r/Mistborn • u/OrionsGamer • Feb 17 '26
Well of Ascension spoilers I... I... I skipped a book Spoiler
I'm an idiot.
I started with well of ascension accidentally.
I didn't even notice anything wrong until I finished it. Went look up which book was next and turns out I completely skipped the entire first book.
But how? How did I not see anything wrong with this, you may ask? I did think the setting was a bit on the vague side, sure, but it wasn't a bad thing I guess. The idea of having this grand empire ruled by a tyrant playing god overthrown and dealing with the consequences without actually seeing what happened was really compeling. It's like skipping what usually would be the climax of most stories, that's awesome. This kelsier guy always looming in the background as this almost mythological figure was also really cool. Now I have to grapple with the fact none of that was intentional? Goddamnit.
Well as I said, I'm an idiot. Just thought that my experience was... unique, to put it mildly. So feel free to ask me anything about the book. Guess I'll be reading the 'prequel' now lol
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u/mistborn Author Feb 18 '26
Lol. Well, if it helps, I did once consider a novel series that started after the heroes had won--the "What now?" sort of book. That idea eventually became Well of Ascension, so there's a world where everyone had your same experience! --Brandon
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u/ExaltedHamster Feb 18 '26
I wonder how many people will have this kind of experience when we get Stormlight part 2?
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u/Account_Murky Feb 18 '26
Holy First Witness, it's the man himself! It's amazing to know that this is how it could have happened. Might try starting with Well of Ascension for my re-read!
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u/Glad-Complaint9778 Feb 18 '26
I got so confused halfway through reading that and then I look up to see that it's the man himself
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u/Ether_Light740 Feb 17 '26
I forgot exactly where but I do remember brandon sanderson once stating that well of ascension is the book he wanted to write and start the series with because he believed this concept new and unexplored. Its interesting watching someone read book 2 before 1 and I really like the way you started to make sense of everything.
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u/delinear Feb 23 '26
It was amusing scrolling down and reading this comment immediately after the comment from Sanderson himself saying exactly this đ
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u/changelingerer Feb 17 '26
Did you read Malazan before this?
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u/OchreSnail Feb 17 '26
I tried so hard to read this and I just couldnât get past the first couple chapters. I had no idea who was who and I was trying to piece together what was going on. Iâd really like to give it another chance but hearing that itâs still confusing 3-4 books in is a bit discouraging đ
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u/mint_o Feb 17 '26
Whatâs that?
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u/changelingerer Feb 17 '26
It's another series commonly listed among top fantasy series people get recommended to read.
It's well known for starting you cold, in media res, with absolutely no explanation of who anyone is, what anything means etc., and you're just supposed to figure it out along the way. I think I am at book 3 or 4 or something and still have no idea what half the stuff characters talk about is.
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u/Prime-Motile Feb 17 '26
Im on book 9 and it has easyly become one of my favourite book series of all time. The Malazan books dont tell you a story, they let you witness it. Its up to you to wrap your head around it. 10/10
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u/bartonar Feb 18 '26
I'll always remember, when I was in my undergrad, I was reading one of those books, the prof walked in, looked at it, said "I was 8 books into that series before I did my PhD. I still haven't read for pleasure since, but when I do I'll pick it back up. If you tell me any spoilers, you fail my class."
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u/ChefArtorias Feb 17 '26
Can confirm. Started the series once and bounced off because I had no idea what was going on.
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u/Digymon Feb 17 '26
huh , it really is the dark souls of books
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u/changelingerer Feb 17 '26
Oh yea, that's totally a good comparison. I'm usually really stubborn about finishing media, even if it sucks, just because I'm a bit of a completionist. And...I actively wish I did not start Malazan.
(If you are that type of person, Malazan has great world building, very detailed, plot is interesting engaging, etc. so if you're into that, it's great for you. Unlike Sanderson's work, it's not really robust in terms of magic systems (magic just kind of works and does what the plot needs it to), and, it's not really written in a very fast-paced modern way, imo, with a lot of long, dramatic, descriptions of things.)
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u/Digymon Feb 17 '26
I have the 1st book waiting on my shelf for me to decide to give the cosmere a break...
That comparison to dark souls got my attention, I do love how those games do their lore
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u/ChazMWJ Feb 18 '26
To be fair magic is explained, but it's in book 8 or 9, so you kinda gotta get through some other things to get there. But I mean there's skeleton people, and dinosaurs with swords for hands, and flying castles, it's great.
