@@arempy5836 Doc: "You have a fatal case of the yeast infection, burning white." Victim: "How long do I have? Doc: "About a month of procedural torture."
The same thing more or less happens with his Night Angel Trilogy. Starts out really good and then slowly descends into...... whatever the hell that ending was
@@V2ULTRAKill Agreed. I was shocked by the Burning White. The book before it was a bit of a dip in quality, but that's what I thought it was. A dip. Turns out, it was the beginning of a slope. If you'd told me that the last book in the series was a scrambled, villain flanderising, preachy, asspully, mess that ended in a literal deus ex machina, I probably wouldn't have started. Which sucks because the first few books were so damn engrossing.
The night angel trilogy was so damn good, and I really liked this series as well. I love Brent Weeks works. He may have flaws in his writing but still creates compelling worlds and characters like few I’ve read. Thanks for sharing your perspective! 😊
I have a lot of friends and family that can just consume fantasy books like people binge watch TV shows. I have never really had the interest in the genre to read, well, any fantasy books. Your channel allows me to participate in a lot of their conversations.
You can tell Brent didn’t plan this series out. As a trope, you usually don’t consider Old Gods being among 200. They’re usually a handful. By the end, it just doesn’t feel like paganism belonged at all. Dazen being insane and thinking he’s Gavin also proved this imo. It makes no sense in the later books lmao Karris, though she has a lot of good qualities, still went around with Dazen while thinking he was Gavin. The man who emotionally destroyed her and basically ruined her life. Brent literally had feminism and the most anti feminist themes in the same character. It’s nuts. Ending is awful. Really bad. God comes down and resolves the conflict bad.
I think Brent did say that this series was originally going to be a trilogy, but then he had more ideas and it extended to four books, then he had more ideas so it became five. I think if this had been a trilogy, or even the Quadrology this could have been a greater series. Really wish the god plot hadn't happened as well.
Spoliers. I really hate the twist that OG Gavin is dead. The scene in the Yellow cell was so good, and the twist nullify it. And there are scenes with OG Gavin while OG Dazen is conscious, so what in OrHolam name do I read there, Dazen subconscious simulation of Gavin?
Brent Weeks knows how to start a compelling story. But my god once he crests the halfway point everything just starts falling apart. The same thing happened in the night angel trilogy with the black kakari suddenly being able to speak and having completely inexplicable knowledge of future sciences and technology
Bought the first two awhile back, hadn’t moved onto the others yet. The magic system is the most interesting part to me - the entire reason I read it, actually.
This is how I feel about the Sword of Truth series. The first book is new and cool. The second, third and fourth are alright. The others have good bits about them but overall they decline rapidly.
idk, I feel like the ending was a lot better than people give it credit for. It just answered the main questions of the series in a way that people didn't like
The series just reminded me too much of Codex Alera, to the point that even by whichever last book in it I read I still kept accidentally calling Kip Tavi.
I feel like Brent is fantastic at writing characters for the most part, but is just ok at ending things, the Night Angel trilogy I liked the characters and thought it started out strong, but then the ending was just sort of meh, and it is the same with me for this series, great characters a mostly solid plot but just not the greatest of endings. Edit: Also the magic system in the Lightbringer is super fascinating to me and I really like all the concepts and the system in general, I think it is one of the best things in the books.
Some maps made during the Medieval era did have South up and North down. Some even have East be left and West be right so that's not actually that weird for a fantasy setting
@@goofsterngafster8411 it's been awhile since I saw it but I remember learning about that from my World History 2 course and a Great Courses Plus video
The series definitely started strong, and then progressively moved further and further away from the things that made the first book good - a solid hard magic system, interesting (implied) political dynamics, the drama surrounding Gavin's hidden identity (and his own internal conflict about being "the evil brother") and the mysteries surrounding the various phenomena in the world that no one seemed to really 'get' - like the blinder's knife, the wights, the old gods and color imbalances (the Prism system always felt like a temporary patch to a deeper problem with the world). And then on top of that, Book 5 went and shit the bed by turning the story into a full on religious parable, straight up assassinating (or whatever the reverse-version is called re: Andross) several characters, and having God turn out to A) exist B) be a straight up port of the Christian god, complete with poorly-parroted Christian theology and C) a complete asshole (who is nevertheless treated as though he is a benevolent being worthy of worship).
