Well? That Was Disappointing

I've written periodically about my forays into books by Brandon Sanderson. I've found the author's stories good, and often great, so I've continued to keep him in my rotation. But I hit a recent hiccup with book two of his original Mistborn trilogy, The Well of Ascension.

For me, this book was a case of the proverbial sophomore slump. After Mistborn introduced a compelling world and magic system, interesting characters, and a satisfying battle of good and evil, The Well of Ascension tries to apply a dose of reality -- and reality is perhaps not entirely welcome in escapist fiction. After a hard-fought victory, the characters of Mistborn now find themselves having to deal fully with "now what?" Having overthrown a despotic ruler, they now must rule instead. Having created a power vacuum, they're now opposed by other formerly minor powers seeking to fill that vacuum.

It's a logical extension of a story that otherwise felt like a fairly self-contained "one and done" sort of novel. And "what happens after the big adventure" remains relatively untapped material for the fantasy genre, despite J.R.R. Tolkien pointing the way down that path in the final chapters of The Lord of the Rings. But a situation mired in stalemates and politics makes for a novel that feels quite slow-paced and long-winded. I found The Well of Ascension to be a plodding chore of a read. It's a story of inaction, one that makes you want to grab the shoulders of the characters and shake them more than the usual tale of "characters not always making the best choices."

Perhaps part of the reason this book is built so much around political brinksmanship is that this helps contain the power of the main character, Vin. Mistborn used Vin in a pretty typical-for-fantasy story arc of being plucked from nothingness to ultimately master incredible magics. But now she's Superman in a world that has no real Kryptonite. She would be too expedient a solution for the sorts of problems that tend to oppose the heroes in a fantasy story, so here the story has to serve up different sorts of problems that she can't just "punch" her way out of. Yet while I'm certainly not saying my fantasy fiction needs to be littered with frenetic magical battles, I'd take a few of those over chapter after chapter of paralyzed inaction.

What ultimately pulled me through The Well of Ascension was residual good feelings for the setting and the characters that carried over from book one. It certainly feels like a rich enough world to keep telling stories in (as Sanderson continued to do after this). In particular, this felt like a strong book for the character of Sazed, and a newly introduced character whose story arc ultimately intertwines with his.

And yet, I felt stuck in this book for weeks on end. Months, even -- preferring to just go to sleep over reading a chapter in bed at the end of a day. When I got to the big cliffhanger that concludes this book,  I felt myself at a real crossroads: I certainly didn't want to read more of what I'd just read... yet I've liked basically every other Brandon Sanderson book I've read before. And he probably pulled himself out of the tailspin of this book, given his long, subsequent career. Right?

But after a grade C experience (at best; like I said, that was mostly "residual feelings" from book one), I can't say I'm eager to find out. I'd be curious to hear from other Sanderson fans their thoughts about The Well of Ascension -- and the next book to follow it.