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A review by rwatkins
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
2.0
It was okay. Overall: 2/5 (9/25)
Another male teen fantasy, with an op action hero as protagonist, every woman is described by breast size, and a comedy relief sidekick who worships the action hero. If you enjoy action movies from the 1980's and 1990's, The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan, or Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria books, you will also enjoy the Lightbringer series. Don't expect decently written female characters, emotional moments or any thematic depth.
Minor Spoilers Below.
Plot: 2/5
Gavin is a magical, action hero Pope, basically. He keeps a man in a private dungeon, finds out he has a bastard son, and hunts crazed mages called color wights. Gavin fetches the bastard, there's a brief academy aspect, then Gavin immediately returns to where he got Kip from to have the untrained, unskilled bastard fumble around in a war. There isn't a resolution to this plotline, as the first in book in a series setting up further installments.
There are some convoluted complications with the dungeon guy that confuses things pointlessly.
This has been harsh so far, but there are a few unexpected and interesting twists to this story. These are pleasant to discover when they do land right. Plot was okay overall.
Setting: 3/5
This is musket-era fantasy with a creative magic system centered around light and spectrums. There are chromatic mages holding power and connected to the religion, which is hard to pin down, except for last rites performed near the end. There are also Old Gods connected to each color, abandoned by the new religion but also included in their testing/training process? Slightly unresolved question there.
Some time is spent in the wizard towers of the Jasper islands, where a complex dungeon is carved out and mysteriously kept secret from everyone else - another oddity not explained.
The magic is basically color crafting, with some colors better suited for certain things.
The world-building was good except for a few odd tidbits here and there.
Characters: 1/5
For me, the character work was awful.
"Gavin" is a child-abuser who instantly slaps his son upon first meeting him and then suffocates him to unconsciousness. He is a sex-slave owner, a liar and a murderer. He is the action-star protagonist but I didn't care for a second if he lived or died, so not great. And this isn't even a grimdark story! We are constantly told he's a good person by everyone he hurts, backstabs, and lies to. Horrible.
Kip fawns over Gavin and says how great he is, even directly after being assaulted by him. Kip is self-deprecating and that's the extent of his characterization. Here for comedy relief only. Every time he inner-monologued I imagined a laugh track being added.
Liv is included for Kip to be awkward around and lust after, while she's lusting after his dad. As soon as she goes home, she suddenly decides she doesn't want to screw Gavin anymore but instead hates him for the war he did sixteen years ago that she already knew about.
Karris is a tough grown soldier woman whose heart-broken and falls apart when she learns her ex-boyfriend from sixteen years ago had cheated on her back when they were kids. I guess she never moved on? And she gets spanked for being bad - not romantically, but seriously.
I didn't care about any of these characters. The men were all dumb and bad and the women existed only through their connections to the men. I'm left unsure of who I'm supposed to root for and so I don't care what happens to any of them.
Style: 1.5/5
There were unnecessary plot complications that made this book hard to follow. The brothers-confusion was an absolute miss for me. It hurt the pacing as I had to stop and think about who had really done what through the backtracking exposition. There is no payoff for it yet, either.
Too much of this book is exposition, literally multiple chapters, wasted on how-to-do or craft certain things (crafting a scull, sailing, making a grenado, building a wall).
Too much of this book is inner monologuing, especially when one of the characters is keeping secrets from the audience, despite spending so much time in his pov, so that things can be revealed later. If the pov character isn't really sharing their honest thoughts and feelings, we aren;t really in their head, so all that inner monologue is pointless.
Weeks took a cool idea for the magic system and made it kinda boring. Too many missteps in style.
Themes: 1.5/5
The "hero" is a bad person. His dungeon alternative is also a bad person. Kip is an abused kid, with some realistic elements to his personality, but these are played for laughs instead of being explored or taken seriously in any way. The women are sexual objects to be ogled or spanked. The horrors of war are mostly ignored. Any psychological or political consequences of war are skipped. Lots of themes are there waiting to be developed or taken more seriously, but nah, not in this book.
