Review: The Hero of Ages

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, loved the series. Will probably read it again someday, and have already bought the first couple of the follow-on Alloy of Law sequence.

That said, this particular volume only gets a "like" from me, not a "love". The originality of the world is still there, but obviously has less novelty value by volume 3. One of the main characters being suddenly transformed, through a big ole Deus Ex Machina device at the end of the last book, from mild-mannered good-natured bookish politician into superhuman killing machine seemed... unnecessarily Marty-Sue-ish. Even for the fantasy genre, which is for obvious reasons full of "Geek Gets Power" stories. And the wrap-up for this book is pretty classic literal Deus Ex Machina as well; our heroes get a good arc (which I enjoyed!) going down fighting the good fight, and then, at the very end, when all seems lost, they are literally saved by a god that they didn't know existed and didn't believe in, who just Makes Everything Good.

Meanwhile, scattered throughout the book we get quite a few long, frankly-boring sections where one of the characters struggles with faith. He trots out all of the usual atheist arguments for his loss of faith - and look, I agree with most of them, but a trivial treatment in the middle of my fantasy novel is still boring to read - and then just decides that he's going to believe anyways, because he wants to be someone who believes. (The Counting Crows argument?) I am not a believer myself, but that's got to be just about the most shallow and insulting portrayal of belief I've ever seen: "I have literally proved to myself that none of this is true, and I believe in my heart-of-hearts that it is not true, but I'm just going to act like my friend is The Holy Saviour anyways because I like the way that makes me feel"? And as if _that_ wasn't disparaging enough, the cosmic reward for this hypocritical behaviour is (view spoiler)[becoming God? (hide spoiler)] I may not really understand faith, but I like to think that some of the people I know who profess to belief _actually believe_; they're not just pretending in the clear absence of belief.

So enough ranting; it's an action-filled fantasy romp, with most of our old favourite characters turning up again, and it's fun to read. I still liked it. But a somewhat scatterbrained all-over-the-place plot, wrapped up by Author's Fiat and mixed in with some tedious - and frankly weird - philosophy, brings it down from the level of amazing I had come to expect of the series.

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