The Black Prism: Book One of Lightbringer

Great book. Can't wait to read the rest. A true epic fantasy.

This book/series has, quite possibly one of the more inventive magic systems I've come across. It comes close to bordering the 'you're making this way too complicated' realm of magic, but manages to stay on the right side of that line. A magic user (drafter) can cast magic, usually, in one colour (the colours of the rainbow predominantly). Some can cast in two or more. Each magic has its uses and every practitioner casts knowing that, every time they do so, they come one step closer to madness or death. You can tell the colour of a person's magic by the colour of their eyes. When they snap, their entire eyes bleed through into that colour, something called 'breaking the halo', which I find to be a really unique and vivid bit of imagery.It's a very good system of 'you can do cool stuff, but that stuff isn't free. The cost is a dramatically shorted life span' style of magic and I really like that dynamic. Makes you think a bit more when reading as, technically, any character could just snap at a moment's notice. Each different colour of magic has it's own personality traits that are shifted onto the caster (Blue's prefer order for instance), another nice little touch to show the depth of thought that has gone into the magic system.The overall plot is a very interesting one with enough layers hidden beneath the surface to keep a reader interested, and guessing, about various different plots (some of which start in this book and aren't heard from again, but you just know their bubbling away ready for later use).The book is told through several POVs and features relatively short chapters. There are (I think) ninety-six chapters spanning the six-hundred + pages and, for a book like this, I feel the short chapters work far better than having lengthy ones. Really helps to keep the interest high and the tempo up as far as story progression goes.It's by no means perfect. It falls short, quite heavily around the characters. My personal peeve being the character of Kip. It reads like the author has no clue how to write him, so writes him several different ways ... often in the same chapter. He flits between outright coward, perverted teen who will look at any cleavage going (and then chastise himself for being a pervert) and, totally at odds with his outright coward act, he'll suddenly fancy being an all-conquering hero (the annoying kind that has no training and can just do it). There also is scarcely a chapter that goes by where Kip hasn't whined about being fat at least five times. It got to the point where I felt I didn't need much more fuel to ignite my 'I'm annoyed with Kip' fire, but the author felt it was better to be stocked up and so shovelled more fuel onto it.The female characters also aren't particularly fantastic for the most part. A couple of them get a lot better when their characters are allowed to grow beyond what their roles demand of them (warrior, school girl with a crush etc ...), but they start off a bit meh. Any of the background school girls literally act like any of the school girls you'd see in a Japanese manga: cleavage pushed up and aimed at whatever 'hot guy' they can see. Their thoughts literally revolve around hot men too. It was the slight let down with the characters that kept this from being a five out of five for me but I'm very curious as to where it goes next and already have book two sat on my desk . A solid four and I certainly hope for more.

This is a great book, not because it’s the best writing, even in the genre, but it has a superb magical theory, a cast of engaging characters, some brilliant plot twists, and an intriguingly comic approach. The story drives along at a brisk pace, and leaves you wanting to know what happens next!It has its faults. For me, the greatest is that the characters’ voices aren’t differentiated enough. I’d forgive the endless ‘oh, he meant that’ moments if they were only Kip’s - he is after all a gauche fifteen year old - but everyone sounds the same.That and the repeated use of ‘on accident’ when I simply want to scream ‘it’s BY accident’ but maybe that’s an American thing.Overall though I love this book, and indeed series, and am looking forward to the last instalment soon.

What a start to a series. Weeks has created a whole new world of magic, based around light and colours but with such layers that becomes more and more complex as the story goes on.I would recommend any of Weeks' work, the Night Angel trilogy is in one of my many reread piles, and will always be one I love to come back to again, and he has carried on that same ability to keep the story entertaining, keeping, you hooked into it every step of the way. He balances perfectly the action and the development of the characters, writing from their perspectives but the narrative always stays consistent. He drops hints to make your mind go crazy with theories, and little details that indicate to the scale of the world he has developed, the histories he as come up with to give meaning to all actions and events.A very good start to a new series and I am very excited to finish this off.

