Books I've Read This Week

The Blinding Knife and The Black Prism by Brent Weeks are the first two books in his new trilogy. I previously enjoyed his Night Angel trilogy so I figured I'd start in on this new series of books. While I have not enjoyed it as much as as the Night Angel trilogy is it still a pretty good series. The system of magic that is used is based off of the colours of the rainbow. Each colour is also linked to an emotion so someone "drafting" (using) red magic will feel rage or anger and someone drafting blue magic will feel calm and detached. It is a pretty neat concept that may remind some folks of the time they've spent playing Magic the Gathering. Which is by design as the game shows up in the books as something called 5 Kings. No, I'm not making this up. Brent Weeks admits to this in the afterword of the second book. Anyway, the story itself centers around Gavin Guile who is the top magic user or Prism of the main religious organization in this world. His role is not unlike the Pope of the Catholic church and that is not the only analogy to be drawn between their system of religion and the Catholic church. Anyway, the world is in a bit of dis-array and people are turning away from the church. Now Gavin has to try and hold off full scale war who's roots were seeded 16 years ago when he and is brother fought in "The False Prism's War" to see who would be the true Prism. Well not really, the war was actually started by the brothers fighting over a woman. Typically right? Anyway, good characterization going on in these books and some interesting commentary on our contemporary society going on under the scenes. I thought for awhile there Weeks was going to do something really different with the main character then he backed away from it. Regardless, I'll be picking up the third book in the series when it comes out. As an aside if anyone wants the three books of the Night Angel trilogy get in touch with me and I'll ship them to you as long as it is not prohibitively expensive.