The Hero of Ages

What an ending... or last book of the series! Many books jump to answers and the reader is at a loss for an explanation, not here. All the clues were right in front of my face the entire time. You can tell this book was planned out. Things that happened in the first chapters of the first book make so much impact and are wrapped up unlike any other series I have read. It ends not as expected, or as I expected, but was brilliant. Really would like to know how Sanderson did this! No question about it, I will read his other series.

4.5 stellePiuttosto che scrivere una recensione, in questo momento vorrei prendere Sanderson per il colletto della camicia e sbatacchiarlo urlandogli contro: “Are you fuc***** crazy?! You gave me hope and faith, then you shattered my heart! Is this the treatment you give to your readers?”.Superata questa fase, devo dire che la trilogia rimarrà una delle mie trilogie preferite.Ha un world building spettacolare, non sto neanche a parlarvene perché mi servirebbero giorni per farvelo apprezzare. Ha una trama e degli intrighi ben congegnati e i personaggi sono ben delineati. Sono personaggi dinamici: evolvono nel corso della trilogia, cambiano, si mettono in discussione ed è ciò che più mi piace dei libri dei libri di Sanderson, tranne quando suddetti personaggi me li uccide, spezzandomi il cuore in mille pezzi.Difetti:si, purtroppo Sanderson non è perfetto e ho notato che i suoi libri andrebbero letti da pag.600 in poi per entrare nel vivo dell'azione, ma non è possibile, altrimenti ti perdi dei micropezzettini utili a capire meglio tutta la faccenda. La prima parte di questo libro (compreso tutto il secondo libro: [b:The Well of Ascension 68429 The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2) Brandon Sanderson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406990198s/68429.jpg 2120474]), l'ho trovata lenta, o meglio, la parola giusta sarebbe “poco allettante”. Si parla di fatti che riempiono la trama, si, ma di cui non me ne frega un tubo. Di Elend cha va a conquistare tutta la Dominazione non mi importa un fico secco. Di tutte le paranoie di Sazed che occupano il secondo e il terzo libro non me ne importa un fico secco. Si, sono eventi utili per capire tutto il worldbuilding, ma potevano essere snelliti. La sensazione è quella che di non arrivare mai a una risoluzione dei fatti, di una stasi. Mi ritrovo a sbatacchiare il libro dicendo: “dai, su! voglio sapere, ma non è questo che voglio sapere”.Secondo me, con una duologia bella giotta oppure tre libri un po' più brevi, avrebbe una trilogia perfetta. PS. Ho adorato Kelsier, Elend, Vin e anche Sazed, ma Spook non ce la potevo fare. La sua evoluzione l'ho trovata alquanto forzata e per me rimarrà sempre un po' sfigatello.

I finished reading this 2 days ago and I'm still emotionally raw. Still thinking about this trilogy and I don't think I'll ever forget it.
I freaking loved it. I suffered through this, it's not an easy ride, Brandon Sanderson made me love this characters so much that I cried and cried while reading some of the most emotional scenes EVER.
The Mistborn trilogy is fantastic. There are no words to describe how amazing this ending was. I was shocked through most of this book and I'm in awe with Brandon Sanderson. He's now definitely my favorite fantasy author.
The level of detail in this, the magic system, the world building, the characters, the journey, the emotional conflict, absolutely astonishing.
And now... my heart aches because I've read it and I wish I could read this three amazing books for the first time, again.
When it comes to the rating... this whole trilogy deserves so much more than 5 stars. It was THAT good.
If you like Fantasy stories, I highly recommend it: PLEASE read it.

Couldn't have ended any better. The author of this book definitely is one of the wittiest men alive. What started out as a fantasy novel, ended in a biblical fashion of sorts. This book taught me more about faith, belief and trust than any religious scripture(yeah, I've had my share of those too) out there.

Edit: After reading this for the 2nd time after nearly 5 years, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I loved it even more. Brandon Sanderson is an absolute genius. He has ruined the entire fantasy genre for me, no one else's writing comes close to his writing.

So I cried. A lot.
Cried to much my vision became blurry.
Cleared my nose of snot.
Thought about the ending again.
Cried some more.
Revisited the first book.
Cried again.

I gotta say. It's not my favorite of the three.
But nonetheless as a whole: Brandon Sanderson has crafted an unfathomably vast world filled with characters - that undoubtedly (tho personally) are the best ones I have ever experienced. I'm already longing for the feeling when I first dived into this story.
I know it can never be replicated.
It also means that this story will stick with me.
And that's all I can wish for.

First of all, I read the mistborn trilogy in a Dutch translation, as English is not my native language. I cannot judge whether this influenced my reading experience but it is what it is and I am not planning to re-read this trilogy in English trying to find out..

So this review is more or less about the whole trilogy and not so much about The Hero of Ages.
My rating for the separate books would be respectively 4, 3, 3.5 stars.

Although this is my first review on Goodreads, I am a member for quite some time now and I value the ratings on books very much. It plays a huge part in my reading decisions.
So when I decided to get into fantasy a bit more this trilogy was a safe choice. Ratings on par with books like LOTR is definetely a huge pro.

So I might have started this with the wrong expectations, which is in the end my own fault of course, you can hardly blame thousands of readers for rating a book higher then you would do ;)

Sanderson started of quite strongly, the premise is a good one. He has a great imagination, original. His writing style is fluently, it reads like a rolls royce. Smooth, slick. The man can write and the man can tell a story.
He builds up his world bit by bit and he uses snippets of italic text before each chapter to unveil info in an interesting way. At least in the first 2 books. In the last one he misuses this format for info dumping not to loose the reader...
He clearly thought about his world building and his magic system. It is something to admire.
So why not the highest praise and give 5 stars hands down?

