When I first read The Black Prism in 2022, I said the following: "I know this book is better than the rating I'm giving it." Yes, oh yes, it was. The Black Prism might be the best first book in a fantasy series that I've read since Mistborn: The Final Empire. I read The Black Prism during the two most stressful weeks of my year, and still I could not stop thinking about it every night as I fell asleep. The Lightbringer series has a very interesting reputation. Each of its strengths is also considered a weakness. Quickly, I want to address some of these points and explain my experience with them.

The Black Prism features a magic system that is on par with the best produced by Brandon Sanderson, but it is poorly explained. In the Lightbringer universe, characters, called drafters, can transform colors they see into physical material called luxin. This substance has a range of fascinating properties that are useful in different contexts. Green luxin is flexible and makes fantastic armor while yellow luxin maintains structures built of other colors of luxin. Each also forces its users into different emotional states. Red luxin makes its drafters prone to anger while blue is a color of impassive focus. Each drafter can use one or more of these colors, but they only have access to a limited amount before effectively going insane. There are so many more intricacies here, like a religious leader who can draft unlimited amounts of every color called the Prism, but what I've described here is the basic idea.

While occasionally a little scientifically questionable (some drafters can control "sub-red" light, which loosely corresponds to thermal infrared emission, but there is no one who can access the near-infrared regime between visible light and the thermal infrared), who cares? Drafting is fascinating and has interesting limits. The problem is, Brent Weeks chooses not to explain those boundaries, instead throwing the reader and certain viewpoint characters into the story blind. Given that there are some crazy plot twists in this story, it is sometimes difficult to know what I should understand about the magic and what is actually related to some yet unrevealed secret. On that note, Weeks is well known for his insane plot twists that sometimes verge on silly. In this book at least, I felt that every twist was justified and exciting. 

Weeks's characters are often lauded as well, and, for the most part, I agree. Nearly every time I turned the page to a new chapter, I felt that great feeling of "oh I forgot about that person! I can't wait to see what's happening with them." That said, Weeks is also criticized for his depiction of character features. His descriptions do center the male gaze and are jarringly fat phobic. In my opinion, this is the biggest fault of the series so far. I think a good bit of this is done intentionally, particularly in the context of our main protagonist, Kip, who is very uncomfortable in his own body. Regardless, reading The Black Prism sometimes made me feel really icky. 

As indicated by this long review, I have a lot of thoughts about The Black Prism. For the first time in a while, I went straight to the next book in this series without a break to read something else in between. I can't wait to check in about my reading experience with that story soon!