Title: The Well of Ascension
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: TOR Books
Release Date: August 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0765316882
Size: 6×9; 592 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Sequel to Mistborn: The Final Empire
The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler—the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years—has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protg, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves.
As Kelsier’s protg and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.
Stopping assassins may keep Vin’s Mistborn skills sharp, but it’s the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn’t run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier’s crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won’t get easier with three armies—one of them composed of ferocious giants—now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler’s hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal.
As the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.
I’m choosing this book as my Friday Favourite for 6 Feb 2009. What did I like best? The part between the first word and the last word.
Okay, a bit more specific. At the end of Chapter 58, where Vin has to choose between healing Elend and doing what he actually wants, which is to defeat the Deepness, I was really struck by the sentence “Apparently gods could cry.”
Or, at the beginning of chapter 59, I could really identify with Vin when she’s thinking she’s made a horrible mistake, and “… she had tried so hard to do what was right, even if it hurt.”