Two things:
It was way too long, boring middle sections, especially in the second book.
Total pages, of the 3 books together, mounts to around 2500 (ebook version, dutch translation). He should have cut this in half. If he would have been able to keep this within 1500 pages he would have had a far more powerful story. At least, that is what I believe.

Second thing. This might be a personal thing...but I had the feeling I was reading a YA flick. And not a story for grown ups.
I entire blame this one on myself. I might not have been the targeting audience for this. If I would have read this 20 years ago (I know this is not possible) I might have had an entire different experience, but with quite some years of reading experience under my belt in different genres I was underwhelmed.

Did I enjoy this one, certainly. Was I blown away, absolutely not.

It is what it is;)

In hindsight, I want to give this a solid 4 stars because a few of the characters and the plot really stuck with me. The plot was so masterful and I loved seeing how all the different intricacies we were introduced to ended up weaving together by the end to form such a conclusive ending. I also became really attached to the characters in general, but in all honesty, I think that is mostly due to the amount of time I ended up spending with them, rather than due to them being well-written characters.One of the reasons I'm reluctant to rate this any higher is because, while I loved the plot and the characters, the way they were executed wasn't always to my liking. For example, there were instances where the characters would get together in meetings to discuss their current situation, what they know so far, etc., and during those moments characters would deliver a bunch of information as if they were info-dumping robots so that Sanderson could ‘show' instead of just tell us everything. I appreciate this, and I can't really fault him for deciding to present the information in this way since there is just so much to unpack in the novel, but I wish it was executed more elegantly. There was a scene where Cett was discussing political matters with Elend, and immediately afterward it was as if Sanderson remembered that he has to maintain Cett's personality, so there is this abrupt interjection of banter where Cett is being vulgar and speaking with his usual mannerisms. It was as if in the midst of writing Sanderson suddenly wanted to remind the readers, “See? These aren't just mindless info-dumping characters. They've got a personality too.” Moments like these felt very awkward because they were contrived and clunky.One of the characters' mental health is looked into at length in this book, which I appreciated greatly because this character's depression was represented really well in my opinion. However, sometimes the character's internal monologue about their depression became really repetitive and redundant; it felt like it was being dragged on for too long. The same points and discussions regarding the character's depression were being rehashed and we were just going around in circles. All this, alongside the writing which often felt awkward to me just ended up deterring my reading experience, which is odd because I never experienced this with [b:Elantris 68427 Elantris (Elantris, #1) Brandon Sanderson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475740953l/68427.SY75.jpg 2908871] or [b:Warbreaker 55767137 Warbreaker (Warbreaker, #1) Brandon Sanderson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603399465l/55767137.SY75.jpg 1257385]. There were also scenes near the beginning that I just didn't care for very much and made me want to DNF it temporarily, but of course, I didn't do that because I knew that Sanderson would ultimately deliver a great ending (which he did!)

Dit was ... Ik weet niet ... Echt .... Waaaaaaauw!
Deze finale van de Mistborn trilogie brengt alles wat we doorheen de serie lazen samen. Elk schijnbaar triviaal detail, blijkt een rol te spelen in hoe het verhaal zich ontplooit.
Alles komt aan de kook, stijgt tot een crescendo en explodeerde dan als een miljoen sterren in mijn hoofd.
Toen ik de laatste zinnen las, liepen er tranen over mijn wangen. Tranen van emoties over wat er gebeurt in het verhaal, met de personages, maar ook tranen van ontzag, over hoe alles in elkaar klikte.
Wow wow wow. Perfect! Petje af, absoluut.
Shit, wat lees ik in hemelsnaam nu??!

Wow wow wow wow wow. I realised that Sanderson for fantasy novels is like Nolan for films in his passion, plotting, satisfying conclusions to setups and moderate theme exploration. I also understood a different reviewer's comment that he writes his characters like super heroes, albeit in this dying and destructive world. Man, this was epic from start to finish - I loved that we were introduced to every character with a small time jump, with Elend and Spook in particular being really well-represented. In these desperate times, the remaining members of the original crew are split between two cities with very different problems, and the story juggles these alongside the tales of kandra-on-trial Tensoon and puppet-victim-to-Ruin Marsh. Like previous entries, chapters open with intriguing epigraphs that smack you in the face with clarity towards the book's conclusion. And while some twists were obvious, the logic, planning and execution behind every single turn in this story just left me shaking my head in amazement. And then there was the emotionally powerful conclusion - this book was the closest thing to LOTR: Return of the King I've felt in a long time in its epic scope and powerful character-focused perspective. Hats off to Sanderson, I've been obsessing over the dude since and will be reading many more of his books in the near-future.

4.50/5.00

I don't know what to say. This book tells me why Brandon Sanderson represents a new age in fantasy. He is unmatched in word building, his stories layered and wound in mystery, unwound in this final of Mistborn Era 1, with much satisfaction.

I still think he can do better with characters. With the exception of chapter 1, the first 40-50% of this book is hard to read as the story very slowly. TBH, I was never able to invest in the characters significantly, with some notable exceptions [TenSoon, Tindywl].

SPOILERS!

I was hoping that the Lord Ruler might return somehow.. and talk !! He is one of the most referenced characters in the book, yet he had the lowest page time. I think he is fav character! Would have loved to see his perspective.

The ending is great, but a little too reminiscent of Christian Mythology. I guess that is to be expected from authors who are of faith.