I read the final book in Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy a few weeks ago, and was left a little bit underwhelmed with the way things were concluded, and with the trilogy in general. Some of the characters were great, while others were underdeveloped or just plain annoying. There were things in the final book that should have been epic, but hadn't been set up properly, or even mentioned in the first two books at all. Aside from a few memorable moments/characters, the whole trilogy just seemed kind of average: nothing terrible, but nothing really special either.'The Black Prism' is the first book in a different series - the Lightbringer series- and I only decided to give it a go because the second book ('The Blinding Knife') recently beat Mark Lawrence's King of Thorns AND Joe Abercrombie's Red Country to win the 2013 David Gemmell Legend Award. And so I thought I'd give Weeks another try.To be honest, I wasn't blown away at the beginning. I found it similar to the Night Angel books: fairly interesting, but not exactly gripping. I stuck with it, though, and after a brilliant twist about a third of the way in I was pretty much hooked. Stuff started happening, characters became much more interesting, and the somewhat complex histories of both the world and the characters started to unfold in unexpected ways.'The Black Prism' is told from the alternating points of view of four main characters: Guile, the Prism and `Emperor'; Kip, his illegitimate son; Liv Danavis, the daughter of a disgraced general; and Karris, one of the Prism's elite Blackguards. All four characters are very different, and it's interesting to see how each of them regard different situations and people. I particularly like reading Kip's PoV: he's fat, he's clumsy, and his life has just been turned upside down, but he's determined, he's talented, and he's funny. It's also great to read Guile's PoV chapters, as we learn a lot of his secrets from him. This leaves us in conflict regarding how we feel about him: do we admire him, or do we hate him?The one thing all the main characters have in common is that they are magic-users, and the magic is one of the things that almost made me put the book down with a snort and a shake of the head. It's based on light and colour, hence the `Prism' is the most powerful of all as he can control all the colours of the spectrum. Using colour magic is referred to as `drafting', which creates a magical substance called luxin, which can be moulded to whatever purposes the drafter requires depending on their skill and will, and the properties of the luxin itself. This magic is called Chromaturgy. Each person (drafter) capable of using it has an affinity to one colour (monochromes), two colours (bichromes), or even more (polychromes).It sounds ridiculous, I know. It's basically `Rainbow Magic'. But the thing is, what starts off as the most ridiculous-sounding thing ever actually becomes one of the more interesting parts of the book. The scenes involving the use of Chromaturgy (and there aren't many that don't) are really fun to imagine, especially after you have an idea of the different uses/properties of each colour. Some of the things it's used for are spectacular; although importantly (for those who like their magic with rules and restrictions) it's not without its drawbacks and limitations.There's lots of action in 'The Black Prism', and even when there's no fighting or drafting there's almost always something happening. Lots of different plot strands have been introduced in this book, and it left me wanting to know not only what will happen next, but also the full details of the events that happened before the main plot of the book. I've been pleasantly surprised by 'The Black Prism', and I'm glad I have the second book at hand to start straight away!

I truly would never have read a book that is so large but now that I have I can't wait for the next one wow amazing writing it left me on the edge of my chair and not wanting to put it down and now I am on to the next in the series great read can't wait to see what is next

Apenas irei comentar o estado do livro. Não é um tall paperback, o livro não é floppy. Porém, caso isso não seja impedimento, recomendo comprarem! Apanhei-o a um ótimo preço e chegou super rápido e está em excelente estado!

