The Hero of Ages

– The following review contains spoilers for the entire trilogy.

Written by Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages marks the conclusion of the first Mistborn trilogy by repeating the same achievements and failures of the previous volumes. The novel is uneven when it comes to developing its characters and presenting its many twists and turns, showing consistency only in its ability to contradict itself all the time.

The story begins a few years after the events of The Well of Ascension, with the deity Vin freed, called Ruin, loose in the world to wreak – as his name suggests – destruction. With the help of her husband, Emperor Elend, Vin’s plan is to seek out the location of some storage caches hidden by the Lord Ruler around the world and find out if the former villain had any information on how to defeat Ruin. While they make preparations to take the city of Fadrex, which is being defended by an obligator, and gain access to the last cache, Spook, Sazed, and Breeze aim to stop a popular rebellion in the city of Urteau. The kandra TenSoon, meanwhile, tries to convince his people that the end is near, but the fact that he is being accused of treason makes things a bit difficult.

The plot involving Fadrex contains one of the best characters of the whole trilogy: the obligator Yomen. Far from being a one-dimensional villain, like those of the first two books, Yomen is fascinating due to the way he tries to reconcile two conflicting things: critical thinking and religious fundamentalism. He follows every teaching of his faith without thinking twice, without making concessions, being harsh and pious, but only because he has already studied them, analyzed them, and deemed them good.

While Yomen’s faith in the Lord Ruler forms the inexorable basis of his government, he remains capable of being open to dialogue and respecting the point of view of his adversaries. Like Sazed, he is a rational man that takes a practical stance when it comes to religion: he knows, for example, that the laws written by the Lord Ruler lead to social injustice, but considers it a necessary evil to maintain the political stability necessary to guarantee security to the people. In other words, Yomen believes that it’s necessary to oppress his people if he wants to protect it. Intelligent and able to manipulate his opponents with ease, the character is certainly the most complex in the book. His narrative arc concludes with a dilemma, forcing a choice between his people and his religion.

The narrative also strives to retroactively make the Lord Ruler a more interesting figure, informing us several times that he did what he did with the best of intentions: in his mind, his tyrannical rule was necessary to save the world. Yomen, therefore, appears almost as a second Lord Ruler, making the same mistakes for the same reasons. In fact, it is curious to see how the Lord Ruler assumes a similar function to Kelsier in The Well of Ascension, being a spectral presence that guides the actions of several characters while becoming a model to be followed or rejected.

After all, another character who bears similarities to the former villain is Elend, whose political stance has been drastically changed from the previous book. The Emperor now believes that democratic concessions, brutal displays of force, coercion, and manipulation are useful tools for a ruler. Much like Yomen and the Lord Ruler, he has no objections to using violence if he believes it will bring peace. The difference between the antagonists and Elend lies in the fact that the Emperor still advocates a more egalitarian world, although his means of achieving this dream don’t differ anymore from those employed by his enemies. It’s no wonder that the climax of his character arc involves the use of an army of koloss to besiege a city: Elend contemplates committing the same abominable act that made him judge and execute his own friend in The Well of Ascension. Elend finally deciding not to go through with the attack, therefore, is the key point that turns him back into his previous self, the Elend that saw violence as a trap instead of a solution.

There are four types of rulers present in The Hero of Ages: there’s the one who sees political stability as the ultimate goal and finds their legitimacy in religion (the Lord Ruler and his proxy, Yomen); there’s the one who doesn’t hesitate to coerce and kill if this will lead to a less socially unjust world and finds their legitimacy in their noble blood (Elend from The Hero of Ages), and there’s the one that believes that this peaceful and less unjust world will never be built with acts of war and injustice, but still have their power legitimized by their social class (Elend from The Well of Ascension).

What about a ruler who comes from the common people? This is where the narrative begins to become very problematic. This type of ruler appears in the form of a mysterious character known simply as “the Citizen”, who controls the town of Urteau – although in the end the character is deconstructed so much that his social class becomes irrelevant.

This plotline offers a scenario predicted and avoided by Elend in The Final Empire: a revolution that begins and ends with the common people. The Emperor used to preach that such a government would never sustain itself for long: since it is based on class struggle it would inevitably collapse under the weight of the hatred towards the upper classes. Elend argued that an alliance with the nobility, breaking this hatred, was essential to build a bridge to a more democratic world. When Spook, Sazed, and Breeze arrive in Urteau, it seems that Elend’s arguments were sound: the city is in chaos, with the Citizen carrying out regular public executions, ruling by fear and acting not unlike the Lord Ruler when it comes to persecuting his opponents.