The magic system was never "hard", nor was it even consistent. The need to absorb light is treated like a hard limit early on but not at all later on. All colors of light behave more or less the same. And the author has no idea what light actually is or how it works. His graph of physics is so poor I was very frustrated for my reading of the first two books.
To be honest, it was *always* a full on religious parable. It was always about a pseudo-Catholic religious order battling false gods and their pagan worshippers. An astute observer would have noted the number of names used which were notable ones from the Bible, the monotheism vs paganism central to the plot, the constant references to a prophesied savior, the spiritual warfare of fallen angels (Abaddon introduced in book 3 being a clear stand in for the Devil, named for the angel of the bottomless pit in revelation who leads an army of locusts, and conveniently taking the appearance of a locust), etc. The Biblical reference in the series was quite extensive from the beginning of the series.
Every time I hear Andross and Chromeria (sp? IDK I've never read this series. Sounds a bit like Corneria anyway) I can't help but think of Starfox 64. All the characters in Lightbringer doing barrel rolls...
It's not taken seriously in-world. It's considered silly and used to mock him by everyone. People who respect him tend to call him "young Guile" "Breaker" or "Diacoptes"
I loved the NightAngel trilogy and was looking forward to reading this series, but never bothered to read it. And I'm kind of disappointed it didn't do so well.
Kind of surprised he didn’t mention this when he talked about the ending. This is why people don’t like it lmao I mean that and the blatant religion preaching.
Lightbringer starts off so strong. Black Prism is great, Blinding Knife perfects the formula, and then Broken Eye mostly levels out between great and phenomenal. The Blood Mirror feels like it's mostly filler. Most of the events could have been cut out and nothing would change. Idk how Burning White finishes. I stopped reading it round 40% through. With each chapter it felt like Brent Weeks was trying to cram at least two books into a single volume in order to finish the series. Like he was ready to move on to something different. So was I.
What really got me in the last book was the insistence on telling everything in chronological order. I couldn't get into it at all because you get maybe two pages from one perspective and then suddenly you jump halfway across the world to a different character for another two pages and then another perspective. Not enough time to sit in a character's head uninterrupted. Even before the 5th book goes completely off the rails plot wise it's already a train wreck structure wise
I was confused when you said that they never addressed the points that the rebels made about the Chromeria's flaws. It seemed to me that they were extensively addressed by the last book, with the revelation about the clergy losing the favor of God that allowed them to use the blinding knife without killing leading them to creating false prisms, weilding black luxin to erase records of the past, and falling to corruption; then leading in to the restoration of the power of the knife, Andros Guile's change of heart as prism, and things like that. It seemed clearly indicated that the path to reform was being made, the flaws acknowledged, and a brighter future on the horizon. I was also a bit confused when you mentioned Liv dying at the end. As I recall, the last we see of her is her healing her father and wandering off into the wilderness to pursue her own power. She wasn't dead.
I completely disagree! I found the first two books moderately enjoyable and then I loved the last three books. I felt like the emotional payoff and the friendships between characters was beautiful.