In The Black Prism, magic is based on colors, where drafters can create a solid form from the different colors in light waves. Each color creates a different texture and has a different property. But the more you draft color, the closer you come to your death because the magic is slowly killing you.I have been looking forward to reading the Lightbringer series for quite a while, and that small bit about how the magic system worked was all I knew before starting. I didn’t know about the plot at all, but knowing about the color magic that slowly kills its user was enough to hook me into reading the book. While I’ve been excited to read this series, I’ve also felt a bit intimidated because each book is 600-700 pages and I knew it would be a commitment. I shouldn’t have been scared to start the series though because this book was so easy to read. I fell right into the story, even with the new and complex magic system, and I found myself engrossed in the plot and the characters and the magic. I usually can’t sit and read for hours on end but with this book I found it to be easy to do just that. I never wanted to put it down, but life’s duties kept calling.I actually started this book by reading through the whole glossary and appendix because, a few chapters in, I already had questions and I didn’t want to be confused. This helped me understand the magic system and the world right from the beginning, which I found to be super useful. This is one of those books that I constantly kept referencing the information at the back to keep everything straight in my mind, and I’m so glad the author included these reference materials.I’m also grateful for the map because I love to reference locations as they’re mentioned in the story. The only problem I had was that the map is upside down—South is at the top—and it took me five minutes of staring at it to realize this. I hope this has some important meaning we find out later because otherwise what’s the point of an upside-down map?The description of the Chromeria with colorful buildings that turn to always be facing the sun sounds so neat and I wish I could see a city like that in real life, or at least some fanart depiction of it. But as much as I love the Chromeria so far, I feel like it is actually not a very good place.This book had some pretty great characters. Gavin was a really neat protagonist. I enjoyed learning about him as the Prism and what those duties entail as far as keeping all the colors balanced in the world. He has a lot of secrets, and I loved discovering snippets of these throughout the story. For example, what are his seven purposes? I really want to know!I also rather enjoyed Kip and the mystery surrounding his parentage because it was clear from the beginning that Gavin wasn’t telling anyone the full story. We got bits and pieces along the way, and I love a good mystery aspect in a book. Although I will say that Kip was rather impulsive at times. He would blurt out offensive statements then immediately be like “crap why did I say that?” I just wasn’t sure why he was acting that way but I guess that’s just who he is.I still don’t know how I feel about Dazen. It’s interesting that we learned right from the beginning that he wasn’t dead as everyone suspected, and I’m curious to see how this will play out in future books. Because of very spoilery reasons, I actually feel sorry for him right now.Karris was okay. I mostly just felt like she was angry the whole time, but I guess part of that can be expected because of her history with Gavin. I kept waiting for her to learn the full truth because I wanted so badly to see her reaction. I think I will like her more as the series progresses.I really liked Liv from the first chapter. And knowing what her mission was and that the Prism didn’t know what or who she was in the beginning just added to the suspense and made me even more excited to keep reading about her. Plus I really like that she’s a superviolet drafter. For some reason, that’s the most interesting color to me, so I loved seeing what she could do with it. Also, she has me very intrigued with what she could do given her position at the end of the book. I’m very excited to see her character progression.Even though I know Lord Omnichrome is the villain and a terrible person, I can’t help but agree with some of his ideals. What he says about the Chromeria makes sense in a way. The good are not always fully good and the bad are not always fully bad. I’m very curious to see how his beliefs affect other characters and the rest of the story in other books.One minor problem I had was the writing style at times. Weeks’s writing was good for the most part but occasionally he would explain something and I wouldn’t understand what he was saying and I would be confused about that aspect of the world or magic system. I did have to reread a few paragraphs because of this issue, but for the most part, I thought the writing was good.One thing, though, that was kind of jarring about Weeks’s writing style was that thoughts in the first person were not italicized. It really threw me off for the first few chapters that I saw it, but it gradually became a normal part of the story and I stopped noticing it as much. I thought this was an interesting way to approach writing in third person, and even though I didn’t think I would like it, I did. It was kind of like third-person limited mixed with first-person.Something else I didn’t really like was how long the final battle scene was. It was almost two hundred pages long, and by the end, I was just exhausted of reading about the drafters fighting. I much preferred the non-combat scenes of the book. I’m positive there will be many more fight scenes in the later books, so I can only hope they do not last as long or they are written in a way that is more entertaining to me. I was fine with the first three-fourths, but during the very ending I was just wanting to be done with battle and I didn’t really care what happened anymore.This book was very compelling, not only because of the story itself, but also because each chapter ended on a cliffhanger but the next chapter would be a new character’s perspective. I had to keep reading to find out what happened next for each of the five character perspectives. It’s been awhile since I read a book like this, one where I was actually excited to know what would happen next in such a way.Overall, I thought The Black Prism was a fantastic book. It has a very unique and impressive magic system, a well-built world, a great cast of characters, some mysterious aspects, intense fight scenes, vivid imagery, and a compelling plot. The writing did take some getting used to in the beginning, but eventually I came to enjoy it. I would recommend to anyone who is looking for an enthralling fast-paced epic fantasy. I’m very much looking forward to where this series takes me on its journey.“Moments of beauty sustain us through hours of ugliness.”

I decided to try out this author and book without knowing what I would find and it was a great discovery. The story line is interesting, unusual and rich in surprises. There are many characters with complex background stories, complex interactions. Definitely recommended. I am really looking forward to see how the series evolves

I loved the night angel triolagy so much I decided to give this a read and so far I have truly enjoyed this book. Really do recomend, it came days before expected and in great conditiones