And then the narrative starts to sabotage itself. First, the chapters in Urteau never advance the political landscape: the Citizen is tyrannical at the beginning, tyrannical in the middle, and tyrannical before he is deposed at the climax. His point of view is never included, and the events serve only to affirm that Elend has always been right, without having any counterpoint raised to his opinion. In other words, if Elend advocates for a multidimensional worldview, the way politics is portrayed in Urteau is, contradictorily, one-dimensional.

However, the main mistake in this part is the final twist that the Citizen was actually acting under the influence of Ruin. This spoils the whole thing because it means that the leader of the people’s revolution was not acting according to his own ideals. Urteau is no longer a laboratory for proving Elend’s point because the necessary elements are no longer present: it was a destructive creature and not the ruler’s political vision, along with his social condition, that was generating those horrible results. In other words, the whole discussion is suddenly thrown out of the window. It’s not the case that Ruin metaphorically symbolizes the mentality of a popular revolution – as questionable as that would be – since it is suggested that the Citizen would have acted differently had he not been influenced by Ruin, and a noble (Penrod) suffers from the same malady while ruling Luthadel. The twist, then, makes the whole plotline thematically hollow: it doesn’t mean anything anymore and feels like padding.

The protagonist of this part is Spook, who finally gains the limelight. And what is revealed about him here? Nothing that hadn’t already been hinted at more effectively in the previous books. The two main points developed are his inferiority complex, showing that his almost insignificant role in Kelsier and Vin’s group made him sad – who could have imagined – and his romantic side, which had already been brilliantly shown with the handing of a handkerchief to Vin in The Final Empire. The character having realized his desire to get out of the background ironically does not add much to him: Spook remains the same character, with no added depth.

To make matters worse, the impact of the Urteau plotline on the war against Ruin lies only in a single message of questionable value. This message is intercepted and read by Marsh, leading him to come up with the idea of ripping out Vin’s earrings, freeing her from Ruin’s influence. The problem is that the information it contained – that people are being manipulated by Ruin when pierced by metal – could very well have been deduced by Marsh alone: after all, he was precisely one of the individuals who went around piercing people with metal so that Ruin could control them.

Marsh has almost no control over his actions, but he still has the ability to think by himself, so there are no obstacles for him to arrive at this conclusion on his own. Not to mention that the explanation of how he managed to pull out Vin’s earrings is ridiculous: although Marsh can’t do something as insignificant as moving a finger without Ruin sensing it, on the other side of the world and focused on other things, and coming back immediately to take control of his body, during a climactic scene Marsh is able to hold a specific object and pull it out of Vin even though Ruin is there and knows that this act would be harmful to him. And this is all possible because apparently the deity was too distracted by the prospect of killing Vin while controlling Marsh’s body.

In short, The Hero of Ages contains a huge plotline that is thematically empty and also suffers from redundant character development and a disappointing pay-off.

Vin, meanwhile, still has no character arc to call her own. She loves Elend and her friends and wants to kill anyone who poses a danger to them – and that’s it. The narrative, however, continues to undo the symbolism established around the character in The Final Empire,

At the beginning of the first book, Vin considered her earrings a weakness because it made her look feminine, drawing unwanted attention to her: it was a sign of weakness that made her easy prey for male predators. After meeting Kelsier and becoming more self-assured, she starts to wear the earrings without fear: the feminine, then, stops being a sign of weakness and becomes a symbol of self-affirmation. Here, however, it’s revealed that the earrings were actually an object by which Ruin was able to influence her thoughts. Consequently, on a symbolic level, this means that the feminine is once again considered a weakness in the narrative. The power to corrupt and the association with a destructive deity have always been cruel symbols associated with the feminine, which means that The Hero of Ages endorsing them is not only bad from a structural point of view, because it contradicts the first volume, but also from a social one.

Talking about structure, some of the book’s revelations have basically no impact on the overall story. In the same way that the discovery in the previous novel that the koloss were being bought by a noble did not result in anything, here the discovery that they are generated from human bodies also doesn’t matter: it’s just trivia that disgusts the characters that find out. Another problematic revelation is that Ruin was the voice of Vin’s brother in her head: one of the chapters ends with this twist, which functions as a thrilling cliffhanger, but is later discarded, as Ruin could not have been the voice for most of the time, since the voice was reacting to her thoughts and Ruin doesn’t have access to them.

