This turned into some kind of hate read.
I mean, I knew that Sanderson was a prime example of Extruded Fantasy Product, so I’ve never sampled any of his books until this year. And… I was kinda pleasantly surprised? I mean, the books were all kinds of hokey, but they were indeed kinda entertaining.
And now this one.
I don’t even know how to describe it. Well, OK, it has typical Middle Book Syndrome — it’s taking us from the premise established in the first book to the probable resolution in the third book. So that’s all well and good, but it’s not just that this book is boring — because it mostly is — but it reveals how thin Sanderson’s world building is, and that’s more disappointing than anything.
Sanderson is primarily interesting in creating systems of magic; i.e., a science fictional approach to magic usage, where he teases out rules for how they work and all that. Which is OK, but it reads like a teenager who’s really into super-heroes and spends all his time doodling in his notebook about a new super-hero he’s created.
There’s so many super-hero/magics fights in this book. They’re not badly written or anything, but it’s just… c’mon. C’mon.
So it took me over a week to get through this book, because every time I sat down with it, I found that I wanted to do something else instead. But it’s not like I’m shy about ditching books that bore me — but it was sufficiently entertaining to stop me from doing that, which is even more annoying.
It’s like… I dunno. MVF, Minimum Viable Fantasy? Or something? The worst part of it all is that the final revelation was kinda interesting, so I’m probably going to read the final book in the trilogy, even though I didn’t really enjoy reading this one?
*sigh*
Stupid Extruded Fantasy Product.
(Or perhaps it would be a better use of my time to read the Wikipedia plot recap instead and save myself the pain.)
The Well of Ascension (2007) by Brandon Sanderson (buy new, buy used, 4.38 on Goodreads)
i think some people would disagree with you, and i think you probably have a good point to make here, which is why i’m sad you didn’t make it with your usual virtuosity, because I’m not sure the details of why you didn’t like the book and i’d really love to know em.