The Well of Ascension

I’m honestly not sure what to say. This series started off so strong, but I was left incredibly disappointed after reading this beast of a book. Let me explain…Watch the more detailed video review: https://youtu.be/gD0rPQ5CxhoThe second book picks up swiftly after the first which is a pleasant experience. After the first, I was hoping we'd have less drawn-out dialogue build-up and a more swift-moving plot. I'm not after immediate action, I just don't need everything explained from scratch. It started out this way but quickly fell into Sanderson’s Sanderlanche approach. The relationship between Elend and Vin was grating. They're supposedly in love (something we’re constantly reminded of in words, not actions), but their relationship is toxic.They know very little of each other's past and upbringing and don’t seem to care to ask each other about it. It’s like we’re just meant to accept their relationship as it is, without it building whatsoever.In this book, we have a new perspective - Elend’s. Which means we now get to see how he views Vin as a person. We witnessed her growing as a complex, empowering character who has been through a lot of trauma. She’s not perfect, far from it, but she’s working on it.Now though, she's reverted to being an overbearing helicopter girlfriend who apparently bothers Elend too much. He sees her as 'not like other girls' (at one point he literally says it) but at the same time calls her odd and comments on her clothing almost constantly. This is perhaps Brandon's lack of romance skill coming through and more likely his lack of women's perspective.All of this meant I didn’t like Vin as a character anymore. She’s rude, thoughtless, doesn’t seem to care for others and she treats one particular character very badly. None of this seems in character. In the first book, she had reason to behave this way, but in the second, she should be evolving, not regressing.She's gone from a confused young woman with good intentions, to an angry and entitled one with no explanation for why. We're just meant to accept who she is now.She essentially treats this other character how she used to be treated. There's no better word for it than racist. And the worst thing is, there was no need for it. Because the reasoning for her behaviour later didn't make sense. They could have just made her grumpy, rather than outright racist and it would have made sense.This weird personality shift isn’t reserved just for Vin, Elend is the same - he acts just plain stupid. He ignores Vin's warnings and makes poor political decisions even though so far we've been led to believe that he was the correct man for the role. Rather than the man who just so happened to get there first.They're such a frustrating pair. They don't communicate, they don't listen to each other and they keep secrets. There’s another thing that bothers me about this book and that’s that Sanderson slips into sexist remarks frequently (I didn’t spot this in the first book at all). Take this line for example: "Just as a beautiful woman demanded attention by virtue of her face and figure, Breeze drew it by near unconscious use of his powers." WTF why was that necessary?Every woman in the book is described by either her looks or her mannerisms, and not in a good way. I understand that some of the male characters and even female characters in the book would make such sexist remarks, but not all. Not every single time. It's hard to read.Then Vin, after months of wearing just trousers and shirts (as the characters in the book put it 'men's clothes'), puts on a dress for a specific reason and everyone is freakin' shocked. Saying she's beautiful and scrubs up nicely. Come on, she can be beautiful in both. She can feel powerful in one and feminine in the other. We don't need to have a ‘She’s All That’ moment. There's this whole bit in the book when Elend, just having achieved something great, then gets deposed by this elected group of people. Then instead of actually progressing the plot, they're stuck dealing with this shit. It reads like a bad filler episode. Frustrating to say the least.By page 472, it had become an incredibly unsatisfying book. Nothing went to plan for the characters, nothing. After reading pages and pages of dialogue and becoming invested in the story and characters, there was quite literally nothing to show for it. I understand the writing technique, to build and build and then deliver at the end. But the first book at least gave us small wins along the way. The Well of Ascension is full of men who want something from a woman. Men who can't seem to achieve the things they want without her. She's never given freedom, never treated right, given the support she needs, or even any real power. That's all for the men. I know a man wrote this book but geez. It's such a contrast to the first. The first book was almost empowering. This one is just frustrating.The payoff wasn't worth it. I'm not sure I'm willing to read that many pages to have so little happen only to have to go through it all again in another book. For more reviews and book recommendations, check out my YouTube channel.