And there’s the twist that the metal deposit Ruin was searching for was hidden in the city of the kandras. Although the twist makes sense, as the creatures’ behavior and origin serve as appropriate clues, it also makes the main villain look pretty stupid. After all, it doesn’t make sense for Ruin to have ignored, in his plan for world destruction, an entire race of shapeshifters that he could mentally control simply because he thought they were “weak,” whatever that means. Ruin not only fails to consider the possibility that the kandras were part of the plan to defeat him, despite them being created by his enemy, he also doesn’t even consider making use of them at all in his plan. Just by being shapeshifters, the kandras would have already been an invaluable tool, saving him the trouble of surgically piercing Penrod with metal, for example: all he had to do was kill the guy and replace him with a kandra. Yes, the creatures had a safety measure if he tried to control them – suicide – but he didn’t know that and some of them didn’t even kill themselves when he finally remembered they existed. Not to mention that things dying is kind of his goal, so even if Ruin knew about the collective suicide plan there would be no reason for him not to try to control them.

The only really interesting revelation is that the hero of ages is not Vin, but Sazed, because in this book, much like in the previous one, he is a much more fascinating character than Vin. Still traumatized by the death of his beloved in the war for Luthadel, Sazed, who used to understand the comforting side of religions, starts to question their very structure, analyzing their contradictions and inconsistencies. The character is even responsible for asking the question of the century: if people kill and oppress in the name of religion, what then is their real social function?

But the point of Sazed being the hero of ages is that this is what allows his character arc to reach a satisfactory conclusion: by becoming a God, Sazed has the chance to use everything he learned to help rebuild the world. Sazed, after all, understands that religions may fail to offer comfort and answers or even to push humanity to goodness, but they still serve as cultural repositories, serving as a mirror that reflect what humanity is.

During the climax, however, some characters just disappear, and in one particular case – Marsh – this means that his arc is left unfinished. It’s an unnecessary omission, since Sazed could have reconstituted his body with the powers he acquired, ending the matter quickly. Or, if for some arbitrary reason Sazed could not make Marsh normal again, Marsh could have carried out the suicide he was contemplating. In any case, even a bad or bizarre ending (Marsh deciding to become a plumber and massacre a whole lot of sentient mushrooms) may have been better than the absolute lack of resolution regarding his arc, with Marsh simply not being mentioned anymore. Yomen could also have had more closure, as his reaction to the miracles performed by Sazed would either lead to a strengthening of his faith in the Lord Ruler, attributing the miracles to him – which would mean that the problem the villain represents would persist – or would cause him to live a crisis of faith. In any case, just like Marsh, he should have been mentioned.

The plot of the kandra TenSoon also has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it develops his race, planting clues to the twist about the location of the metal deposit, and moves Sazed to where he should be to become the hero, both physically and psychologically. On the other hand, it just amounts to TenSoon running around quite lost for much of the book, and, in some situations, this even occurs artificially: the soldiers in Luthadel, for example, not knowing where their own army has gone – when there is no reason for this to be a state secret – is just bizarre.

As for the villain, Ruin, it’s a good thing there is Yomen, because he is another one who falls into the category of one-dimensional monsters – being described as a uniquely destructive force – that are also idiots – as evidenced by his decision to ignore the kandras and let Marsh rip out Vin’s earrings while controlling his body. Another problem with Ruin’s development is that not only is he just another bad guy out to destroy everything, but that he is a bad guy out to destroy everything that still has several lines of dialogue. What can such a character say that is interesting? Apparently, nothing, because his lines vary from arrogance to mockery and end in childish meanness: he even gives an evil laugh when he kills Elend, for example, saying to Vin, “I killed him! I ruined everything you love,” – and probably thinking himself very smart for the pun.

Finally, it is worth noting that the narrative remains repetitive and condescending. The characters, for example, still repeat the same thoughts over and over again: Spook repeatedly laments having abandoned his uncle, Marsh repeatedly laments not being able to commit suicide, Elend repeatedly laments that the war has turned him into something he despises, and so on.

Meanwhile, the story is frequently interrupted by very didactic explanations on how some of the elements of that universe work, which is something unacceptable in the third book of a trilogy: the function of pewter is explained three times; the first with Ham, the second with Vin, and the third with Spook, who, not satisfied, takes the opportunity to recall the alomantic function of all the metals. And this can get laughably bad at some points: near the end, for example, it is said again that Luthadel was built on top of the Well of Ascension and that it eventually became a pretty important city. No shit.

The Hero of Ages perfectly encapsulates the entire Mistborn trilogy: it may raise some relevant questions and present a few interesting scenes and set-pieces, but it’s dragged down by a boring and repetitive narrative, which is full of poorly developed characters.

February 11, 2021.

Review originally published in Portuguese on January 01, 2018.