God, I A D O R E D the Lightbringer series for the first few books. I would reread them once a year so I would be ready for the next book to come out. Sweet fuck what a waste. Weeks shits the bed in the last book and the Christian undertones throughout the series swap to the over-est of tones possible. Gavin literally wrestles an angel for a day like in one of the bible stories. The color prince dies by jumping off a ledge basically saying "save me, satan!" and I could hear Weeks chuckling and saying "debil bad haha bad guy go splat" and actual God saying "Hey Gavin get in my helicopter, I call it the machina! Let me hop in there with you like some kind of Deus Ex-Machina"
Yeah, I think that's sort of the point of the story. Lightbringer asks the questions "Does God exist, and if so, is he who he says he is?" Most fantasy series answer "no" to one of these questions, typically the latter, but Lightbringer does something unique in that it says "yes" to both. Not a particularly popular choice apparently, especially given the marked decline of religiosity in real life, but still a very bold choice as far as writing goes. Or maybe I'm just a Lightbringer fanboy, idk
@@---rm8do Bold's certainly one way to put it. Especially given the kind of contradictory nature. The answer to that question is actually "no". Orholam supposedly loves everyone, knows everyone's hearts and gives people the gift of drafting. Yet we know for a fact that drafting has been used to murder and rape and steal. Meaning that either he doesn't really love people, doesn't have a clue what they'll do with the power, or has no control over who gets to be a drafter. The fact that characters can _believe_ he is all these self contradictory things is fine. People in real life have mutually incompatible views. Cognitive dissonance, doublethink, whatever you wanna call it. But the fact that he _is_ all those things is impossible based on what Weeks himself has already written. Plus, Orholam (god/deus) riding in on his "Machina" to save the day at the last minute is clearly something someone would write in a parody, not a serious novel. It's what I'd expect to see in a fantasy equivalent of Starship Troopers or Robocop.
@@---rm8do How so? I have no problem with fantasy gods. Eru Illuvatar, the Shards of Adonalsium, Everam, the freaking Theran pantheon, you name it. What I have a problem with is a series posing a question, presenting one answer resoundingly and yet insisting the answer is something else. No, the god that the Chromeria worships is nothing like the god that _actually_ presides over their world. In essence, what I don't like is the contradictory writing.
I read these books a couple of years ago, so a lot of it has faded into memory. I remember two major gripes with the series, outside of the mess of an ending. I really disliked how fucking horny the writing of the books are. Every female character is described by how big her boobs are and how attractive she is. There's also a lot of r*pe, an unnecessary amount, even for an adult series. The vaginismus subplot didn't bother me either actually, I agree that it felt pretty well handled. It also engages in a bit of slavery apologia, which Brent claims he was not trying to do. There are several slaves in the series that are freed & actively seek to return to slavery. He almost makes it seem like just another job at points. I think there's one freed slave who is actually happy to be freed & they were only freed as an act of spite towards their master. I've stolen a bunch of stuff from those books for my D&D game though. The most prominent of which being "The Compelling Argument" being the name of a really powerful weapon.
I read all the books except the last one about three years ago so I basically remember nothing of the series now, should I reread the whole thing plus the last book? I did like it back then but if the ending was pretty bad is it worth it?
IT wasnt pretty bad, it was really really bad. None of the arcs end satisfyingly, and most are outright bad. the first few books make you think that he had a big plan for the series and everything would make sense in the end. But it doesnt. and the last half of the last book basically will make your head hurt trying to understand how brent weeks fucked it up so badly.
I dropped this series like hot garbage after book two. My buddy was singing its praises so I checked it out. I thought book one had horrible action and shaky world building, but the plotting was compelling so I rode it out. Book two though? YEESH. Kips arc is a beat for beat rip off Ender's Game. The science of light is poorly understood the author and the magic rules are so inconsistent that there are no stakes. And for some fucked up reason there is a Magic: the Gathering subplot that is so immersion breaking I'm shocked it wasn't cut or retooled. Bad. Bad bad garbage.
