The Hero of Ages is the third book in the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. [My reviews of the other two books here.]

Plot [with MAJOR SPOILERS for both books before this one]:
By releasing the power at the Well of Ascension in the last book, instead of keeping it to herself, Vin has pretty much doomed humanity. She and now-Mistborn Elend plus his army are now pretty much everything that stands between them and Ruin, the evil force out to destroy the world. In short, things don’t look too hot. But the Lord Ruler has seen that day coming and has guarded supplies for it.

Unfortunately, my frustrations with the second book only got worse with the third one. Despite frankly superior plotting, I was mostly annoyed with the characters; and the pacing, especially towards the end, was just way off.

[SPOILERS]

I pretty much hated the ending. For the last two hundred pages or so, I just wanted it to be over, right. fucking. now. I swear that I have rarely been that frustrated that a book wasn’t over yet. Also, the whole deification of Vin (and then Sazed) didn’t sit well with me. I mean, it already didn’t work when Cordelia was made a Higher Being. Does nobody learn from pop culture?

What worked very well though, was the plotting. Little details from the first two books suddenly got important in the third and it was very nice to see how Sanderson worked this. Vin’s earring, her whole origin story, the gaps that were filled in about the world building and the kandra – it all came together beautifully.

The problem was that at some point I lost interest in what happened to Vin or Elend or Spook. Sazed with his religious doubts seriously annoyed me. The only thing I was invested in was TenSoon’s plot line – and that was probably the shortest of all.

My recommendation for these books: Read the first part, then skip the other two. The plot is closed enough that you don’t need the sequels and they are just too annoying.