use of hemalurgy that would allow him to manipulate some people. This, along with Ruin's unexpected augmenting of the mists and the resulting threat to light-dependent crops, led to the fiasco of Alendi, Kwaan, and Rashek. Alendi had a hemalurgical spike of some sort, and almost certainly would have followed the distorted prophecies' command to give up the power and thereby release Ruin. Kwaan, Rashek, and some intervention by Preservation managed to prevent this, but Rashek's inexperience with the power led to his "fixes" being decidedly mixed blessings.
Do we know why the Prison weakened so much *this* time between renewals? Did the WoA-user before Rashek not do a good job renewing it? (I guess, for all we know, Alendi/Rashek was actually the first of this "cycle of heroes.")


I haven't gotten an official answer from Brandon yet, but some other posters seem pretty confident in their statements that the brass/zinc thing is a mistake. It might just be in the one table I checked, and I haven't bothered to search the text of the actual book yet. Assuming they're correct, that would make atium the only exception to that rule.

Hmmm, yes, I don't know about the table you're looking at, but I distinctly remember being surprised when someone in FE (Breeze?) explained to Vin that Soothing (brass) is "pushing" on someone's emotions, while Rioting (zinc) is "pulling" on their emotions. Seemed counter-intuitive to me at the time, but now it seems inevitable. So that follows the same pull/push, metal/alloy pattern as the other non-atium pairs.

[Seer]

I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback. I wasn't terribly awed by the first two.

[Douglas]

Care to explain what you didn't like about them?