The Burning White: Lightbringer, Book 5

Loved this series! Loved the way it ended. Loved the characters. Loved the magic. Highly recommend this book and the rest of the series!

Just re-read TBW for the second time and, like homemade Rainbow Stew, it's better the second time around. Read this series!

This has been an amazing journey into a compelling and interesting world, now the end is finally near, it's been a very long wait!There are parts in here that are downright awesome, particularly the machinations and scheming going on around older Guile, of which we get much more insight and background in the last book, many pieces fall in to place and it's simply a treat. The storyline revolving around the Order and Teia is pretty neat too, but Karris story seems to have run out of steam and become somewhat stagnant, although not entirely uninteresting. Gavin/Dazen isn't quite dead yet, and he has a surprise or two left, but his is also the storyline that spins completely out of whack eventually. As for Kip and his band of merry men, it's just on and on with very little real progress.The problem with Kip is that he never really grow up. Sure, he gets older, but he never matures much and the reflective moments he gets revolves mostly around walloving in the comraderie of the merry men and the love of super-babe that he just happened to get hitched with. It reads a bit like "isn't this just so romantic and harmonic, and aren't we just the perfect Band of Brothers?". I really don't know what it is, but there's a trend in the fantasy genre that makes young adults very reluctant to go beoynd age 12 in their ways, and Kip & co. is stuck there for much of their reasoning and interactions. We even get a scene where they are given mighty magical gifts, like straight out of a childrens book, and it's a blemish on an otherwise serious setting.The plot is solid almost all the way through and as more background is revealed the setting becomes deeper and more believable, this is excellent worldbuilding! The grand finale has been building up for a long time now, and our heroes are faced with seemingly impossible odds. The big battle starts to unfold and it is absolutely amazing; riveting action, daring deeds, danger and death.. There comes a point when the reader starts wondering whether they'll make it. It's rare to find yourself completely unsure of how it'll all end, and I loved it. As some of the main characters starts to die, I loved it even more, this battle was turning out to be everything GoT should have been, right up to the point where our main character finally steps up and acts his age and dies! Yep, Kip dead.. as in really dead and gone, and now everything seems lost and the struggle doomed, the entire battle hangs on a desparate Hail Mary that is not going well either and so, at the very height of what is fast becoming an absolutely epic conclusion, enter.. God, (Orphalem, technically speaking, but oh well..).What? No! Yup, sure, Gavin/Dazens storyline turned out to be a quest to find God, which he actually did, and now the whole thing comes chrashing down as God himself sweeps up the baddies, resurrects the goodies, cures diseases, rights the wrongs, amplify the number of cute kittens in the world and ensures everyone gets bigger presents for christmas. Well maybe not the last parts, but it's still the mother of all Deus-Ex resolutions, completely out of nowhere and for no reason what so ever, except to get a happy sugar-coated ending.What happened Mr. Weeks? Did you lose courage in the fans reaction? Did you write yourself into a corner where a happy ending seemed impossible to achieve by normal means? What could have possibly prompted you to turn this epic finale into such an epic fizzle? What a story it would have been, had the survivors been left to lament the dead and the gruesome sacrifices it took to save the world. Heck, I could even have stomached the bad guys coming out on top for once, anything but this!I'll rate this with 3 stars, because right up to the very end it had the makings of a 5-star series, but that ending.. What a complete and utter anti-climax, I wouldn't even give it a single star, especially because it just came out of absolutely nowhere, even GoT at least gave a full season 7 to warn us of the let-down in store for season 8. No, it's not that I detest happy endings as such, nor that main characters must die for it to be a great story, but why reverse it once started? I was fully prepared for a gory, tough, bitter-sweet ending as the final battle unfolded, it was refreshingly bold and interesting, but then.. argh!