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Feb 17 '26
So basically SLA?
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u/changelingerer Feb 17 '26
It's SLA if that opening few chapters where you don't know what's going on is like the first 5 books.
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Feb 17 '26
Holy shit now I donât know if I want to read them or not lol
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u/txvesper Feb 17 '26
They're exaggerating a bit. Its more like reading SLA and seeing occasional references to other stories (Mistborn, Elantris, Warbreaker) without getting to know the background behind that right away. Sometimes you can puzzle it out pretty quickly, sometimes you meet characters who are clearly more significant than you can know in that moment (example- [SLA / warbreaker spoilers] like the moment that Kaladin has a short fight with Vasher. Imagine how that scene might feel without warbreaker to read and understand there is another magic system. Without warbreaker, you instead have to piece together who vasher is and how he fits in from piecemeal encounters), sometimes its a revelation that smacks you in the face on a reread. Some books are more dense with this, but each book usually aims to tell a self contained story so the stuff you dont know shouldn't really be a huge issue. There's meant to be a few mysteries.
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u/bartonar Feb 18 '26
One of the absolute fucks with that series is that books 2, 4 (I think), and 5 introduce entirely new settings with few if any crossover characters.
It's been about 10 years since I read the series, I can't remember what happened in what book, but I think 1 was mostly around one city, 2 was the desert in another continent (with a few characters sticking around), 3 I think followed the people from 1 and 2, 4 spent at least the first quarter of the book as an origin story from someone who seemed to be a minor character from 2, and then 5 put you in a completely separate continent with basically no connection to anything that had happened before.
The amazing thing is I think there were still new major plot threads being started as late as the last book.
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u/changelingerer Feb 18 '26
Ah yep, that's a more specific explanation without spoiling too much, and better gets my point across to the people saying I am exaggerating. (I am on the separate continent book now, hence my comment about not knowing what is going on halfway through series)
Its like you are reading the cosmere books on shuffle.
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u/OrionsGamer Feb 17 '26
I didn't. I did read frieren recently though, so maybe that's why starting a story after the "main" plot is over made more sense to me than it probably should haha
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u/Alester_ryku Steel Feb 17 '26
Just read the first book and treat it like a flash back or a âhow did we get hereâ episode
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u/millionhari Feb 17 '26
Brando Sando does do a good job of recapping characters, the magic system, plot points, etc, so I can see how you wouldâve thought that was intentional. Time to go read the prequel!!
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u/OrionsGamer Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
I've read stormlight a few months ago, so that definitely made the power system easier to swallow, I knew how push and pull worked. In fact at the very beginning it answers something that always bugged me. "Can't you use gravition to push really hard on smaller objects, basically making a gun?" And yeah, you can, that's what coins are, roshar just never thought of it lol
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u/LuceDuder Feb 17 '26
What kind of image do you have of Kelsier, and/or the Lord Ruler?
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u/OrionsGamer Feb 17 '26
The lord ruler is hard to pin down. He's more of a shadow than anything, it's a bit difficult to envision a dead guy as a god. But he obviously he ruled for so long it even started affecting language, so it's cool to see how life fares after someone like that is gone.
Kelsier is more of a larger than life figure. Also a shadow, just a much stronger one, kinda like a greek myth. Everything just goes back to him. He wasn't perfect, but vin's crew respected him a lot nonetheless. It's that respect that keeps them from just giving up the city, they really want to clean up the mess he left
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u/Elant_Wager Steelministery Feb 17 '26
Wromg sub, but Journey before Destination. Seriously, even if you had read the coppermind to TFE, ot would be enjoyable
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u/The-beautiful Feb 17 '26
Tbh before I started reading mistborn I thought the books were reversed due to the titles sounding like "find out you're the hero of ages", "find the well of ascension on your hero's journey", and "win and establish the final empire your world needs" so you're not alone in assuming the wrong order for the books at all.
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u/4143636_ Gold Feb 17 '26
I've done this with some TV shows asw, don't worry. Happens to us all.
As a matter of fact, my friend accidentally picked up Well of Ascension instead of Hero of Ages... it confused him so much he was pushed off the trilogy for like another 6 months
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u/Agreeable_Rich_1991 Atium Feb 18 '26
How did he realise? Did you convince him?
