The Black Prism

Lightbringer Trilogy Book One

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The Black Prism

By: Brent Weeks

Narrated by: Simon Vance

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About this listen

This fantastic new recording was released in September 2016 and comes from the acclaimed narrator of The Lightbringer series Simon Vance.

The start of a brand new trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Way of Shadows.

Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals.

But when Guile discovers he has a son, born in a far kingdom after the war that put him in power, he must decide how much he's willing to pay to protect a secret that could tear his world apart.

Epic

Epic Fantasy

Fantasy

Fiction

War

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This story is absolutely compelling - there isn't a dull moment and I struggled to stop listening whenever life interfered with the story. This is a great adventure story but it also has surprising depth in character studies, social morality and politics.

The story is intentionally riddled with fantasy tropes, but always with a new perspective or a surprising twist. The most immediate example is the boy coming of age. He is clumsy, overweight, unattractive and lacks social skills but nevertheless is able to fill role of fantasy hero in a way that is satisfying and exciting.

The story is very character focussed and so the perspective is deliberately limited. For example, battles focus on individuals rather than groups and martial arts rather than tactics. Politics are glimpsed rather than explained. The overall effect is very personal and involving for the reader. There is a strong sense of a wider world around the events of the story.

The plot of this story is simple and, as one reviewer commented, you could miss things and keep up with the story. This isn't a criticism however, The focus is not on the plot. The story is not challenging but the how and why is always more important than the what. It's worth bearing in mind that this is the first of five novels, and the plot is only in its infancy.

One of the really exceptional things about this story is the perspective on heroes and villains. Almost every character is multi-faceted and explored from a sympathetic point of view. The heroes are flawed and the villains have many redeeming features, Rather than degenerating into the nihilism so common in this genre, the author uses multidimensional characters to highlight heroism and villainy. The heroes are great precisely because they are flawed and human. The villains are made far worse by their unfulfilled or misused potential. It is also difficult to know in advance whether a particular character will turn out to do the right thing - an obvious advantage to the story.

This story explores social morality in some rather clever ways. The culture is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance with all its shortcomings. In other ways the society's ills mirror our own, in that the image in a mirror is the same but inverted.

In spite of its depth, this is a really easy book to enjoy. I've rarely encountered better storytelling. If the author can bring the story to a satisfying conclusion in the later books, this could very well be one of the greats.