#brent weeks

[fantasybooktournament]

#robert jordan #brent weeks #mary robinette kowal #wheel of time #lightbringer #shades of milk and honey #round 1 #polls #fantasy book tournament

[comparativelysuperlative]

What was the book? With the Definitely Real Banishment

Spoilers (obviously) but it's the Lightbringer series. That villain was pretty good! The word-by-word writing is fine! The plot is, for several books' worth, aimed at being Very Generic Fantasy (for reasons that will make sense later). Incoming long post about its philosophy, with even more spoilers.

It's not often that I read a book and immediately go "I can tell you what kind of middle school this author went to." In this case, it was drawing on the author's experience of exactly the theology I grew up with, which was almost eerie.

(I read book one years and years ago, and didn't retain much other than "cool magic system." Probably everything in this post is true about book one as well, but I wouldn't know.)

Google will tell you that the series gets gradually very Christian, to the point where the climax of the last book contains a sermon. But it's more specific than that. These books scream "Protestant, American, classically educated, does not travel internationally very often, male, straight, probably white, the kind of person who would vote straight-ticket Republican until that meant Trump at which point all bets are off." I did not bother confirming most of those. They're just obvious.

The loudest part--to me at least--was the "classically educated." (If you're not familiar, it's this thing.) The series would mention quotes from fantasy medieval Catholics or fantasy ancient Greeks or whatever, and I'd recognize the quotes or the names because they'd be real people I ran across in school. Sure enough, author went to Hillsdale.

Lightbringer is interesting for having an actual vision of a conservative society, not just about hating the right/wrong people. Not being on that team anymore I don't actually like this vision very much, but compared to current conservatives, credit for having one at all.

Differences between people obviously don't affect your value as a person, they just might make it easier or harder or mean you have to specialize differently to accomplish as much For The Group.

(That opinion makes perfect sense for characters in an elite military unit/training for that unit. But that context is mostly specific to book two, and the philosophy really isn't.)

This applies to everything. Physical condition, including strength/weight/gender. Color-blindness. Superpowers. Being straight. (I'm genuinely not sure if that part was intentional. Characters kept getting distracted at terrible times, and the narration outside their head sounded exactly the same as when someone can't run a mile without Trying Very Hard.)

It does not matter whether your mental illness turns out to be literally demons in your head. Either way you've still got to either work through it or specialize around it.

Tradition matters, even when we don't understand the reason behind it.

If you happen to be in a fantasy book and have access to magic, consorting with demons is evil but fancy physics is fine. You can just BET this author got into fights with other Christians about whether Harry Potter was anti-Jesus.

"Irredeemably bad" isn't really a thing. "Not in fact going to be redeemed" is, but it's worth trying to show mercy if you have the chance. If you don't have the chance, kill 'em. Don't enjoy it, though.

Forgiving people for actually-bad things is hard, can't just go "idk, they're good guys now," but it's also important. (I do think this is underrepresented in secular fiction, where it's either depicted as "how could you work with THEM" or "come on, get over it already and team up against the whatever.")

One of the big reveals at the end is "the Christian God is real." The answer to the problem of evil is indeed the popular answer in the denominations I grew up with. Human choices something something mumble free will.

Very incrementalist. You do as much good as you can as fast as you can, but obviously without overthrowing the entire order or anything. Only evil opportunists would want to do that. Yes, even if the existing order is corrupt all the way through.

Speaking of which, you know that organization/political entity claiming to represent God? Corrupt all the way through. God is more personal than that. Protestantism!

Personal morality matters. Your leaders absolutely must be good people, or at least trying to be, or you're screwed.

Personal morality matters. It is safe to assume you'll end up as exactly what your peers expect of you, so pick good peers.

A man should be faithful to one (1) wife. Viewpoint characters speedrun figuring out the philosophy behind this.

(IMO monogamy was a legitimate human rights win by early Christianity, relative to what came before, and I think something similar applies in this setting. But since the real-life alternatives today are so much better than women being property, giving this a lot of screen time sounded like the book is fishing very hard for things historical Christianity did right.)

Also, once you are married you Are Married. It's not that changing that would be unthinkable, just that if you do treat it as an option you're obviously doing it wrong.

Gay people don't exist. Any variety of non-straight, really. Nobody says that it should be that way. It just doesn't come up. Characters are written in enough detail that I can tell you how they'd react if you asked them, and it's mostly the "not my business" + "prefer not to think about it" kind of low-grade homophobia. A few would be explicitly okay with it. But it does not come up. If there were a gay relationship depicted, I'd expect it to be "coincidentally" problematic in some other way.

(I guess there's that one slaver-antagonist whose sexuality is just "sadist." Yeah, one might call that problematic.)

Practically dripping with Great Man Theory of History. There's a scene where the protagonist has a self-affirming/emotional moment about not relying on his family name and meritoriously earning his first kingdom. This is played completely straight.

Don't worry, he uses it for good. At least as much good as he can without overthrowing the existing order etc.

If there are end times prophecies, they might well be true but you can't trust any specific interpretation so it's wiser to just do your best without reference to the prophecy. (This is an interesting take! And not heresy but also not common! I bet the author's reacting against some interesting strains of fundamentalism there.)

A cool idea where angels and demons can be anywhere in any world at any time in history, but are very reluctant to actually do that because they can't pick the same time twice. You can just tell it's the author's Christianity headcanon.

