Book review
Written by Brent Weeks
Orbit paperback
Release date Out now

Gavin Guile is the ‘Prism’ – and therefore the most powerful man in the Seven Satrapies. Like all powerful men, Gavin has secrets, one of which would destroy the relative peace spanning the Seven nations if ever discovered. So when Gavin finds out that he has an illegitimate son from a backwater town, complications arise that threaten to uncover everything he has worked so hard to keep hidden...

Every so often an author comes along who injects a genre with a new vitality. Whether it’s by tackling previously taboo subjects or masterfully intertwining seemingly incompatible genres, their work sets a new precedent. With his new novel The Black Prism, Brent Weeks sets himself apart from the masses and claims a worthy position among these talented individuals.

The success of the first instalment in The Lightbringer Trilogy lies first and foremost in its highly original narrative. The inhabitants of the Seven Satrapies are divided between those who can ‘draft’ and those who can’t. Drafters are able to harness light and generate a substance from it, with each person attuned to a different colour or colours in the spectrum. Each colour has a different density once formed, making specific colours suitable for specific needs – architecture, machinery, weaponry etc. The Prism, however, can draft every colour, commanding more power than any other drafter in the Satrapies.

Secrets, lies and deception are at the heart of everything in this series opener, and characters will stoop to any level to maintain their facades. Everyone has a secret; in Gavin’s case, he has a few hundred. Withheld and unveiled at perfectly timed intervals, the deceptions that dominate the pages demonstrate Weeks’s aptitude for skilfully maintaining tension while averting frustration.

Despite the serious-sounding story, Weeks adds a comedic flavour to the narrative, which helps humanise the characters and breaks up the intimidating 626 pages. The book’s length does allow the characters to develop at a comfortable speed, however, and the short chapters (often only four or five pages long) make the novel more accessible than the heavy page count might suggest.

Gavin Guile is a charismatic and involving protagonist whose league of friends and foes makes for interesting political and social dynamics to say the very least. The world he governs, with all its problems and intricacies, makes for a solid and believable setting, but it's Guile's personality that makes us so easily absorbed into the Seven Satrapies.

The supporting characters are also well sculpted. Kip proves a particularly pleasant surprise as the overweight bastard son of the Prism, who, despite his turbulent past, possesses an unerring sense of honour and loyalty. This character could easily have been little more than an irritating rags-to-riches teenager, but he instead elicits our sympathy and effectively tempers the convoluted adult world with his juvenile thoughts and attitudes.

Refreshingly, the other supporting characters, including Karris White Oak, a feisty female bodyguard with a love/hate relationship with the Prism; Liv, the White; and Commander Ironfist, do more then just fill in the narrative gaps, and bring their own motives and plot manoeuvres to the novel.

It takes a while to get to grips with the various types of drafters (bichromes, polychromes, superchromats and colour wights to name but a few) and the particulars of their abilities, but this doesn’t distract from a rollicking and invigorating read. One of the Fantasy highpoints of recent few years. Alice Wybrew

VERDICT: 10/10
A real ray of light, The Black Prism presents a fantastically exciting and believable world, but more impressively, an energising and original one.