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My oh my, where do I start?

The Final Empire was one hell of a ride. It was incredibly fast-paced, and going from that to The Well Of Ascension felt like going from sprinting to walking a procession. The change of pace was one of the major things I had to get used to. In the The Final Empire the reader was always a page or two removed from action; The Well Of Ascension on the other hand ripes like a fine wine.
The first half of the book I struggled a little. It took me way longer to finish it than I had anticipated. Part of his had to do with the pacing, but a lot of it was due to the plot. When I was done reading The Final Empire I was honestly curious what book two would be about. Sure, there were questions that remained unanswered (what would come of Vin and Elend, what did the future hold for Luthadel) but the main plot threads had been wrapped up. The main antagonist of this book had already been dealt with. It felt a little like reading The Lord of the Rings and watching Sauron die in the Fellowship.
The Lord Ruler was a god-like being that couldn't be defeated, and when he did get defeated I wondered if the series had peaked in book one. Sure, our cast wasn't out of the woods yet, but worldly problems such as the siege of Luthadel or the relationship of Vin and Elend were dwarfed by the earlier prospect of confronting the Lord Ruler. Because of this I really missed a sense of urgency throughout book two.
This is not criticism of The Well Of Ascension, or of the ending of The Final Empire. It's just something to keep in mind if you plan on picking this up. I know people who would say The Well Of Ascension is their favourite book of the three, so maybe I am just a different kind of reader.

The character work in The Well Of Ascension is something else. Admittedly, I only started my journey into the fantasy genre last year, but I still feel like I witnessed something special. I feel like the people in these pages are actual people, who respond to things the way actual people would. Heroes don't leave the rubble of tragedy unscathed: They get traumatized, depressed - they change.
A good example of this is our dear Vin. She has a very, very slow character arc. I didn't like her in book one, or a good chunk of book two for that matter. She needs a while to grow as a person, as a woman, as an adolescent, and you the reader are with her every step of the way. Vin is a character with a lot of growing pains which makes her all the more real.
The only problem with this is her capacity to carry a story. In the first book she is one of the POV's we the readers get to enjoy. The other prominent POV is that of Kelsier. He has a lot of flair and charisma, which makes the death of his character a great loss from a storytelling point of view. In the beginning of The Well Of Ascension I felt like Vin's shoulders weren't broad enough yet to carry an entire book mostly by herself.

I like almost all relationships in this book. Vin and Sazed, Sazed and Tindwyl, Breeze and Allriane, Zane and Vin, Zane and Straff: It's all very believable and human. Sadly, the only relationship I strongly dislike is the one at the very center of this story, namely the one of Vin and Elend. Don't get me wrong, a lot of books that aren't romantic stories at heart mess up romantic relationships. Sadly, Mistborn is no different.
Vin and Elend feel hollow and rushed. Throughout the book I felt like I was reading a story for adults, until Elend and Vin had a scene together. It wouldn't have bothered me as much if they hadn't been such a big part of the story, and if it hadn't been such a big part of Vin's character arc. There was just so much teen-relationship drama, I felt like it was massively out of place in a book with the ambitions of Mistborn.
Don't get me wrong: It makes sense given the characters' ages and the things they are going through, but I really don't need to hear about it for 3/4 of the book. I actually ended up hoping Elend would die just because of how much I hated it. And from what I've gathered from other people's reviews I am not the only person that felt this way. That doesn't make me right, but definitely not wrong either.

The third act of the book is when things really speed up. Very much like its predecessor, The Well Of Ascension has an exciting finale. Whatever your opinion of the book may be up until that point, the ending is more than a worthy pay-off.
Upon finishing this review there's only one thing on my mind: Reading book three. Brandon Sanderson did a great job setting up the last entry into the series. This is something I missed with book one and because of this it took me a while to start book two. I now feel a real sense of urgency and an unquenchable curiousity regarding the finale of this series.