Cav's Place

If I was saying that I wouldn’t call The Final Empire dark, The Hero of Ages definitely is, despite an ending that doesn’t quite fit. On the other hand, if The Well of Ascension at times seemed to me to read as I expect a good crime novel would, only on a much bigger scale, The Hero of Ages didn’t leave the same impression. There is a solid direction, there are revelations that build upon each other, the scale is even grander, and the stakes, the importance and impact of actions and events, as high as possible while confined to a single planet, but perhaps it moves too quickly and goes too far, leaving behind a feeling that details, even important ones, are overlooked in the process, that it occasionally falls apart at the seams.
It definitely is written well, and it also touches upon quite a number of issues and occasionally offers arguments which may or may not be considered bits of wisdom, likely depending on whether or not the reader agrees, so I have no reservations in stating that it’s a good book. At the same time… I expected more. Or, more exactly, I expected better, though I do now realize that The Well of Ascension may have set the bar too high in certain aspects and made me carefully search for certain elements, looking for flaws and dismissing potential positive aspects if they didn’t mark a significant improvement, which may have been too much to ask. For example, after having correctly figured out the identity of the spy in The Well of Ascension pretty much right away, I felt that the author may have allowed me to do so in order to lull me into complacency and then surprise me with even greater revelations, while now there was no similar feeling after also immediately figuring out the identity of the Hero of Ages. Yet is that because there really was nothing greater hidden beneath, or is it because I was somewhat inoculated against that feeling, searching too carefully and expecting too much? I couldn’t really say…

Rating: 4/5