I am surprised that you didn´t mention Marissa or what Gavin´s bedslave is called cuz SPOILER WARNING she´s the White´s granddaughter and volunteered to be his sexslave cuz she had a crush on him and was in a position to spy on him for her grandma as slave
Just getting into book 5. Read NA like 10 times. Orholam, pray for me on this though. Too much, too fast (or slow), bad transitions & simply so many characters and plots (good ones, original ideas) that have just not been executed upon. If Liv stayed in the army & actually has to rise on her merit, (simply to have the Color Prince fleshed out) or Remove her as the afterthought she is. Teia..I know a lot of people love her, meh. Remove her, have us read from whom we find out is the Old Man of the Desert instead maybe? Then again that whole set up is just /delete. Gavin-in-prison (but not rly) & everyone was just playing along? - 100s of pages...only to abandon that entire thing later on, Remove it do something. Kip becoming sage & wise beyond his abilities..or in the woods Kip is not relatable later on & already exhausted of the forest raiding. Through his experiences from the library & memories from cards just "becoming" this skilled & amazing politician-tactician, master drafter/crafter as you pointed out feels hollow. The vague nature of how this happens to a 15 yr old boy from a backwater, no education, sure why not. Winsen can just shoot a cloaked Shadow that was so incompetent its smell revealed an assassination attempt..bc Ferk & cloves I guess. Lazy ish like this really piles up. The original plots, characters, subplots, dangers, wonders become stupid, buried, forgotten, etc or just fall off. There is no sense of weight to the actions happening when he had so much to work with, and def had enough room to deal w/ these exact issues. Smh. Good review, subbed.
Teia was such a useless character, you didn't even mention her throughout the entire video. A rather time consuming storyline that is just eh. The last book infuriated me. Even as the series had gotten weaker in 3 and 4, I was still enjoying myself, but the fifth book damaged so much of my feelings towards the entire story. And yeah, SO MANY plot threads or ideas that are just forgotten. What was that about mirror armor in the first book being for fighting drafters? Ya know, when the invading army is nothing but a bunch of color wights, maybe that mirror armor would be a HUGE advantage? I liked Night Angel a fair bit and don't feel it went off nearly the same cliff Lightbringer did. But maybe because it was also only three books instead of five. I wonder what kind of story Weeks could have told if Lightbringer was a trilogy instead and he had to take an extremely aggressive axe to it in editing.
While Gavin's storyline gets annoying after book two, the overall increase in quality makes up for it. It's just plots within plots within plots, and Andros! Then there's the Kip and Tisis stuff which is frankly amazing! In short, I can't say I agree with you about this stuff, Jimmy James.
Ah, perfect timing! I need something to distract me as I painstakingly slog my way through the last ten chapters of the Burning White.
Good luck, you'll need it.
Burning White sounds like an STD
@@arempy5836
Doc: "You have a fatal case of the yeast infection, burning white."
Victim: "How long do I have?
Doc: "About a month of procedural torture."
Can I just say that is one of the coolest Castlevania shirts
You can say it, idk if he'll see this comment though.
@@JamesTullos lol
The same thing more or less happens with his Night Angel Trilogy. Starts out really good and then slowly descends into...... whatever the hell that ending was
What? You didn't like how the entire last book was scrambling to find a new villain?
@@JamesTullos Forgive me. I fear I have lost the ability to appreciate peak fiction:^)
@@JamesTullos Brent is really good at creating concepts and magic systems, but dear god he needs to plan these series better
Eren Jaeger
@@V2ULTRAKill Agreed. I was shocked by the Burning White. The book before it was a bit of a dip in quality, but that's what I thought it was. A dip. Turns out, it was the beginning of a slope. If you'd told me that the last book in the series was a scrambled, villain flanderising, preachy, asspully, mess that ended in a literal deus ex machina, I probably wouldn't have started. Which sucks because the first few books were so damn engrossing.
The night angel trilogy was so damn good, and I really liked this series as well. I love Brent Weeks works. He may have flaws in his writing but still creates compelling worlds and characters like few I’ve read. Thanks for sharing your perspective! 😊
the intro song never gets old
I have a lot of friends and family that can just consume fantasy books like people binge watch TV shows. I have never really had the interest in the genre to read, well, any fantasy books.
Your channel allows me to participate in a lot of their conversations.
I would like to meet your family
I want your family to adopt me
Good framing/lighting on this one.
You can tell Brent didn’t plan this series out. As a trope, you usually don’t consider Old Gods being among 200. They’re usually a handful. By the end, it just doesn’t feel like paganism belonged at all.
Dazen being insane and thinking he’s Gavin also proved this imo. It makes no sense in the later books lmao
Karris, though she has a lot of good qualities, still went around with Dazen while thinking he was Gavin. The man who emotionally destroyed her and basically ruined her life. Brent literally had feminism and the most anti feminist themes in the same character. It’s nuts.