You win by doing your best and having faith in God. The villains are very much a sideshow.

(I think if everyone followed this book's philosophy more it would be a mostly bad thing. Let's not do that.)

(But wow, I wish modern conservatives were only this bad.)

It probably sounds like I didn't like this series. But I did read five doorstoppers' worth. This post is just about the opinions, and the opinions sucked.

Anyway. This has to be on purpose, right, and 10 or 15 years ago I was pretty much the target audience for this. Guess I'm old.

I used to explicitly think "I'm Christian, but atheist fiction is more interesting," and this book is the kind of thing that...tries...to counter that. Fails, because resolving major conflicts with divine intervention is tricky to make interesting. But you'll see why it's going for Every Other Book, But Christian. (Also, the amount of sex in these books is much higher than you might think, given everything. I wish I knew less about what body types the author is attracted to.)

Anyway, I can't really say I would recommend it. But if you're interested in what would happen if Card or Sanderson tried to be Evangelical Lewis for adults, Lightbringer isn't bad.

#brent weeks #the black prism #lightbringer series

[midcyru-and-the-chromeria]

#night angel trilogy #brent weeks #Fanart

[alabasterandpitch]

Bit of afternoon journaling, trashy fantasy and a decent coffee

Sometimes the simple pleasures go a long way 🥰

#coffee #journal #journaling #brent weeks #fantasy #fantasy series #night angel trilogy #my happy place

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

JOMP BPC - August 23rd - Couldn't Finish

as much as I love the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks, I haven't made any attempt whatsoever to keep up with it for about 10 years now 😅 I will try to finish it one day but who knows when that will be

#lightbringer series #brent weeks #the black prism #justonemorepage #jompbpc #booklr #bookblr #trcc original #portraits

[mintmentos]

More series should do a recap at the beginning of subsequent books it’s such a good idea

#even tho I’ve been reading lightbringer back to back and legit just finished the broken eye last night I still read through it all in case #I’d forgotten something and it’s just such a good idea?? how come no one else does this it’s so helpful and means you don’t have to reread #everything to be up to speed or look for recaps other people have made #this was published 7 years ago this should be a trend by now #lightbringer #brent weeks #kiera talks books

[demondarakna]

I’m the sacrifice everyone is willing to make. - Brent Weeks, Night Angel Nemesis

#quote #book quote #brent weeks #night angel nemesis #night angel #night angel nemesis quotes #making quotes pretty

[mschocolateworld]

Kochał w niej wszystko to, czego sam nie miał.

Brent Weeks

#brent weeks

[hungerpaste]

Finally getting around to reading the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks and it is excellent but I especially appreciate how much personal research he must have done just to passively include all the characters physical realities in their chapters.

Teia is a great example. Having to run while others jog to make up for stride, never getting to tune out at the market because being in a crowd means playing dodgeball with limbs. As a shorty myself boy can I relate.

There's no way this tall (at least from my perspective) white man could have thought of this without asking or keenly observing people he knows. Something something true care and diligence something something fits a series that celebrates and examines different characters and potentials

#light bringer #brent weeks #Lightbringer #the broken eye #looooong way from the night angel trilogy #someones gotta represent us scrawny shorties!!

[tinynavajoreads]

Another one because I think people dont send enough asks anymore! Number 35!

I agree! Thank you for the question!

35. Least favourite trope in your most favourite book genre

Oh jeez....I love fantasy. It is my genre, it has my books, if I could live in a fantasy world, I probably would. What I absolutely HATE is when a fantasy world is basically the worst of the real world with some flashy magic placed on top. The best example of this is The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. The magic system is wonderful, but the people, the story, the motivation of everyone felt like the absolute worst of humanity and people I hear on the news and I hate it. It makes me not want to read that book. It was the start of a series and I haven't touched a book in that series after that. Hate hate hate.

Ask me more book worm questions!

#ask game #questions answered #booklr #book worm #book wyrm #book talk #tropes #fantasy #the black prism #brent weeks

[fantasybooktournament]

#fantasy book tournament #brent weeks

[midcyru-and-the-chromeria]

#night angel trilogy #brent weeks #kylar stern

[alabasterandpitch]

It's been such a joy watching Brent Weeks' writing improve from his very first book. I'm absolutely loving his authorial voice in his newest book, the prose is so poetical in scenes like this that I just absolutely lose my shit

#books #books and reading #poetic #brent weeks #night angel nemesis #prose #poetic prose #quotes

[wanderlustingdreamer]

I finally finished the Lightbringer series and I am so mad. It just turned from 4 and 3/4 books of one of the most interesting magic systems I’ve ever come across into a hundreds-page long sermon that culminated in some deus-ex-machina bullshit. Awful.

#lightbringer #Brent weeks #the burning white #the black prism

[cephandriusnimi]

@melaan this is for you, and maybe the subject of future posts

currently reading on my calculator: The Blinding Knife, Book 2 of The Lightbringer series (reread)

I also have various assorted SCP files on here, but i’ll probably move to the farseer trilogy/whatever is associated with that next.

#books #calculator #ti84 #reading #cosmere #scp #brandon sanderson #lightbringer #brent weeks #night angel trilogy

[botanicaxu]

Some character sketches for Lightbringer series (Gavin/Dazen & Kip)

#lightbringer series #the black prism #brent weeks #gavin guile #kip guile #fanart #doodle #doodle dump