Recommendation
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
This book comes highly recommended from GLF books. This book is well thought-out and has great characters. The story has many twists and turns, and I didn’t see the series taking the turn it did in this book. I enjoyed it and if you are someone who likes thoughtful stories, I’m confident that you too will like The Well of Ascension.
Reading Level
10th-12th grade
Review for Parents
This book is clean fiction. There aren’t any sexual scenes and there is very little swearing. I would let my kids read this book.
Plotline: Spoiler-Free
This plotline assumes that you have already read the first book in the series.
The story is set in Luthadel after the fall of the lord ruler. Elend Venture has been chosen as king and has set up a parliamentary-type system. In this system, there is an assembly that must vote on nearly anything that he wants to do as king. This assembly also has the power to boot him from his position as king.
Luthadel is facing many challenges. They must keep the new government together, feed their people, and figure out how to survive the two armies that have marched on them. Vin has been charged with keeping Elend safe while they both have to navigate their feelings for one another.
Keeping Elend safe isn’t an easy task as there are assassins sent regularly to kill him and the new government hasn’t been able to locate the lord ruler’s atium supply. This leaves them vulnerable to any mistborn burning atium.
One army parked in front of the city is led by lord cett, a blunt man from the Western dominance. The other is led by Straff Venture, Elend’s father. The best chance for the survival of the city and its current government is to pit both armies against each other.
While all of this is happening, Vin is protecting Elend from assassins. There is another mistborn in the city that she can’t quite catch. Throughout their encounters, they become quasi-friends. As they spar, this mysterious mistborn tries to pull her away from Elend.
Not only is there a mysterious mistborn that Vin must worry about, but there is also a mysterious spirit that seems to be following her, always watching her in the mists.
On top of the mist spirit and this other mistborn, there is also a kandra spy somewhere in the palace who is feeding their enemies information. Vin and her kandra OreSeur are tasked with tracking down the spy.
As the story progresses, a third army shows up. This army is made up of koloss. Koloss are thought to be of sub-human intelligence. They are large and have skin that hangs off their body or skin that is tight. They never stop growing but their skin doesn’t stretch. They each fight as if they are five men.
Elend eventually loses his throne because he is unwilling to lie to keep it. immediately after the loss of the throne, Sazed calls a secret meeting amongst the crew. He invites everyone except Vin, Elend, and Spook. The city will soon be lost, and he wants to send Vin, Elend, and Spook away so they can survive. He knows that they won’t go willingly and will want to stay and fight to protect their city.
Sazed, with the help of the crew, comes up with a plan to get them to leave the city. He sends them to the north with a fabricated map to the well of ascension.
On their journey northward, they figure out that Sazed lied to them. He didn’t know where the well of ascension was, he just wanted them to leave the city. They turn around and head back to the city. Vin runs, using her pewter until she runs out. Then she finds help in a small village. She takes some horseshoes and burns metals that allow her to push herself with the horseshoes back to Luthedel.
Arriving just as the battle seems lost, she helps turn the tide.
My Thoughts on The Well of Ascension
Wow….. This book is amazing. It is well thought out and very well written. There is a lot less action in this book and a lot more diplomacy but there is still plenty of action. I couldn’t help but think about how much Vin and Elend have grown throughout this book. First, I’d like to delve into and analyze their relationship.
Vin and Elend love each other but they don’t understand each other. They both feel unworthy to be with the other. Vin thinks that Elend deserves a woman that he can take to parties and show off, a woman that isn’t a warrior. On the other hand, Elend thinks that Vin doesn’t want to be with him because he isn’t competent enough to keep his throne. It’s not until her final battle with the other mistborn Zane (mentioned in the review above) that she decides she does want to be with Elend. The love story is very cute and quite satisfying.
Sazed also has a love story in this book. He falls in love Tindwyl, a terrace keeper like himself. Tindwyl’s specialty is the study of kings and rulers. She has come to Luthadel to turn Elend into the king that he needs to be. Sazed and Tindwyl’s story is one of great wisdom I think. They had such a short time together, but their love was deep.
There are not only love stories in this book but also stories of sacrifice. The entire crew is willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the city. To protect what they’ve built and many of them do lay down their lives in defense of the city.
The end of the book taught me a great lesson. As people, we should do what we believe is the right thing to do, and if there are unforeseen consequences, we need to deal with them afterward. When Vin approaches the well of ascension and takes hold of the power, she lets it go because she believes it’s the right thing to do. Even though she could have saved Elend and stopped him from dying she did what she thought was right.
When she releases the power, it is used by the god Ruin to escape his prison. It was Ruin who had been building the legend that the power shouldn’t be taken for oneself but released so that the deepness could be defeated.
Vin loved Elend enough to let him go because she knew that’s what he wanted. Fortunately, the mist spirit who stabbed Elend to get Vin to take the power for herself to save Elend also leads Vin to a small bead of metal. This bead turns Elend into a mistborn and he is able to burn pewter to keep himself alive.
Takeaways from The Well of Ascension
People aren’t who they used to be. People change and they can change quickly under certain circumstances. We often think we know people, but we don’t know them as well as we think we do. Vin and Elend are a great example. Even people who love each other don’t always understand each other. I think it’s important to keep that in mind as we seek to understand people better.
Kindness and trust matter. TenSoon the kondra spy who killed OreSeur to spy on Vin and Elend switched his allegiance due to Vin’s Kindness. Her trust in him even after she found out he was the spy is a reminder to me that kindness always matters and you’re likely to make friends amongst enemies when you are kind to them.