Alright, let’s wrap up the Mistborn trilogy. I want to get into Stormlight Archive 4 as soon as I can!
The Mistborn trilogy has certainly been interesting. The first book was an interesting twist on the chosen one plot with a fun heist to add some flavor. The second was an ultra tense siege with some romance. Now, the third is an apocalypse story about gods playing Civilization ultra-aggressively.
Yet, somehow, they all come together. This book takes all of the threads that have been dangling since the beginning of the trilogy and wraps them up in one satisfying, mind-boggling package. And to top it all off, it delivers one of the most emotionally powerful and satisfying endings to a trilogy I’ve ever read!
The story picks up a few years after the events of The Well of Ascension. Vin and Elend, now both Mistborn, travel across the Final Empire in pursuit of the supply caches left behind by the late Lord Ruler in hopes that they can provide some hint as to stop Ruin, the god aiming to destroy the world. Meanwhile, Sazid is having a crisis of faith, Tensoon tries to convince the Condra people to aide Vin, and Spook struggles to overthrow a tyrannical Ska ruler. All the while, the sky fills with ash and the mists grow ever thicker. Can our heroes find a way to stop Ruin before their world is consumed?
This book gets crazy, dude! It starts off pretty chill, then gradually starts moving closer and closer into total insanity! The final battle of the story is one of the most stunning, grim, and impactful setpieces I’ve ever read through! It gets so nuts that you can’t help but look back at the first two books and think “Wow, and I thought those got intense”! It feels so much bigger, grander than its predecessors, yet it all ties together perfectly!
This book is basically a long collection of revelations. Every single mystery left dangling from the other books, without exception, is picked up and answered in this one. And shockingly, none of them are predictable or boring! Each one is shocking in its own right, providing a crucial bit of info that completely flips the story as you know it on its head!
It leaves no stone unturned! Why did the Lord Ruler become the tyrant we knew in the first book? What was the deal with Zane being insane? Why did Vin’s mother stab her with the earring? How did the Kolos and the Condra come to be? And most important of all: what are the Mists?
How the characters play with all this information is super interesting and, better yet, goes a long way in pushing their growth as characters. All of whom, and I do mean all, get their moment to shine! Even Spook gets his hero moment! In fact, he gets some of the best stuff in the whole book!
But this book ain’t perfect. While the concept of Ruin is interesting, he as an antagonist isn’t all that interesting. Sure, he does a great job of pressing our heroes, like a good antagonist should! But as a character? His whole personality is ‘destroy, manipulate, kill’. All the other bad guys that he creates are more interesting than he is himself.
Except for the other antagonists, the Second Generation (you’ll know what that means if you’ve read the book; if not, tough luck). These guys are super boring! They’re not menacing, nor interesting or even fun. They’re just conservative assholes that whine a lot. Considering how important they are to the plot, I do wish they had more interesting personalities.
Also, this book is kinda super mega dark. Like, the previous two books were pretty dark. But this makes them look like an episode of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! This shit is filled with our characters, these dudes that we’ve come to love over the course of the trilogy, failing, getting slaughtered, burned alive, brutally tortured in excessive detail, the list goes on! This book is a downer, to put it lightly! It gets really uncomfortable at times!
Is that bad? Not at all! Sure, it can be depressing at times. But that’s what makes the ending so damn powerful! After all the horrifying, insane shit, the story leaves off on one of the most quiet, calm, and even somber notes I’ve ever seen! It brought an actual tear to my eye!
All in all, I think Hero of Ages was an incredible ending to the Mistborn trilogy. It has a few minor issues, but it’s so damn satisfying all throughout that it’s easy to forgive them. This book, as well as this whole trilogy, is a fantastic piece of modern fantasy, one that I’d highly recommend checking out!
And now, nothing shall stand between me and Rhythm of War! Let’s goooooo!!!
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