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I really, really tried.
THE BLACK PRISM, Brent Weeks (author of the tremendous Night Angel trilogy) new book, the first in the new series with new characters, in a new world, with a new magic system and political intrigues.....was not what I was expecting.
First off, it's fairly big (compared to the previous efforts) 628 pages in hardcover. The magic system is....er....unique...a little hard to get a grip on (until I associated it with the Green Lantern Corps....using light to form objects with different light spectrum colours producing different styles of the magic, called Luxin).
Okay. I stopped at around page 322. that is how long I gave this book before I had to stop reading. I figure 322 pages is enough of a (give him a shot, he's a great author) chance.
I was never enthralled. It took at least 100 pages before I could fully understand the intricacies of the magic system, and by that point I was kind of annoyed.
No one feels like they particularly needed me to cheer for them. The main protagonist, Kip, feels a little too unsure of his surroundings even by the 300 page mark...he is still getting his bearings and isn't firmly rooted in the story. That bothered me. Secondly, he seemed to be written with two different pens...one where he is a smartass and likes telling off nasty superiors or evil folk...and the other where he is ashamed of himself and doesn't really have a voice. He is no Azoth...let along Kylar Stern...and he doesn't impress me at all and I found I didn't much care for him.
Gavin Guile....another main character.....wow...another one I wanted to care about. His story is interesting...but even his plot twists...which are pretty predictable didn't really blow me away. I find that he is to broadly painted to be endearing.
Liv Danavis is...okay. She's at least a bit interesting, and I cared what happened to her...but again, she is an underdog with a smart mouth. A character trait that bothers me....if you get picked on...then smirking at the girls who picked on you when they get in trouble is a good idea? Doesn't that make you as bad as they? I dunno. I liked her, but I am starting to think I was reaching for SOMEONE to like and she was one of the only ones I liked.
Coravan Danavis....now this guy was easy to like. I cared. Old soldier. General. Played for the "wrong side" during the wars. I rooted for him....but he's not in it enough. His part is kind of on the sideline for much of the half of the book I read.
Sigh. I think my main issue was that I didn't care about anyones plotlines. In contrast, I cared about every last character in the Night Angel trilogy and what happened to them. I cared about Azoth and DollGirl like 30 pages in FFS!
I want to tell you that monumental stuff happens in the first 322 pages of an over 600 page book...but it doesn't. Imagine this....Harry Potter's Parents die, he lives for a few years with his Aunt and Uncle...then he get's sent off to Hogwarts and has his first day of class. That's what? Maybe the first chapter or two of the first HP book....well that's essentially all that happens in the first THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO PAGES of this book. Oh my god, I tried Brent! I so tried. I'm so sorry bro. You're still a good author and I will likely come back to this book and read the second half at some point down the road...but for now as I sat reading it and the book just kind of plodded along and wasn't holding my interest...there were other books in my to-read pile beckoning to me and asking to have time spent in their worlds. So I stopped.
I have a friend who is a completionist...and I seem to recall him reading a book of religiously infused, boring as hell, C.S. Lewis short stories for like a month and him complaining that he was SO bored and wished he could read something else, but his completionism made him have to slog through it. I'm not like that thankfully. If I'm excessively bored, I'll stop. There's too many books and too little time. In Week's favour, I gave this book FAR longer to get me interested than I would have other authors.
On the brightside, there seems to be some very positive reviews already for it by folk who really enjoyed it, so far I seem to be a minority. (though a few others on Amazon and goodreads.com have voiced similar issues with it as the ones I have).
therefore, I fully advise you guys to give it a go. You may like it, but I have a sneaky suspicion this book may polarize his readers into camps who like the new world and characters and those that wonder where the guy who wrote the Night Angel books went.
Just MHO.
This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 22 August 2010 - 10:43 PM
