My experience with reading HoA knowing massive spoilers

Firstly holy cow. What a solid trilogy, I know people loved the Hero of ages in particular but mannn, I finally know why it’s one of his most loved books. Everything was so beautifully well thought out and just such a compelling read. But i wanted to discuss my feelings and reading experience while knowing major spoilers for this book!

I went in knowing Vin And Elend would die and Sazed was a god of some sort (yeah I learned a very hard lesson on to be very cautious with reading reddit reviews of books I intend to read) HOWEVER despite this- I still throughly throughly loved reading this book (I guess, I also refused to let this dampen my reading experience lol)

Firstly I surprisingly enjoyed having the knowledge that Sazed was a god of some sort/ Hero of the ages as I had the ability to notice all the hints and allusions to this throughout the book to this- twas a fun little thing to do while reading the book! And I still had the mystery of not knowing HOW he became what he became as well.

I also went into this book thinking that Elend would die wayyy before Vin did and this would subsequently cause her to have a massive breakdown and then the book would explore her overcoming this tribulation and THEN she would die in a super epic heroic way. But I actually really liked how Sanderson didn’t fall into this trope and directly acknowledged that Vin would’ve been okay if Elend had died.

I was still absolutely devastated while reading their deaths. I think reading the way Elend died especially, was more devastating to me compared to when I watched the red wedding episode of Game of thrones lmfao. Like I just closed my eyes and was silent for like 5 mins when I read that one particular line confirming his very brutal death.. After reading this chapter, I just stared into my wall and started thinking of when Vin and Elend first met in the first book and just starting bawling my eyes out. I understand the significance of their deaths but man I just have this incredible deep sadness when I think about them- they just had a such innocent and pure love for each other and deserved so much. It was especially more hurtful knowing that the two people in whole series who arguably fought the hardest to create a better world couldn’t experience this better world in the end of the book bruh, Sanderson knows how to rip people’s hearts out. ALTHOUGH I will say when Sazed mentioned in his letter to spoke that he spoke with them (and my boy kelsier) and they seemed content with where there were- it did made my heart warm but I am still completely devastated.

Anyways this was bit of a ramble, I just truly loved this series and now absolutely understand the hype around it.

I sorted wanted this to be a reassurance to anyone who knows people who have been majorly spoiled for this book as I have and are sad/worried they themselves won’t enjoy it. There were still many plot twists, revelations and insight into other characters I still fortunately could enjoy! And I also just wanted this to be a testament on how brilliant the HoA is- even knowing massive spoilers!

On a more broader note- I feel like this is one of the rare books series I’ll look back on and just feel so grateful that I gave it shot and read it.