Ending is awful. Really bad. God comes down and resolves the conflict bad.
I think Brent did say that this series was originally going to be a trilogy, but then he had more ideas and it extended to four books, then he had more ideas so it became five. I think if this had been a trilogy, or even the Quadrology this could have been a greater series. Really wish the god plot hadn't happened as well.
Spoliers.
I really hate the twist that OG Gavin is dead. The scene in the Yellow cell was so good, and the twist nullify it. And there are scenes with OG Gavin while OG Dazen is conscious, so what in OrHolam name do I read there, Dazen subconscious simulation of Gavin?
@@Aviv704 Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense at all lmao
I read the series a while back but doesnt God also brings out a plane out of nowhere (in a fantasy world) and flys a protagonist to the big fight?
LOL
@@j.fragoso7451 It's implied that Kip coming back was his doing, too. The end of the book is a mess.
Brent Weeks knows how to start a compelling story. But my god once he crests the halfway point everything just starts falling apart. The same thing happened in the night angel trilogy with the black kakari suddenly being able to speak and having completely inexplicable knowledge of future sciences and technology
This series was already on fire by the time book 2 finished.
@@PanicGiraffe yeah that sounds about right.
Bought the first two awhile back, hadn’t moved onto the others yet. The magic system is the most interesting part to me - the entire reason I read it, actually.
This is how I feel about the Sword of Truth series. The first book is new and cool. The second, third and fourth are alright. The others have good bits about them but overall they decline rapidly.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the one superhero webcomic by the guy who wrote Atop The Fourth Wall.
I knew he wasn't but I wanted to see if anybody else remembered it.
The guy who wrote Atop The Fourth Wall? You of course mean *THE LIGHTBRINGER*
idk, I feel like the ending was a lot better than people give it credit for. It just answered the main questions of the series in a way that people didn't like
The series just reminded me too much of Codex Alera, to the point that even by whichever last book in it I read I still kept accidentally calling Kip Tavi.
That's funny because Kip's arc in book 2 is a direct rip off of Ender's Game.
I feel like Brent is fantastic at writing characters for the most part, but is just ok at ending things, the Night Angel trilogy I liked the characters and thought it started out strong, but then the ending was just sort of meh, and it is the same with me for this series, great characters a mostly solid plot but just not the greatest of endings.
Edit: Also the magic system in the Lightbringer is super fascinating to me and I really like all the concepts and the system in general, I think it is one of the best things in the books.
Some maps made during the Medieval era did have South up and North down. Some even have East be left and West be right so that's not actually that weird for a fantasy setting
I know a couple of maps put Jerusalem at the top for religious reasons
I have heard of east being up because it was, you know, the "Orient" but never have i heard of south being up
@@goofsterngafster8411 it's been awhile since I saw it but I remember learning about that from my World History 2 course and a Great Courses Plus video
The series definitely started strong, and then progressively moved further and further away from the things that made the first book good - a solid hard magic system, interesting (implied) political dynamics, the drama surrounding Gavin's hidden identity (and his own internal conflict about being "the evil brother") and the mysteries surrounding the various phenomena in the world that no one seemed to really 'get' - like the blinder's knife, the wights, the old gods and color imbalances (the Prism system always felt like a temporary patch to a deeper problem with the world).
And then on top of that, Book 5 went and shit the bed by turning the story into a full on religious parable, straight up assassinating (or whatever the reverse-version is called re: Andross) several characters, and having God turn out to A) exist B) be a straight up port of the Christian god, complete with poorly-parroted Christian theology and C) a complete asshole (who is nevertheless treated as though he is a benevolent being worthy of worship).
The magic system was never "hard", nor was it even consistent. The need to absorb light is treated like a hard limit early on but not at all later on. All colors of light behave more or less the same. And the author has no idea what light actually is or how it works. His graph of physics is so poor I was very frustrated for my reading of the first two books.
