Loved the further development here, especially with how the world would realistically deal with the aftermath of the Collapse. The arguments felt real, and you could see where tensions from all sides/socioeconomic groups stemmed from. 

With that being said, the romance could definitely be written better. I am not a big fan of miscommunication tropes or of people in a relationship not being able to talk to each other. 

The love triangle (if you could even call it that) between Zane and Vin was so forced and not believable at all. The shifting perspectives from Vin to Zane actually probably confused things even more and would have been better if we didn’t see things from Zane’s POV.

The plot twists were great in this book.

Finding out about OreSeur’s death had me floored. And revisiting Kwaan’s words carved in stone was incredible

Loved this book. Perfect amount of slower and faster chapters. I cannot wait to start the last book in this trilogy to find out what happens next.

The casual sexism is exhausting.

I could hardly put it down. I am so glad I finally decided to read this series. I found the second installment of the Mistborn trilogy solid. Lots of politics and character development, new characters, a new metal, all sorts of good stuff. I had so many questions going into the ending few chapters that my head was spinning and several of them were resolved- some obviously will have to wait until I can get my hands on book 3. Lots of the storylines and plot points were very satisfying and while I knew that the whole band couldn't just happily skip through the series unscathed, I'm kind of bitter about some of the events (if I said any more then there would be spoilers) that happened in the climax of the book and other parts just left me devastated on behalf of the characters I've grown to love. The ending definitely left me wanting more and I'm excited to see how this part of the saga resolves.

I Really Liked It 😊
-★★★★✮- (4.50/5.00)
My Grading Letter Score = 90% (A)

When I finished The Well of Ascension, the first words that came out of my mouth were "simply incredible." But at first the pacing of this book at the start, I completely understand why some people would consider this weaker than The Final Empire if we are discussing overall pacing because The Well of Ascension was constantly going from slow to fast to slower to faster. For me, I'm not really someone who heavily focuses on pacing if what is being provided to me is engaging and if it's building up to something that is paid off when it's due, which this book mostly everyone agrees it does just that. So, regarding pacing consistency, sure, you can go ahead and give The Final Empire the upper hand when it comes to that. But honestly, outside of that, I most definitely feel like The Well of Ascension is tied with The Final Empire in almost every other criteria, and/or The Well of Ascension did it better.

The two categories I feel The Well of Ascension did better were characterization and character development. Every single character that was focused on in The Well of Ascension, for the most part, felt like they were given the time they needed to be fleshed out enough to be commended at least above what the characterization execution was provided to us in The Final Empire and goes for the development they went through in this book. World-building, Lore, Action, and Prose are all categories that can be debated which one did it better. I don't really care since I enjoyed all of these things in both of these books. 


Verdict
At first, I was Team Final Empire, until around Chapter 47 when my favorite fight scene in the series so far occurred did I start to lean over to Team Well of Ascension, after that the pacing slowed back down and then I started to lean back over to The Final Empire and then the last fifty pages of this book leveled me out. It brought me to the conclusion of thinking that I like both of these books equally critically, to be honest. If I was held at gunpoint and forced to choose one over the other, I might say The Well of Ascension, since the hype of just finishing it is still on me and I love great characterization which this book gave me a whole lot of. But I love both of these books equally and I'm glad I did not come out of it thinking less of it in comparison to its predecessor, a successor should be as good or better than what came before it and I feel The Well of Ascension accomplished just that. So regardless of what the majority of people state or what the rating score in comparison says about this book. 

I Really Liked It.