Ok, so I'm going to try to keep this review for The Burning White. If I were to review the series in its entirety, I'd give it four stars. But the final book in the series was a disappointment, in my view.Probably some spoilers ahead.----Let me start by saying, I am a fan of Brent Weeks. I *loved* The Night Angel series and I liked The Lightbringer series.One thing I loved about this book and the series is the complex--sometimes a little convoluted--magic system. It reminds me of Sanderson's Warbringer but more fleshed out. The problem I had with it in this book is that it got overly complicated and it often became a little bit Star Treky in the way in which a new magic/new variation of light would suddenly solve all the problems. Really?The characterization was good in this novel. I came away liking Andros Guile a lot more than I expected to. You really got of sense of his character arc. Kip too. I wanted more from Karis and Teia (sorry if I'm getting the names wrong, I have the audiobook version). I get that Weeks probably didn't want a Night Angel 2.0 with Teia but I wanted to feel more from her journey. I did, however, love the postlogue. Brillant.The Dazin/Gavin switcheroo was expertly done in the earlier books. Totally caught me off guard. But later iterations of this kind of fake out didn't work so well. You can only do it so many times before it just gets tedious.And this is where I really had issues with this book. It was way tooooooo long. I don't mind long books. I love them, actually--but the length has to serve a purpose. This book needed to be 1/4 shorter to tighten up the narrative a lot. I get that Weeks wanted to tie off loose ends but sometimes, sometimes it's ok to leave your readers wondering. Like Gunner coming in riding a sea demon at the end? come on. You don't have to be RJ and Asmodean but you can leave some tertiary things to the imagination of your readers.That's another thing: too often we're led by the nose and shown plot points. 'Show, don't tell' is an overwrought phrase in writing but it Brent would have been better served adhering to that 'principle' more. Maybe he just needed a heavier editorial hand? I don't know.Probably the worst sin of this book is God showing up. JFC, it turned into a bad 80s buddy cop movie with the poor dialogue to go along with it. Dazin and God became bros, and it went on FOREVER. LIKE FOREVER.Subtly is a good thing. Subtly was not used in this book. God comes in and saves the day---but not by the snap of his fingers but through telling Dazen what to do. I mean, why couldn't God just do it himself? Brent even messed with the timeline at one point. It was all TOO MUCH. ALL OF THAT. If you want to push a certain tenant of religiosity at your readers through the story, that's fine. But do so with a lighter touch. My goodness. It's like getting slapped in the face at times.And finally, Weeks wrapped EVERYTHING UP IN A NEAT BOW. I don't think every author has to be GRRM and kill of Rob Stark at the red wedding but there was a lack of complexity in the story--not the magic system, but the storytelling--that I found irksome. The last line could have been "and they all lived happily ever after" and it would have fit.I had to take a step back and wonder who the intended audience is. It's not marketed as a YA book, so I expect a little more depth from a series I've been following for years. The earlier books had a gritty-ness that this book lacked. Again, you don't have to be LordGridmark but some death is ok. Like, I would have been sad if Kip died but it would have fit. Instead, we get a random dude folks barely remembering giving him a shot in the arm like it's Call of Duty (I've been playing modern warfare 2019, sorry). Or Karris. Or even Teia. That would have been ok.It felt like Weeks got together with some consultants from Hatchette and Hollywood to workshop this final installment. It was just too clean. Too neat. Too safe.And that was a shame.But, if you haven't read this series, don't let this review discourage your purchase. It's an enjoyable world for the most part and I'm glad Brent Weeks wrote it. I'm eager to see what his next project will be.

