COMMENTARY: The Hero of Ages (2008)
The following are thoughts and reactions I had while reading The Hero of Ages (2008) by Brandon Sanderson. They do not reflect my overall post-reading opinion of the work.
⚠️ SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD ⚠️
- Everybody’s a superhero now.
- ugh. I’m 5% in going at 2.5X speed and it’s just a boring fight against the Koloss. I don’t care. I can’t imagine reading this (as opposed to listening to it) at my regular speed. Fights and action scenes are boring. I want to hear more about Tensoon.
- 7% - this is a super slow beginning.
- 12% - there’s so much overt lore and mechanism exposition. Just so much explainer copy. Here’s how this works. Here’s how that works. Here’s the history of these people and their rules. It was my biggest critique of Dune Part 2. Everything is so overt and spoken aloud, whereas Dune Part 1 just dramatized stuff and let the audience see it, wonder about it, think about it, experience it and absorb it. Like A New Hope, things were just hinted at to show a well worn world. Not here, nor Dune Part 2. Here we’re going to info dump you like a DM guide. Here’s all the history, the major NPCs, all the secrets of each location. Here’s everybody’s motivations laid out clearly and explicitly. I guess the redeeming quality here is that I trust Sanderson to make all this lore dump relevant to the plot eventually unlike Lies of Locke Lamora where none of the lore dump mattered.
- I don’t know if it’s because I’m listening at 2.5X, or if it’s Sanderson and this particular book, but he’s repeating character motivations a LOT. Like every couple of chapters in reminded of why they’re doing stuff. Feels redundant.
- 17% in and I still don’t care about what’s going on. The last book had at least five subplots by this point, each of them that I genuinely wanted to find out more about. This one is them trying to figure out Ruin with the Kandra court case and Marsh wondering what’s going on. It’s all just so… meh. Is it the lack of stakes? They all keep saying the world will end but I don’t feel the impending doom. Is it because Ruin hasn’t done anything to show it’s power? Like I don’t know what Ruin can or will do. I just know that he will “end the world” and that’s vague and doesn’t cause tension at all.
- omg there’s so much naval gazing. Either flashback and/or put it in a present scene that’s dramatized and relevant to the past
- 19% - If Dune is Sanderson’s favorite book, then Elend as tyrant is his Paul Altreides. Or Kelsior as the Messiah. And the Skaa the Fremen… except none of this has the same political depth that Herbert had.
- looking forward to the Vin/Tensoon reunion!
- 26% - “Ruthless, brutal sense” yeah, ok, this is good internal struggle for Elena as reluctant tyrant.
- FINALLY!!! An interesting hook I’m actually invested in. 16% of Skaa die from the mist… but also, super-anachronistic for the dude to be spouting off high school statistics and probabilities. Might as well say the words “standard deviation”. lol
- oh cool. Breaking bones of Kandra as punishment.
- 30% - I like Spook’s subplot with Kelsiar’s ghost too. Maybe it’s Ruin
- 32% - I think Vin’s navel gazing just revealed why I’m not invested in the book. The first one she was afraid of losing everything. The second one she was afraid of losing Elend. This one… it’s a vague, nebulous end of world. It’s not just clear stakes that I need to do as an author… but the reader also needs to see the “paths to destruction”… and I can’t see or imagine how things will end here. Ruin is just a vague, nebulous villain. It’s like writing preventive copy (insurance and climate change and eating well). People don’t care and are lazy about it. But if it’s reactive, as in the danger is clear and present and has already caused pain… then you’re invested.
- Sanderson warned his students that “homicidal hat trick” would show up and he admitted it was weird in his SFF writing class online… and it is still shocking when it shows up. It’s just so anachronistic and weird and out of place
- 38% - I’m finally invested. The ball has real tension.
- 41% - YESSSS. The Elend/Vin relationship is what I’m here for. More of this.
- Oof. You have to realize who you’re becoming is a valid extension of yourself. That’s good
- 42% - yes! Tensoon’s escape!!!
- 55% - Yomen pretending to not be Mistborn and then trapping Vin is excellent.
- 68% - there’s a lot more naval gazing In this book than the previous two….
- 78% - oh my god. ruin is ending the current world so he can start one that’s not ash and mist. Stop dragging this out Sanderson.
- Yomen is such a boring villain
- band name: fingers of a thief
- 85% - army of allomancers
- 87% - 13 inquisitors. Yay… another.. fight. Hurray…. Ugh
- 88% - that’s a crazy gamble
- 89% - she’s a atom bomb!
- 97% - it’s the buffy finale. Everyone has super powers. Wait a minute. I just read this
- another twist?