To be honest, it was *always* a full on religious parable. It was always about a pseudo-Catholic religious order battling false gods and their pagan worshippers.
An astute observer would have noted the number of names used which were notable ones from the Bible, the monotheism vs paganism central to the plot, the constant references to a prophesied savior, the spiritual warfare of fallen angels (Abaddon introduced in book 3 being a clear stand in for the Devil, named for the angel of the bottomless pit in revelation who leads an army of locusts, and conveniently taking the appearance of a locust), etc.
The Biblical reference in the series was quite extensive from the beginning of the series.
Every time I hear Andross and Chromeria (sp? IDK I've never read this series. Sounds a bit like Corneria anyway) I can't help but think of Starfox 64. All the characters in Lightbringer doing barrel rolls...
I remember I read the first book and quite liked it, but never felt inclined to read the second for some reason.
i remember way back you did a live stream and i asked if you'd read this series and you said you hadn't, im glad you got around to it.
I can't take the name Kip (if that's how it's spelled) seriously as it means chicken in my native language
Dutch?
@@inmezzoallonde7196 you got it
@@lianneeden4873 high five
@@inmezzoallonde7196 🙏
It's not taken seriously in-world. It's considered silly and used to mock him by everyone. People who respect him tend to call him "young Guile" "Breaker" or "Diacoptes"
I loved the NightAngel trilogy and was looking forward to reading this series, but never bothered to read it. And I'm kind of disappointed it didn't do so well.
Guys, my English teacher likes Throne of Glass, help!
Excellent now I can check off the Lightbringer series from my atrociously long TBR
Yeah, I was on the fence if I wanted to read this series. Probably not going to, I think there’s just to meany Better opinions.
To me Lightbringer is like shadiversity’s book, magnificent premise and world building that is beaten and abused by the story
mfw this isn't a review of Linkara's hilarious webcomic
best comment
Ah yes, a Castlevania shirt, a man of taste.
I have a soft spot for endings like that, to be honest. Gives me an enjoyable feeling of melancholy.
The end being literal Dues Ex Machina was very annoying.
Kind of surprised he didn’t mention this when he talked about the ending. This is why people don’t like it lmao
I mean that and the blatant religion preaching.
Brent Weeks is aggressively Christian, soooo yeah
somewhere out in the distance, Linkara feels a disturbance in the force when the name Lightbringer is mentioned....
Lightbringer starts off so strong. Black Prism is great, Blinding Knife perfects the formula, and then Broken Eye mostly levels out between great and phenomenal. The Blood Mirror feels like it's mostly filler. Most of the events could have been cut out and nothing would change. Idk how Burning White finishes. I stopped reading it round 40% through. With each chapter it felt like Brent Weeks was trying to cram at least two books into a single volume in order to finish the series. Like he was ready to move on to something different. So was I.
What really got me in the last book was the insistence on telling everything in chronological order.
I couldn't get into it at all because you get maybe two pages from one perspective and then suddenly you jump halfway across the world to a different character for another two pages and then another perspective. Not enough time to sit in a character's head uninterrupted. Even before the 5th book goes completely off the rails plot wise it's already a train wreck structure wise
I was confused when you said that they never addressed the points that the rebels made about the Chromeria's flaws. It seemed to me that they were extensively addressed by the last book, with the revelation about the clergy losing the favor of God that allowed them to use the blinding knife without killing leading them to creating false prisms, weilding black luxin to erase records of the past, and falling to corruption; then leading in to the restoration of the power of the knife, Andros Guile's change of heart as prism, and things like that.
It seemed clearly indicated that the path to reform was being made, the flaws acknowledged, and a brighter future on the horizon.
I was also a bit confused when you mentioned Liv dying at the end. As I recall, the last we see of her is her healing her father and wandering off into the wilderness to pursue her own power. She wasn't dead.
It's like he read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett and thought he could do better >.
Linkara
Not a fan myself, I find him dull.
Living for that shirt
I'm happy to see you fully recovered from the surgical procedure :) will you talk of Dune and Dune messiah, Id love your opinion!