Gone are the swashbuckling days of Gavin Guile. Gone are the tantalising enigmas. Gone is the pace, grace and charm of the early books and instead The Lightbringer limps to a conclusion.Or rather, waffles to a conclusion.The early books were mile-a-minute popcorn adventures where you didn't see the twists coming because you were enjoying the present too much to think ahead. But in choosing to extend the sequence to 5 books rather than the 3 it needed to tell this story, Weeks leaves his prose not his action to bear the weight.It can't handle it.Too often a florid or clumsy turn of phrase jerks you out of the action, breaking the flow. Too often chapters or storylines go nowhere and give nothing. Worse, even than these cardinal sins, the hideously misjudged bawdiness and sexual references are frankly nauseating.There is a sequence with Teia waiting in an alley planning an attack that embodies everything frustrating about the last 2 volumes of the series. First, it slams the action to a halt, distracting the story with moral quandries which go undeveloped and unresolved. Second, it drags out an encounter that relies on being short, sharp and brutal. Finally, some of the 'jokes' are so crass they defy belief. Note to editors- always remove the wet-dream puns.And yet, the pieces are placed and the action ramps up. Once the fighting starts all sins are forgiven (literally) and we get a flash of what this could have been. The battle rock and rolls and for about 100 pages the characters face real peril and real drama.Then it ends, not with a bang but with 4 epilogues. 4.The plot device for Gavin and the final confrontation is lazy and contrived and ultimately unsatisfying. The dramatic weight, pathos and reward, earned by brave decisions from Weeks are suddenly, inexplicably reversed and plotlines and twists declared a score draw or simply summed up with "yes, wrongly".This series had magic and pace and charm and characters you loved to hate and hated to love. It should have been 3 books and a few 100,000 words shorter.Try the Night Angel Trilogy instead, when Weeks was still being edited properly.*Yes I am aware this review is also over written and under edited. So it goes.

This book’s so bad I actually find it hard to believe that Brent Weeks wrote it. Book four was pretty awful too but this is on a whole new level, and that’s taken into account book four must have wasted a hundred pages on Kip’s wife, Tisis, trying to get her sex toy to fit up her. Oh yes, that happened.This last book could have been one-hundred pages if you cut out of the drivel and pointlessness. It’s 90% filler, often with characters going on rambling internal monologues that make them sound insane or babyish. Most of the characters have lost their flavour, becoming incredibly boring. The “banter” (if you can call it that) between The Mighty is just terrible. It’s not even mildly amusing nor does it instil any belief in camaraderie – not only does it not add anything it subtracts from the writing.Don’t even read Teia’s chapters – seriously, nothing happens at all. After first few I skipped them all and didn’t miss anything in the end. Pointless character.There are so many plot holes in this book it’s crazy – as another review mentioned here Brent Weeks gets around this by the characters simply forgetting where they are, what they were doing, or just makes them go insane instead. Also, one thing that the other reviewer didn’t pick up on was that if this was a PC game then at many points it would be like someone opened the console and entered cheat codes in to help the characters. I mean at some points characters just magically appear that have never been heard of before and just outright tell Kip and others things like “Oh yeh just head 20 miles East and you’ll win a battle” And Kip is like “Nice one thanks person who just appeared out of nowhere and then is never seen again.”It's like the author is just putting in cheat codes to skip past points he's stuck on. This happens several times. It’s lazy, awful writing.The magic system was amazing in book one and two, even despite Gavin/Dazen getting totally ruined as a character by losing all his powers, but in this last book the magic just goes off the rails. No rules anymore, it’s not bound by any laws, it stops being about coloured magic with casters and skill to just being a hazy, wishy washy flavourless mash of crap. Its just being made up as it goes along.And Gavin/Dazen? His biggest contribution to the book, and I kid you not, is to climb a big hill then have a WWE wrestling match with God for two days.Seriously.Avoid this book. I think I’m done with Brent Weeks altogether now. What was once a favourite author has become a joke.

