Started : 20/08/19
Finished : 12/09/19
Spoilers : No.
Mwah. Chef’s kiss. This novel is fucking fantastic is every conceivable way. A very, very easy five stars.
This book is so utterly brilliant, I’m really struggling to think of what to write outside of “GO READ IT!” I will try to be a little more coherent than that, but I can’t make any promises.
Characters
There’s quite a lot of characters, some important, some not so important, but none of them felt pointless. Everyone had a role to serve and progress the story in some way, and everyone fulfilled that role.
Gavin Guile is our MC. The Prism himself. He’s fantastically charismatic but also a little bit of a rouge. He does what he wants and knows he’ll get away with it. He’s powerful, but never abuses his power in a selfish way, only abuses it to help and protect people when he should really remain impartial to politics. He’s a man of many sides with twice as many secrets. I don’t know what his endgame is and I don’t totally trust him, all I know is that I love him.
Kip is loveable and I found myself cheering him on every step of the way. I just wanted the best for him always. And any time he made Gavin proud, I was proud for him. That brief validation meant so much to Kip. For a kid who thought himself an inadequate coward, he was pretty damn brave in the end. His development was satisfying to witness and I can’t wait to see him grow further.
There’s too many to mention, but they all felt real and human and a valid part of this world and story.
Plot
This is a seriously good fantasy brick of a book. At over 700 pages it wasn’t boring for a single second.
This is the kind of book I’ll be forcing on friends and family just so I have someone to gush to about its brilliance. It’s books like these that remind me why I love fantasy so much.
The story is engaging throughout, even during the slower chapters, everything still feels relevant and important.
The battles, oh god, the battles. I could practically hear the carnage in my head like a was there. Brent Weeks is outstanding at writing battle scenes and painted the images so clearly in my head. I was entirely somewhere else while reading this book. For such a big book, it seemed to go so quickly.
Something I really liked about the story was how it’s taking place after the events of a huge war between the two Guile brothers. It really provides a sense of history between all the characters and unfinished business between others. The false Prism’s war is mentioned often enough but we never actually see any of these scenes through flashbacks or anything, we simply have to rely on our rather unreliable narrator to slowly fill us in on the details, and naturally, things aren’t always what they seem.
Setting
There’s a map in this book and I looked at it often. So many places are mentioned and explored. There’s nothing I love more than a rich fantasy world that’s actually explored.
And the magic system. Oh god, the magic system. *Homer drool noise.*
The magic system is the crowning glory of this world, as it rightly should be.
I’ve never read such a fantastic, intricate, creative magic system. For the first time in a long time, the magic excited me. I mean, as classic as elemental magic is, it’s been done to death. THIS is something truly remarkable and noteworthy.
It’s all about light and colour. Drafters can draw colour from the light and shape certain colours into physical, tangible objects. Not everyone is a drafter and not all drafters can draft every colour on the spectrum. But Gavin can split any colour from the light, which is what makes him the Prism.
This is exactly the kind of magic system I love. Magic that’s powerful, but ultimately takes as much as it gives. Magic that is a curse as well as a blessing. This is the crème de la crème of magic systems.
Writing Style
Fantastic, honestly. The descriptions were on point. Every single little thing is described just enough, not too much to be overkill, but just enough so I could picture everything, everyone and every fight scene.
I also really enjoyed the dialogue. It felt pretty real and I loved the dynamic between certain characters.
And can we just take a moment to slow clap the author on his magnificent use of plot twists. I’ve never had the same plot point twist so many times on me (you’ll know which twist I’m talking about).
When it was first revealed, I was shook and in denial. Then as more of the story is slowly revealed, I came to the conclusion that maybe who we’re meant to believe is the bad guy, isn’t actually the bad guy. This storyline twisted my opinion so many times but never was I confused as to whom the author was referring to
My vague and final thoughts on that twisty storyline? I haven’t chosen a side yet, and I don’t totally trust either of them.
Final Impression Literally itching to read the next one. Seriously. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this book since I finished it. I WILL be buying the sequel very soon, much to the dismay of my already mammoth TBR but, honestly, how could I not after an ending like that?
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