Nice Castlevania shirt ;)
Love the shirt. Cheers!
I completely disagree! I found the first two books moderately enjoyable and then I loved the last three books. I felt like the emotional payoff and the friendships between characters was beautiful.
>Emotional payoff
>God does all the work
Pick one
I managed to get through the first 2 books, I think I maybe got halfway through the 3rd but I don't remember
Hold on it’s not that superhero comic Linkara made?
Dark Emperor Draksis LOL. Indeed. At least Weeks isn’t having a hissy fit like Linkara did over someone joking about it.
Preliminary mandatory comment interaction for the algorithm, edit later
*Linkara intro plays*
Strong green lantern vibes
God, I A D O R E D the Lightbringer series for the first few books. I would reread them once a year so I would be ready for the next book to come out. Sweet fuck what a waste. Weeks shits the bed in the last book and the Christian undertones throughout the series swap to the over-est of tones possible. Gavin literally wrestles an angel for a day like in one of the bible stories. The color prince dies by jumping off a ledge basically saying "save me, satan!" and I could hear Weeks chuckling and saying "debil bad haha bad guy go splat" and actual God saying "Hey Gavin get in my helicopter, I call it the machina! Let me hop in there with you like some kind of Deus Ex-Machina"
Yeah, I think that's sort of the point of the story. Lightbringer asks the questions "Does God exist, and if so, is he who he says he is?" Most fantasy series answer "no" to one of these questions, typically the latter, but Lightbringer does something unique in that it says "yes" to both. Not a particularly popular choice apparently, especially given the marked decline of religiosity in real life, but still a very bold choice as far as writing goes.
Or maybe I'm just a Lightbringer fanboy, idk
@@---rm8do Bold's certainly one way to put it. Especially given the kind of contradictory nature. The answer to that question is actually "no". Orholam supposedly loves everyone, knows everyone's hearts and gives people the gift of drafting. Yet we know for a fact that drafting has been used to murder and rape and steal.
Meaning that either he doesn't really love people, doesn't have a clue what they'll do with the power, or has no control over who gets to be a drafter.
The fact that characters can _believe_ he is all these self contradictory things is fine. People in real life have mutually incompatible views. Cognitive dissonance, doublethink, whatever you wanna call it. But the fact that he _is_ all those things is impossible based on what Weeks himself has already written.
Plus, Orholam (god/deus) riding in on his "Machina" to save the day at the last minute is clearly something someone would write in a parody, not a serious novel. It's what I'd expect to see in a fantasy equivalent of Starship Troopers or Robocop.
@@typhoonzebra reddit atheist vibes
@@---rm8do How so? I have no problem with fantasy gods. Eru Illuvatar, the Shards of Adonalsium, Everam, the freaking Theran pantheon, you name it.
What I have a problem with is a series posing a question, presenting one answer resoundingly and yet insisting the answer is something else. No, the god that the Chromeria worships is nothing like the god that _actually_ presides over their world. In essence, what I don't like is the contradictory writing.
James, have you read the first law? if you havent yet i really think you should
I read these books a couple of years ago, so a lot of it has faded into memory. I remember two major gripes with the series, outside of the mess of an ending.
I really disliked how fucking horny the writing of the books are. Every female character is described by how big her boobs are and how attractive she is. There's also a lot of r*pe, an unnecessary amount, even for an adult series. The vaginismus subplot didn't bother me either actually, I agree that it felt pretty well handled.
It also engages in a bit of slavery apologia, which Brent claims he was not trying to do. There are several slaves in the series that are freed & actively seek to return to slavery. He almost makes it seem like just another job at points. I think there's one freed slave who is actually happy to be freed & they were only freed as an act of spite towards their master.
I've stolen a bunch of stuff from those books for my D&D game though. The most prominent of which being "The Compelling Argument" being the name of a really powerful weapon.
You mean the Linkara webcomic?
I read all the books except the last one about three years ago so I basically remember nothing of the series now, should I reread the whole thing plus the last book? I did like it back then but if the ending was pretty bad is it worth it?
