78 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best fantasy novel of 2010, August 30, 2010
This review is from: The Black Prism (Lightbringer) (Hardcover)
Excellent book. While I had issues with the Night Angel series (assassins were essentially supermen in that world), the plot, plot twists, and some of the characterization was good enough to add him to my list of authors to read.
The Black Prism, well, is even better. Fantastic world building, good magic system, and amazingly good plot. Best high fantasy novel I've read this year, hands down. Some parts of the plot figuratively floored me, and he definitely doesn't move the characters OR the plot in the direction that you anticipate after the first 150 pages. In this regard, it's similar to the Night Angel series: the reader builds up an expectation of how everything is going to pan out, and then he shakes it all around, and beats you over your head with your own expectation. It's frustrating not being able to talk about it here, but I hate people that blow spoilers for me.
I think it accomplishes a light-based magic system better than the one used in Brandon Sanderson's Warbringer - though that novel had an appeal all of its own as well.
Highly, highly recommended.
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112 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks - Review, August 20, 2010
This review is from: The Black Prism (Lightbringer) (Hardcover)
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks is his fourth book and first in an original new series. Brent Weeks has over the last year become one of my favorite authors. I have read his original three books in the Night Angel Trilogy several times now and I have read through The Black Prism once. I am starting to get a good feel for his style. What makes Brent Weeks so engaging as an author isn't his world creation skills or intricate magic systems, which are by no means bad, but his interaction with the reader. Quickly becoming Brent's hallmark is the ironic interplay between what I call the "blind reveal" and the "open secret" welded together with great dialogue and characters.
The oxymoron, open secret, I define as a secret known to the reader but not the characters in the book. The narratives inhabitants are often family members or friends close enough to be siblings. The meat of the fiction is how these characters interact. Needless to say, each of the characters, through a variety of story telling tricks, always end up with massive secrets that are withheld from their compatriots for a variety of reason. These secrets are often of the life changing and world shattering variety but the characters always feel they are doing what is best by keeping the secret. As the reader, you rage at the book in frustration, beseeching the characters for one iota of honesty with those that they call friend, family and/or wife/husband. These secrets compound as every character seems to accrue several and each secret affects the characters web of relationships.
It is at this level that Brent creates such an engaging cast of characters. The level of interplay needed to keep these secrets is intense and Brent captures it in brilliant detail. What is more, through the burden of these secrets you get to see into the core of each character and find what drives them. Do they take the easy way out. Do they take the higher path. These secrets are a figurative crucifixion of the novel's characters and you get to witness how they breakdown under the telamonic burden. Have no illusion, Brent crushes his characters into their component parts only to reassemble them later in the novel. But in this way, you as the reader gain such a fascinating insight into each of the characters. You know both how and why they tick and they become ever so real as a result.
Now, the dramatic irony comes into play with the second oxymoron of the pairing: blind reveal. As you grow engrossed with the secrets each character carries you begin to feel a level of control. You start to feel as if you know where the novel is going to go. You know these characters so well. That my dear reader cannot stand. After all, if you get too comfortable you may get bored. It is at this point that Brent strikes. Because, it is not only the narrative residents that have secrets...Brent has some as well that you don't know. It is these secrets that Brent thrusts up from the pages and skewers your mind. I am quite sure I have heard his manic cackling while I figuratively wriggle in mental distress. In a single page, the entire stream of the story can shift. The reader is left foundering trying to cope and readjust.
These two components, the blind reveal and open secret, combine to create what I find so appealing in Brent's work: anticipation. You know something is going to happen. You wait for it. You are mentally tense. You thumb the next page with tingling anticipation waiting for the bomb to drop. It is utterly engrossing.
I have wanted to immediately re-read every one of Brent's books after I finished them just to see if I could guess some of these blind reveals through small innocuous clues. What keeps the re-reads so enjoyable is Brent's ability to create such entertaining characters; each with their own quirks and foibles. Karris' paranoia about her shoulders is priceless. I would also like to mention that I think Brent is the best male writer of female characters I have ever read. I am tempted to think he has a woman ghost write for him. Going along with the great characters is memorable and unique dialog for each character. When the characters speak in the narrative you feel as if it is truly the characters speaking, not Brent.
The Black Prism is a really enjoyable read. I have not spoken of the setting, or magic systems, etc and that is for a reason. Those are immaterial next to simply flat out great storytelling found in this book. This book could have been set anywhere and been great. Yes there is magic and adventure. Yes there are muskets and cannons. Yes there is numerology and mysticism. These are all important but what should be foremost is the glee that this is another Brent Weeks book. A book where you can see Brent starting to take his craft to the next level.
