The following is commentary, written by Brandon, about one of the chapters of MISTBORN: THE WELL OF ASCENSION. If you haven’t read this book, know that the following will contain major spoilers. We suggest reading the sample chapters from book one instead. You can also go to this book’s introduction or go to the main annotations page to access all annotations for all books. For those who have read some of MISTBORN 2, any spoilers for the ending of this book will be hidden, so as long as you’ve read up to this chapter, you should be all right.

Fifty-seven

Sazed In Charge of the City

Sazed’s in charge here. There’s one small problem with that. Sazed’s not very good at leadership.

It’s not his fault. He just doesn’t have the skillset for it. Unlike Elend, who had a buried desire to lead–and the skills to become a king, if he learned how to use them–Sazed just wants to be a quiet scholar. We saw this when he gathered the crew and couldn’t keep them from arguing. We see it again here.

He’s much more in his element when he looks through the book he wrote with Tindwyl. Though, of course, losing her is starting to hit him pretty hard. He keeps wavering back in forth emotionally, and that’s intentional. He is confused, and doesn’t know what to do.

Here’s another Couple of things we’ll find answers to in book three:

How Vin drew on the mists, and why she could do it.

Why she can feel the pulsing of the Well and nobody else can.

Vin Goes to Kredik Shaw

Originally, the Well of Ascension WAS in the mountains. That’s the big reason for the rewrite of the ending. This section of the book felt TOO disjointed with the rest of the novel, and I felt that I needed to move the Well to Luthadel. That way, the fight for the city meant something–and I didn’t have to send Vin out, have her come back, then send her north yet again.

It works far better this way. Of course, I had to do some major rewriting–and I had to explain why the Well isn’t in the mountains. But, in this case, fixing one thing gave me motivation for fixing something else. I had worried about how easy it was to find the Well, and how difficult it would be to take Vin and Elend into the mountains to find it. All very awkward. Both the history and the current story work much better when I decided to have the Lord Ruler have moved the Well down and put his city on top of it.

Marsh

One of the things about this novel is that the bookends–the beginning and the end–are very closely tied together, with only small strands weaving through the middle. Here, at the end, we come full circle. We find a body, just like the one that Sazed found in the first chapter where we introduced him. Next, we run into Marsh, who vanished so many months ago.

He’s actually been in the city. Some of Demoux’s people reported seeing an Inquisitor, if you recall, and Vin found footprints inside of Kredik Shaw. Marsh has been here the whole time, watching and waiting.

Now he has something to do.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the beginning and the ending are tied so closely together. On one hand, I worry that you’ve forgotten about Marsh and the killings the mists caused. On the other hand, I like the symmetry in this book. You think you’re done with it after the siege of Luthadel.

Then this happens.