Wow... what. an. ending. Finally I am glad I trudged my way through this era.

The time skip at the beginning of this novel was definitely needed, and I was so glad of it, it did a world of wonders. It was so nice not knowing things the characters did straight away and being able to ponder on what's happened in the last 6 years. 

Sanderson had definitely got his act back together when writing this, all of the good bits from the first 3 books were expanded on, and the naff bits have been removed or toned down. 

The majority of the book did still suffer from one of the biggest issues of the first three, that being my uninterest in the current story. In the first three books my main interest was in the call backs to the first trilogy, and in this one it was the anticipation of the next era and otherworldly characters and events. The core characters are often lacking, and most of the time aren't that interesting or fleshed out, almost like caricatures with no depth. In general, I'm still not convinced by this era, but this book is by far and away the best of the four. It felt like someone else had written it, and I was way more invested in the story. 

One small complaint I have is the inclusion of Wax and Steris' children, why were they even there? I'm not entirely sure either of them are good parents, they just seem to do the fun stuff with the kids then hand them over to the maid... I don't think their inclusion was necessary to the story, and made me dislike the main characters, which I didn't think would be possible with Steris. 

A note on the religious aspect of the story - between the third and this instalment I found out that Sanderson is Mormon. Knowing this made me look differently on the religious parts of this book, which with this knowledge felt less sincere as parts of the story, and more like a religious agenda. It felt like him putting his own religious views into the characters (struggling to accept faith, God always being right, reasons why God can't protect everyone, why you need to have faith in God) and at times it felt like I was reading religious propaganda, right up until the final page of the book. This did affect my enjoyment of the book a little, as I felt like I was being preached to, but not enough to impact the rating much, especially after how it ended...

Because MY GOD, after the cavern reveal this book got so fucking good. It made this era finally live up to Era 1. The fight up the skyscraper was epic and definitely one of Sanderson's best action scenes. 

And I'm sorry, the last 100 pages?? They truly made reading this whole crappy era worth it. SUCH GOOD SHIT. I just wish the rest could have been this consistently good throughout. 

However much I loved the ending, I can't give this book a full five stars. Most of the book was still pretty mediocre, then there were the weird God vibes, but the GODDAMN ENDING. This has reignited by Sanderson excitement, and I can’t wait to dive back into the Cosmere.