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30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not in the Shadows, August 26, 2010
This review is from: The Black Prism (Lightbringer) (Hardcover)
For the unawares, this is the start of a new series from author Brent Weeks, who wrote the highly acclaimed Night Angel trilogy. (The trilogy has my own personal acclaim as well. Hmm, that doesn't sound right.) I know some of us (ahem, me) were excited at the possible prospect of a new series that followed old and new characters a couple of decades later in the timeline. And when I first heard about the release of a new book, I immediately assumed this was the case. I admit to a big wave of disappointment when I heard it was in an all-new world with all-new characters. I even sulked a bit. (Okay, a lot.)
But guess what isn't a disappointment? Go ahead. Guess.
Well, that's true, but I was actually referring to The Black Prism.
The Black Prism follows the Prism Gavin Guile (the Prism is the religious leader-like the Pope) as he attempts to complete five great purposes before his death in five years. The world is composed of the Seven Satrapies, and the Chromeria where drafters-magic-users-are trained in service of the Satrapies, the Prism being the most powerful drafter of all. Sixteen years ago, the Prism fought and defeated his brother in a civil war to attain his title, and now the satrapy Tyrea, who sided with the losing brother, is attempting to declare independence. In Tyrea, Kip's hometown is destroyed by the cruel new king, and the ungainly, hapless young man becomes a part of the powerful events that are about to shatter the Seven Satrapies.
It would be too easy, too uncomplicated to say that this book is awesome, and it wouldn't do justice to Weeks' craft. But I'll say it anyway. This book...IS AWESOME!! There have been too many times where I have opened a new series in a new world by an author well-known for one particular fantasy world. And I have been disappointed. If the characters are well-done, the world almost never is. Or both. It reads palely in comparison to that other world I loved. And I can say, reading the first chapter from the online excerpt, I feared the same lackluster results. The world seemed uncomfortable and awkward, and I didn't even feel like continuing the next two chapters included in the excerpt. It's not that the events of the beginning don't fit with the rest of the book; the writing itself doesn't seem as smooth. I suspect this is in part my sulkiness at the lack of more Night Angel books. The other part is probably that Weeks really writes his characters, and Kip is an awkward character, especially at first.
Despite his awkwardness, however, Kip develops into a fantastic character. All of them, even the secondary and tertiary characters, are tantalizingly near real. In this regard, I found TBP to surpass the NAT. In fact, as much as I love the NAT (and that's quite a gigantonormous amount), Weeks has obviously grown as a writer and TBP is more polished and more well-paced than the NAT. Though at first I had trouble getting into the story, once I really got into it (about 200 pages in) I was an addict. Almost a color wight. About to break the halo. (Not ready to be Freed, though.) Okay, enough Black Prism references. Anyway, there are many things about this world, especially the Chromeria and drafting, that are somewhat hard to explain. In fact, any dedicated in-book explanation would amount to boring, excessive exposition and I might have never finished the book. But this, I think, is what made it difficult for me to become engrossed; I wasn't addicted until I had a firm grasp on the idea of chromaturgy. So, if you're not as slow as me, you'll become engrossed within the first page or three.
One really frustrating aspect for me was the excessive difficulty the competent and incompetent characters alike had with the challenges that arose to meet them. Sure, nobody wants the protagonist to march in and save the princess because he brought an anachronistic tommy gun to a Really Big Stick fight. Unforeseen difficulties and a character's lack of experience add real tension to the narrative. But after a certain point it becomes too frustrating when seemingly nothing goes according to plan. Ever. I'm not complaining too much, because it does up the excitement factor and it removes easy predictability of events, but it also creates a semi-predictability in its own way.
Speaking of irony, there is some serious dramatic irony in this book. Just sayin'. It adds to the humor sparkled throughout. As was pointed out to me just now, it may be ironic that it sounds as if I found too much fault with this book. But I truly, immensely enjoyed it. It's well-paced, well-written, well-characterized...er, full of great characters. Kip is a unique character in many ways yet exceptionally relatable, and the magic (luxin) and magic system (chromaturgy) stands out from magic systems I've seen in other fantasy worlds. The fight scenes are some of the best I've ever read, as with the NAT. They are somehow easy to follow, yet not so simple as to be boring. Ultimately, this book takes it to another level that even the NAT didn't reach, and for all my trepidations and small qualms, I expect this to be a new favorite series. It's well worth the time, long or short, it will take you to read the 640 or so pages. (So is the NAT if you have yet to read it because you're a blind kangaroo.)
Oh yeah, it ends on something of a cliffhanger.
And I don't expect the next book will be released anytime soon.
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