Review: The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
Gavin Guile is the Prism and the most powerful religious figure in the world. He can do the impossible, weaving materials out of color, but his time is running out. As he works to repair the lingering damages of a war 15 years in the past, he instead finds himself the unlikely ward of a royal bastard-his royal bastard. In addition, he faces a religious rebellion, an overzealous governor, and a handful of close friends and family whose growing suspicions begin to leave him nervous about what really happened during the final confrontation with his younger brother fifteen years ago. Which brother was the real hero and which was the villain?
I tried describing this book to a friend of mine the other day. Between the magic system, the politics, secret identities, and the family drama, what should have been a brief, one line explanation turned into a much longer attempt to encompass something so utterly complicated it can only be described as epic. The Black Prism isn’t just huge (my ARC teeters just over 600 pages) and thus, physically imposing, it’s dense with plot. With so much going on, I think it’s little wonder I found myself equal parts confused, enthralled, and (sadly) disappointed. Let me begin with what I liked.
How often is the protagonist of any book an overweight teenager with a diarrhetic mouth, an embarrassing tendency to fall flat on his face, and whose most admiral ability seems to be knowing how to take a beating? Kip is definitely not your typical Fantasy protagonist. He doesn’t know how to use his magic-he doesn’t even know he has magic. I have to take a moment to express how utterly cool and refreshing this was. Compared to Gavin (his complete opposite in almost every way), Kip comes across as a bull in a china shop-nothing he does ever seems to come out right.
What does come out right is Weeks’ imaginative and sustaining magic system, which I’m not going to describe. That would take too long. I will say that at first I thought there was little consequence to it, but was quickly proved wrong. People can tire from using this magic, they can be overwhelmed and succumb to a type of insanity induced by long-term use/addiction to color that essentially turns someone into a physical incarnation of that color with all inherent traits adopted therein. It’s as scary as it is awesome. Not to mention: balance is incredibly important.
With balance being to key to the existence of the Chromeria and Kip’s world, I found it disconcerting the concept was applied so chaotically to the gender politics of Weeks’ carefully constructed narrative. He was so attentive with his wording at times (even taking portions of expository to explain the cultural diversity and unique magical advantages ascribed to each gender) that I found this strange, but I’d like to explain.
There were several situations where women in particular were singled out stereotypically. These instances are disagreeable, surely, but understandable taken in the context of the character who’s speaking. But at other times, I was confused with how Kariss reacted as a woman, rather than as a Blackguard. I couldn’t quite make sense of her appeasement with a dress made specifically for her by her kidnappers, even if her excitement seems to be explained in part through nostalgia. If I were kidnapped, I certainly wouldn’t feel happy if the ones who kidnapped me made me a dress. It implies an inherent weakness derived from a deep stereotype that imagines women’s priorities as vastly different, and in this case ridiculous, compared to their male counterparts. She’s a bodyguard. Why is her first reaction girlish excitement rather than the kind of cool and calculated appraisement she’s been trained for?
This also makes little sense when compared to her explanation for wearing men’s clothes over women’s: “A woman traveling alone in a far country shouldn’t tempt fate more than necessary” (p. 113). There is something so offensive in that reasoning, but even more offensive that it comes from a woman trained to defend herself in unarmed combat. Not to mention the inherent judgmental attitude toward other women implied in her belief.
The biggest thing about gender that bothered me was the gates of Garriston. There were four: the Mother, the Guardian, the Lover, and the Hag. In other words, four aspects of their goddess Anat; four examples of stereotypical gender roles that pigeon-hole women rather than diversify them (excepting maybe the Guardian). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not assuming Weeks set out specifically to offend anyone. On the contrary, I think he went out of his way to ameliorate the despicableness of certain characters and their objectionable perspectives by uplifting the role of women in Kip and Gavin’s world at various points in the narrative. It’s for that reason alone that I’m so confused and don’t quite know what to do with the areas of the text that caught my attention. To be fair, these moments are few and far between; most readers might not even catch them. I may be misinterpreting what are clearly well-intentioned scenes and being overly sensitive as a result.
Despite being long and involved (and sometimes troubling), The Black Prism doesn’t overwhelm the reader with a large cast of key characters, which surprised me. I didn’t particularly like any of them, but I liked reading about them, if that makes sense. They are all incredibly flawed, realistic, and human despite their superhuman abilities. It was very easy for me to become involved in the story, when the narrative wasn’t saturated with overly detailed explanations that threatened to overwhelm me and worse: make me lose interest. Admittedly, the climatic battle at the end was a confusing mess of mixed loyalties, carnage, and a literal explosion of color that didn’t always have my attention for that very reason.
But Weeks’ writing is punctuated with sarcasm, witticisms, and enough one-liners to propel the story forward. He’s also very good at slowly revealing the background to his story throughout the book in an excruciatingly teasing manner (sometimes openly revealing his secrets, sometimes completely surprising the reader), rather than clumsily arranging large blocks of important information at awkward points in the text. I will be reading the next book in the Lightbringer Trilogy, with some hesitation. Hopefully the issues I have with gender will be cleared up in the next installment.
Thank you to Orbit Books for my review copy!
As a reminder, you can read this and my other book reviews at Jawas Read, Too!