In Sanderson's second installation Elend Venture is the current king of Luthadel with Vin as his personal mistborn bodyguard, but the young monarch holds a very precarious position as his father, Straff Venture, is camped outside his city's gates with an army bent on conquest. This fact is compounded when another army (that of Lord Cett) shows up, and of course there are still assassins trying for Elend's life. On top of this, Vin discovers a mysterious Watcher during her nightly patrols who tests the limits of her mistborn abilities.
Sanderson again tells far more than he shows. The most blatant instance of this comes when Elend meets with Dockson, and afterword the author insists that Dockson doesn't like Elend. Okay...what? At no point in the prior exchange was there ANY sign of animosity between these two individuals. Their conversation was polite and there was nothing in the narrative or dialogue tags to show what Dockson felt. We don't find this out until afterward where Sanderson tells us that it's so, and has Elend bemoaning the fact.
I also found reason to dislike Vin in this novel among other things. She has inherited OreSeur the kandra, a creature that can take the shape of people (and later animals) that it consumes. Vin is still upset that the kandra, well, essentially ate Kelsier after he died in order to impersonate him for a time, even though this was the Survivor's plans all along. Her treatment of OreSeur just bugs me and seems out of character with someone who has been trodden on and abused her entire life. Kandra follow a contract that allows them to live in human society. They are forced to obey their human master/mistress by this with few exceptions.
*sigh* I am very glad I didn't waste my time finishing this novel. I
tried...I really tried to get through it. I really tried to let my fascination with the Deepness cut through my ever growing ennui and fuel a
desire to find out what the hell that was. I really tried to maintain
my interest despite the stodgy dialogue and constant telling
instead of showing. I tried to latch on to some of the attempted intrigue with Zane who ends up not only be the elusive Watcher, but also Straff Venture's bastard mistborn son who constantly hears "God's" voice telling him to kill everyone he meets especially his father. I tried to care about this stuff, but it all just seemed so forced and trite. No one really had a strongly discernible personality, and I honestly just stopped caring and resorted to reading
the Mistborn wiki to find out how both this and the third one ended. Having done that I'm even happier that I didn't waste my time in finishing because I'm less than impressed. The first novel was okay. The idea was new and fantastic; what would happen if the villain won. Brilliance pulled off in a not so stellar way, but I was still able to slog through it. This one has the two armies besieging our protagonists, but it just doesn't hold a candle to a ragtag bunch of thieves and spies trying to overthrow god (which, let's face it is essentially the plot of every Final Fantasy), and Sanderson's writing just wasn't compelling enough to hold me to this story without those dire odds. Maybe this one just begins slower because it's mostly about politics, but reading what the end is, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and say, "Eh..."
Two stars and I (obviously) won't be reading the third or fourth or however many of these there are. Maybe I'll give Elantris a try...but not right now.
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