Another male teen fantasy, with an op action hero as protagonist, every woman is described by breast size, and a comedy relief sidekick who worships the action hero. If you enjoy action movies from the 1980's and 1990's, The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan, or Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria books, you will also enjoy the Lightbringer series. Don't expect decently written female characters, emotional moments or any thematic depth.
Minor Spoilers Below.
Plot: 2/5
Gavin is a magical, action hero Pope, basically. He keeps a man in a private dungeon, finds out he has a bastard son, and hunts crazed mages called color wights. Gavin fetches the bastard, there's a brief academy aspect, then Gavin immediately returns to where he got Kip from to have the untrained, unskilled bastard fumble around in a war. There isn't a resolution to this plotline, as the first in book in a series setting up further installments.
There are some convoluted complications with the dungeon guy that confuses things pointlessly.
This has been harsh so far, but there are a few unexpected and interesting twists to this story. These are pleasant to discover when they do land right. Plot was okay overall.
Setting: 3/5
This is musket-era fantasy with a creative magic system centered around light and spectrums. There are chromatic mages holding power and connected to the religion, which is hard to pin down, except for last rites performed near the end. There are also Old Gods connected to each color, abandoned by the new religion but also included in their testing/training process? Slightly unresolved question there.
Some time is spent in the wizard towers of the Jasper islands, where a complex dungeon is carved out and mysteriously kept secret from everyone else - another oddity not explained.
The magic is basically color crafting, with some colors better suited for certain things.
The world-building was good except for a few odd tidbits here and there.
Characters: 1/5
For me, the character work was awful.
"Gavin" is a child-abuser who instantly slaps his son upon first meeting him and then suffocates him to unconsciousness. He is a sex-slave owner, a liar and a murderer. He is the action-star protagonist but I didn't care for a second if he lived or died, so not great. And this isn't even a grimdark story! We are constantly told he's a good person by everyone he hurts, backstabs, and lies to. Horrible.
Kip fawns over Gavin and says how great he is, even directly after being assaulted by him. Kip is self-deprecating and that's the extent of his characterization. Here for comedy relief only. Every time he inner-monologued I imagined a laugh track being added.
Liv is included for Kip to be awkward around and lust after, while she's lusting after his dad. As soon as she goes home, she suddenly decides she doesn't want to screw Gavin anymore but instead hates him for the war he did sixteen years ago that she already knew about.
Karris is a tough grown soldier woman whose heart-broken and falls apart when she learns her ex-boyfriend from sixteen years ago had cheated on her back when they were kids. I guess she never moved on? And she gets spanked for being bad - not romantically, but seriously.
I didn't care about any of these characters. The men were all dumb and bad and the women existed only through their connections to the men. I'm left unsure of who I'm supposed to root for and so I don't care what happens to any of them.
Style: 1.5/5
There were unnecessary plot complications that made this book hard to follow. The brothers-confusion was an absolute miss for me. It hurt the pacing as I had to stop and think about who had really done what through the backtracking exposition. There is no payoff for it yet, either.
Too much of this book is exposition, literally multiple chapters, wasted on how-to-do or craft certain things (crafting a scull, sailing, making a grenado, building a wall).
Too much of this book is inner monologuing, especially when one of the characters is keeping secrets from the audience, despite spending so much time in his pov, so that things can be revealed later. If the pov character isn't really sharing their honest thoughts and feelings, we aren;t really in their head, so all that inner monologue is pointless.
Weeks took a cool idea for the magic system and made it kinda boring. Too many missteps in style.
Themes: 1.5/5
The "hero" is a bad person. His dungeon alternative is also a bad person. Kip is an abused kid, with some realistic elements to his personality, but these are played for laughs instead of being explored or taken seriously in any way. The women are sexual objects to be ogled or spanked. The horrors of war are mostly ignored. Any psychological or political consequences of war are skipped. Lots of themes are there waiting to be developed or taken more seriously, but nah, not in this book.