the hero of ages (book)

rating

starstarstarstar_halfstar

date

31 december 2025

genre

fantasy

author

brandon sanderson

this is the third book in sanderson's mistborn series, therefore expect spoilers for the two previous books (reviews here and here).

picking up from vin following what she thought to be the instructions of terris prophecy to save the world, only to release the thing attempting to destroy the world, we're starting off in a situation that is well and truly fucked. the force slash god ruin had been trapped by the power of an opposing force slash god, preservation and once unleashed, ruin can exert direct influence on the world and some important people and creatures to make the planet uninhabitable and force everybody into death through either starvation or violence.

every chapter, as in the previous books, is preceded by short blurbs of a journal by an initially unknown author. in this case, it's the titular hero of ages, although we don't get any confirmation of their identity until the climax of the book. but these short sections pull back the veil on most of the open questions regarding the forces at play, introduce another type of metallurgic magic and generally do a lot of convenient contextualizing infodumping. the now three total types of magic are also associated with the opposing forces slash gods (allomancy being of preservation, feruchemy being neutral and hemalurgy being of ruin), which takes a certain degree of importance since every user of hemalurgy can now possibly be puppeteered by ruin.

much of the plot is spent in a desperate scramble by the protagonists (interestingly, with vin, elend, sazed, spook and tensoon there's now a total 5 regular pov characters) to even just keep as many people as possible alive for just a little longer while trying to chase down increasingly obscure leads of how to oppose ruin. it's a pretty bleak ride for most of it with no real hope on the horizon, while the planet chokes on feet-high ashfall blocking out the sun, killing crops and making travel arduous. everything finally falls into the place at the last moment, giving the trilogy a remarkably neat and tied-off positive ending, which almost made me feel like it's too cozy, but through a lot of well-earned plot twists and good world building, it does feel earned. my personal highlight is a certain moment regarding a completely innocent-seeming unimportant fact around vin that turns into a big oh-shit moment when it clicks which was definitely planned from the beginning (i will not get more specific here).

whereas the plot and lore feels meticulously planned and set up, sanderson's weaknesses also present in the first two books seem even more glaring here. despite over 700 pages, there's not a lot of room here for the characters to develop. sazed gets the most time for introspection by going through a crisis of faith: he was a keeper of all religious knowledge of the pre-final empire world and used to see the value and truth in all of them, only to lose this faith through the loss of his romantic interest. he goes through the teachings of all these religions, increasingly frustrated that they're all full of contradictions, but finds his hope and faith again in the end. the arc is a bit of a slog at times, but its conclusion is definitely interesting given sanderson's religious background, since sazed, in the end, finds shared bits of truth and his hope in all of the religions again, even if they don't stand up to logical scrutiny. everybody else is very one-note here though or their journeys just didn't work that well for me on a character level (glancing towards spook). tensoon's plot, fleshing out the lore around the kandra people, is on the more interesting side at least.

another big weakness that gets more glaring over the course of the trilogy is sanderson's penchant for repetition. it seems he does not want you to ever forget the details of how the magic system works, how characters feel about certain things, or specific bits of lore, so he tells you again. and again. and again. in this book it's the most pronounced and i think a less verbose style and more trust in the reader (there's even a magic compendium in the back of the book in case i need to look up specifics, shouldn't that be enough?) could have shaved 200 pages off the book without cutting anything of importance.

it's difficult for me to give this a definitive numerical rating, as i devoured it and had a really good time with it and my interest in the world and wanting to see everything finally contextualized remained strong throughout, but the more i think back about the experience, the more little annoyances i can find. purely on the immediate vibes i did enjoy it though.