The Black Prism

Hey Guys!

It´s Monday and here I am. Today I am ready to tell you about a book that was a gift by my Godfather, as I told you in my July Hook Haul.

Today I will be talking about The Black Prism by Brent Weeks, a book that I was really looking forward to read. I saw a recommendation over PerouseProjct BookTube channel and she and I have similar tastes as we both are fantasy lovers. In the end, I am happy I read the book but there are some aspects that I haven’t enjoyed as much as I thought I would.

In The Black Prism we follow Gavin: the Prism and the most powerful man in the world. He is like an emperor and is the only man who is able to control all the colours in the light spectrum. Gavin is considered to be almost a god because of this power. He has 7 goals but all seems to fade once he discovers he has a son.

There is so much more in the plot of this book, but I cannot tell you about it without make a spoiler so I won’t. As per usual this will be a spoiler free review and in case there is any spoiler it will be warn in the following way: before the spoiler start you will see [SPOILER] the actual spoiler will be written in white so if you want to read it you´ll have to select the text; finally, when the spoiler is over you will see [END OF THE SPOILER].

And now without further ado let´s talk about the book.

Truth to be told, I have enjoyed the book but I have found some issues. The narration is not the best, there are some contractions with the plot and too much sexism in some scenes. But I don’t want to make this confusing for you so I will explain all of those in further detail in the following lines.

The Black Prism is a fantasy novel and in being so we follow different perspectives. This in often use within the genre but in this case, does not work as well as in others. My problem is that I only like, meaning I feel a strong interest for them, for just two characters. But things go even harder as I only like to read for the perspective of one of those characters: Gavin. As there was only one POV in which I was genially interested the reading was, at times, tedious. 

There were times in which I was completely capture by the story but there were times in which I didn’t care at all and even consider drop the book and go for the next one. There is no story for almost 250 pages and then, [SPOILER] we find out that Gavin is actually Dazen (his evil brother) [END OF THE SPOILER] there is this massive plot twist that changes everything and make you want to keep reading.

One of the things that I have enjoy the most about this book is Gavin. He is one of the best characters I have read in a very long time. He is morally ambiguous: he is fair but he does not mind having slaves and [SPOILER]there is this little detail, he kept his brother look in a prison inside a prison for 16 years [END OF THE SPOILER].

I have previously mention that sexism is present in the book. I get that for medieval societies this might be a way to express brutality even when I do not like it. I get that sometimes this sexism is necessary for the plot in order to construct a ruthless world. If it´s for the plots sake I am fine with it. However, in The Black Prism it does not make the plot better in any way and actually it does not make sense at all. In this universe women are allowed to join the military, it does not improve the quality of the story. I did not need that many boobs in the plot, and I didn’t need an independent strong woman losing her confidence because of the comment of some jerk that she does not care at all. I mean, at some point one of the characters thinks that he spends more time on his back than a whore.

I also said earlier that there are some contradictions with the plot that insult if not the intelligent of the reader, at least his or her memory. [SPOILER] How can it be that at the beginning no one knew Gavin/Dazen secret and at the end of the book almost everybody does? The people that seems to know, only know because it will make their relationship with the Prism somehow special. That will be completely fine it if wasn’t because it was bring out of nowhere [END OF THE SPOILER].

I like the magic system of this world. It´s really interesting with the whole colours thing. But in my opinion, it was kind of similar to the one in the Mist Born Trilogy so I was not that impressed by it.

Overall, I think this book deserves 3.5 stars because there are some things that are very interesting but, as you might have seen in this review, there are some stuff that I don’t like. I will continue with the series because there are some parts of the story that truly got my attention, the last sentence makes me want to pick up the next book right away. Nonetheless this is not a book for everyone, if you are not a fantasy-lover I don’t think you will enjoy.

Have you already read The Black Prism? If not, are you looking forward to it?

See you all next Monday!