IT wasnt pretty bad, it was really really bad. None of the arcs end satisfyingly, and most are outright bad. the first few books make you think that he had a big plan for the series and everything would make sense in the end. But it doesnt. and the last half of the last book basically will make your head hurt trying to understand how brent weeks fucked it up so badly.
I dropped this series like hot garbage after book two. My buddy was singing its praises so I checked it out. I thought book one had horrible action and shaky world building, but the plotting was compelling so I rode it out.
Book two though? YEESH. Kips arc is a beat for beat rip off Ender's Game. The science of light is poorly understood the author and the magic rules are so inconsistent that there are no stakes. And for some fucked up reason there is a Magic: the Gathering subplot that is so immersion breaking I'm shocked it wasn't cut or retooled.
Bad. Bad bad garbage.
very cool video comment for algorythm though
What do u think about Napoleon's exile on St. Helena?
Idk how you did touch on the whole orlohm thing...dang was that bad.
You should review castlevaina
Hmm, interesting
Ok but the important question is: does Gavin dance?
It's me! Linkara, the Lightbringer!
Kip in the forest was my least favourite part of the series
If Brando Sando finished this series it would have been amazing.
nice the tird comment
Algorithm
I am surprised that you didn´t mention Marissa or what Gavin´s bedslave is called cuz SPOILER WARNING she´s the White´s granddaughter and volunteered to be his sexslave cuz she had a crush on him and was in a position to spy on him for her grandma as slave
Just getting into book 5. Read NA like 10 times. Orholam, pray for me on this though. Too much, too fast (or slow), bad transitions & simply so many characters and plots (good ones, original ideas) that have just not been executed upon. If Liv stayed in the army & actually has to rise on her merit, (simply to have the Color Prince fleshed out) or Remove her as the afterthought she is. Teia..I know a lot of people love her, meh. Remove her, have us read from whom we find out is the Old Man of the Desert instead maybe? Then again that whole set up is just /delete. Gavin-in-prison (but not rly) & everyone was just playing along? - 100s of pages...only to abandon that entire thing later on, Remove it do something. Kip becoming sage & wise beyond his abilities..or in the woods Kip is not relatable later on & already exhausted of the forest raiding. Through his experiences from the library & memories from cards just "becoming" this skilled & amazing politician-tactician, master drafter/crafter as you pointed out feels hollow. The vague nature of how this happens to a 15 yr old boy from a backwater, no education, sure why not. Winsen can just shoot a cloaked Shadow that was so incompetent its smell revealed an assassination attempt..bc Ferk & cloves I guess. Lazy ish like this really piles up. The original plots, characters, subplots, dangers, wonders become stupid, buried, forgotten, etc or just fall off. There is no sense of weight to the actions happening when he had so much to work with, and def had enough room to deal w/ these exact issues. Smh. Good review, subbed.
Cool, I was looking for an excuse to not read the rest of it, thanks.
Teia was such a useless character, you didn't even mention her throughout the entire video. A rather time consuming storyline that is just eh.
The last book infuriated me. Even as the series had gotten weaker in 3 and 4, I was still enjoying myself, but the fifth book damaged so much of my feelings towards the entire story. And yeah, SO MANY plot threads or ideas that are just forgotten. What was that about mirror armor in the first book being for fighting drafters? Ya know, when the invading army is nothing but a bunch of color wights, maybe that mirror armor would be a HUGE advantage?
I liked Night Angel a fair bit and don't feel it went off nearly the same cliff Lightbringer did. But maybe because it was also only three books instead of five. I wonder what kind of story Weeks could have told if Lightbringer was a trilogy instead and he had to take an extremely aggressive axe to it in editing.
While Gavin's storyline gets annoying after book two, the overall increase in quality makes up for it. It's just plots within plots within plots, and Andros! Then there's the Kip and Tisis stuff which is frankly amazing! In short, I can't say I agree with you about this stuff, Jimmy James.
Did you for real say "for real" twice in a video? For real?
Preliminary mandatory comment interaction for the algorithm, edit later
Someone doesn't know what "mandatory" means.