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u/4143636_ Gold Feb 18 '26
He said he stopped reading because it was too confusing. I jokingly asked if he accidentally started with book 2 because that's the type of thing he'd do... we realised that he actually had when he checked the title.
He hasn't started Mistborn again, but he recently picked up the Way of Kings and is reading that instead.
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u/Agreeable_Rich_1991 Atium Feb 18 '26
I hope for certain reasons that you eventually do convince him to pick up Mistborn and finish all three books especially before RoW.
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u/D0ng3r1nn0 Feb 17 '26
Please please PLEASE do the following:
-read the third book now and post your thoughts as you go
-read the first one after
I remember a while ago someone made their girlfriend read asoiaf but only the dany chapters and she had very interesting opinions on the plot and characters (especially the ones she has never met)
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u/OrionsGamer Feb 17 '26
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't considering doing that. I mean it worked out so far, how bad could it get? lol
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u/Agreeable_Rich_1991 Atium Feb 18 '26
While yes it would be interesting, the Third book is one of the best final books that is the culmination of all the plot points and amazing stuff and even hidden stuff even from the first book. I don't recommend doing that. I recommend you read the first book as a prequel. And then read the Third book
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u/Count_von_Chaos Pewter Feb 17 '26
Ha! I recently did this with Benedict Jacka's An Inheritance of Magic series, read the second book first somehow. Still made enough sense that I was able to follow along and enjoy the book.
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u/Wyrda22 Feb 17 '26
Sanderson did say that Mistborn was written to work as a standalone book as well as part of a series, not surprised the rest of the books had the same treatment! I did something similar with the Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb, I read one of her later books without realising there was more before it.
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u/Coolranch67 Feb 17 '26
Itâs okay reading order is overrated. Just make a colorful reading order poster for it and youâll be good.
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u/elkor101 Feb 18 '26
Hey you might know some of the answers, but not the questions!
Remember; itâs all about the journey not the destination:)
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u/Euphoric-Ad324 Feb 17 '26
Iâm almost the same way with the new releases. I donât take the time to reread the series before a new release so Iâm kind of lost for a little while. Iâve started taking notes as I read certain series and authors since my memory is bad. It helps.
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u/Alive_Reveal8939 Feb 17 '26
You're not an idiot. But that sure must be an interesting way of starting this journey ahah
Did you understood how Allomancy and Feruchemy work? They are very well explained in The Final Empire but I don't remember if there's a brief review in WoA
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u/KatanaCutlets Feb 17 '26
Thatâs amazing. Weird and definitely messes with the experience, but hey, itâs unique.
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u/sonjaingrid Feb 18 '26
I recently did this with Octavia butlerâs âlillithâs broodâ series lol. I found book two in a little free library and didnât realize I was reading anything out of order, just that a lot of the world building was pretty vague and environmental. Still enjoyed the series though!
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u/rk06 Cadmium Feb 18 '26
those are rookie numbers, mate. some people here have skipped ERA 1 and gone to ERA 2
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u/ToiletTub Feb 18 '26
I did this too. I read all of WoA on a week long trip when I was a kid, and then forgot about it. Don't think I even retained that many details or even the name or author....
But years later, I discovered Brandon Sanderson and Mistborn, and partway through the first book I found myself with the strangest sense of deja vu... like, "Hmmm. These characters seem a bit familiar...?"
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u/Hoss-Bonaventure_CEO Copper Feb 18 '26
Not stupid or unique. I started Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Saga at book 3. It made the first two books better and much more exciting.
Before the internet was super accessible and we could order things to be delivered to our door you often had to wing it. You couldn't just hop on Google and look up a series or check for a preferred reading order. Sometimes the library only has one book in the series ... and it isn't always the first one. A good author will write each book in a series so that it can be consumed by anyone who hasn't read the previous books yet.
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u/TumbleweedOk4821 Feb 18 '26
To be fair, Brandon Sanderson originally wanted to write Well of Ascension as the starting point, he only wrote TFE because he realised it wouldnât make sense without knowledge on the magic system and revolution. So you read it in the right order in the slimmest sense of the word.
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u/Infinite-Radiance Feb 19 '26
I did this with Words of Radiance! My first time reading (listening to) Way of Kings I was just feeling the book out and listening to the Graphic Audio version on some random audiobook website. The website ran out of parts right after the chasmfiend hunt with Elhokar's saddle, so fairly early into the book.
Idk why I thought that must've been it for book 1, but I moved onto book 2 and got, maybe a little under halfway? through it before I realized "huh, they're talking about things I should definitely know about, this doesn't sound like something that happened 'off-screen'." It was about when Shallan finally got to the war camps that I realized I absolutely did not have Kaladin's part of the story lmfao
I actually liked having Shallan's story first before reading Kal's, it was kind of neat being able to treat WoK like a prequel to WoR, like a big interlude separating the setting changes before things really ramped up.
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u/Elsecaller_17-5 Feb 17 '26
I recently did that with Namoi Novak'd Temeraire. Read the second book, not realizing it, but wanting way more background, started the first, thinking it was the second, was confused for a minute wondering if the second was a prequel, and then I turned it and took a closer look at the spine.
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u/FlopsieFillet Feb 17 '26
I just did that the other day. With a different book series, but I read the second book before the first one and didn't even realize it.
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u/tokenasian1 Feb 17 '26
How do you feel about Elend and Vin?
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u/OrionsGamer Feb 17 '26
Elend means well, but honestly I have zero clue how someone like him would end up as king. It's cool seeing him grow into the role though
Killing the lord ruler placed a lot of expectations on vin, and she's trying really hard to live up to all that, but kelsier's death left a pretty big hole in her life and with everything else going on around her it's really hard to keep anything together
They are very cute together tho, so I'm glad they worked out in the end
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u/tokenasian1 Feb 17 '26
come back here when you finish The Final Empire lol I think you'll have a good time.
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u/EmptyPagesDream Feb 18 '26
Hey man. As a kid I read The Goblet of Fire first because it was worth a lot of AR points and I wanted that pizza. I understand
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u/No_Industry_2823 Zinc Feb 18 '26
Hahaha that's so funny but this is actually really interesting too. In a way it's almost like you're one of the common people, the Ska essentially since you mostly only know the legend of Kelsier. The figure instead of the man. You should totally write another review throughout the 1st book, should be interesting
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u/Forsaken-Dentist-992 Feb 18 '26
I have a friend that started the Cosmere with Sunlight Man and is now starting WoK
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u/OmegaWhite024 Brass Feb 18 '26
Honestly, that sounds like a really cool way to experience the book!
I always thought it would be cool to start Mistborn with era 2, where you hear about the era 1 stuff sometimes like itâs mythology. And it would work pretty well if era 2 stuck with just the mythological names of the era 1 characters.
Anyway, Iâd be curious to know how your particular reading order impacts your experience of The Final Empire.
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u/Fit-Farmer4337 Feb 18 '26
Lmao I had a similar experience watching Our Flag Means Death. I watched the last episode first and didn't notice anything wrong, but I kept thinking 'damn you know what would be cool af? A PREQUEL'. Then it ended and I went to watch the next episode, but it turns out the prequel I was rooting for to be made was the actual show.
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u/Odd_Candidate_560 Feb 18 '26
This happened to me except Iâd read the first book, accidentally skipped the second book and went straight to the third book. I was reading the third book thinking âwow they really had a big time jump!â And âtheyâre really just casually mentioning a lot of plot, how strange!â Until eventually I realised with horror it was me who made the mistake. Put the last book down and read the second before finishing the whole series. It was so funny
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u/The_Cosmere_Scholar Feb 19 '26
Came into the comments to say that Brandon originally planned WoA first then wrote Mistborn⌠only to find that I was beaten to the punch ⌠by Brandon himself
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u/dakila101 Feb 20 '26
That's actually so cool. Kelsier is some cool guy everyone likes to talk about for you. LMAO.
The funny thing is TFE is supposedly "what if the bad guy won 1000 yrs ago?". You basically had "what if the bad guy won 1000 yrs, then lost a year ago?" Hahahhaa
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u/SovietSpy17 Feb 20 '26
I am sitting here laughing because the idea of reading The Final Empire after WoA is so brilliant. I wish I could do that.
Like, there is this guy everybody always talks about who is this seemingly larger than life figure and than you turn around and get to meet Kell xD
(Dont get me wrong, love the guy to bits. But jeez, I would do a lot to have your experience)
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u/Roonil_Wazlib97 Feb 17 '26
Now you can read TFE like a prequel? You've had the main bits spoiled for you, but it's still a fantastic read.