Book five of the Lightbringer series of fantasy novels.After two books of wondering when it would end, you get an ending here! Eventually.It's obviously not a jumping on point. I would say new readers start at book one. But since the series goes completely off the rails from book three onwards - even more so as four and five go on - I should actually say don't bother.This one is Just over nine hundred and fifteen pages. It has lots of short chapters. Four epilogues. Then another extra chapter hidden in the acknowledgements. And a web address on the last page to get another one. If you've not thrown the book across the room by then.As before, there's strong language and adult moments and violence.What there isn't is any sign of editing.Gavin, Karris, Teia and Kip all have narrative strands and chapters to themselves. They all spend the first three hundred or so pages ruminating on things. Nothing happens. There's no sense of urgency or jeopardy, even though people are supposedly trying to get read for the White King's attack. And they all speak roughly the same. In annoying dialogue that sounds too present day. Every character is so hip, and they speak like this as if they are trying to get the reader's attention and make them think they are the coolest.It does slightly pick up from then on, as things do start to happen. But the prose is just uninteresting. I was skimming so much of it. Even when we get a big battle as it all finally goes down, it's just like watching a movie in which lots of explosions go off and you have no idea who any of these people running around fighting are.It could do with more from the White King's side. Which might have given it a better focus. And at one point Kip says 'no worries.' Using modern idioms in a fantasy setting just takes you right out of it.And one thing I am a bit tired of in fantasy is stories where the gods get involved with the affairs of mortals. This is one of the most annoying examples of that ever.There are some reasonably good character beats at times, one scene with Teia in particular. And it does do some good things with Andross at points.But this is a really prime example of a writer getting to the point where they are such a name that nobody wants to edit them. Good editing can make writing so much better. This needed it. It didn't get it.I slogged through to the end of this because having invested ten years in this story, I had to make it to the end. I did. What started as a great journey became a very annoying one at the finish.There's all the usual glossaries and cast of characters and the like at the back of the book. If you do care enough about it, they may come in handy. Ditto the maps at the front.If you are new to this writer, stick to his Night's Angel trilogy of books. And hope that any future works are no longer than three books. I shall be reading reviews of any future works before deciding to commit to them.

I'm still hovering between four or five stars for this. It was definitely a four star read for the first half but the second half nearly bumped it up.Hmm it's going to be difficult to review this without spoilers but I'll try. The first half of the book was pretty slow if I'm honest and not always in a good way. I thought that after the final book had been split into two that it would move faster but not many significant events really occurred, they were all kept for the second half. It wasn't bad or anything but slower than expected.The second half more than made up for it though. It was pretty much non stop, both in action and character development. Honestly still not sure about all the new information, will probably need to read it again at some stage to really appreciate it. It definitely took a few directions I wasn't expecting. Things that had been only hinted at in previous volumes ended up playing much more significant roles that I expected and I imagine that might alienate a few people but I quite liked it.The characters as usual are all brilliant. I mean it's seriously cool to see how much they've all changed since the first couple of books. Gavin Guile is one of the best 'gray' characters I think I've ever read. He's definitely a 'hero' if you know what I mean but he is not really a nice person and has done some really awful things. I'm still not sure I actually like him or not, but I love reading his chapters and that says something about how well the author has created him. I was right about Teia, she does go down a pretty dark path but again it was great. Not much to say about Kip, Karris, Andross and the Mighty, I love them all.This is some world that Brent Weeks created. I enjoyed the Night Angel series but it didn't really stand out to me, I only started this because I'd heard people mention that it was a real step up. They were so right. This is probably now in my top ten series of all time. There were enough threads dangling that I could see the author coming back here if he wanted to, and I really want him to. I would whole heartedly recommend this series to any fans of fantasy.4.5 stars

When purchasing this book, my one prayer was 'please don't be as poor as Blood Mirror'. I'm happy to say that I got my wish, and that this book brings the series to a better end than I was expecting. I feel a little bad giving it 3 stars; 7/10 would be a fair reflection, but my personal distaste for the manner in which it ends drags it down.This book is the longest in the series, and it will often really, really, feel like it. It's abundantly clear that a lot of thought has been put into the sentences, the prose, and the philosophy of the characters. The story is also aware of all that has come before, and how you might forget some details of 3000 pages of prior material. It tries to do justice to everything that lead up to this book, but my oh my does that make it clunky in places.It is also pretty slow to get going, which I attribute to two things. Firstly, it's the final book in a big series; you're aiming for a big crescendo, and naturally that's going to happen towards the end. Secondly, this book is trying to extricate itself from the morass of where Blood Mirror left matters. So you'll find yourself 40-50 chapters in with the realisation that the scene is still being set.The overall story of the series is a good one, and when you look back at it from the finish line you can see all the things that were set up along the way. But you can also see all the bits that don't get wrapped up neatly. Some of it is that the storylines are left unresolved, and some are that resolutions and exposition are just crammed into the strangest places. For example: Vician's Sin is an event that literally and metaphorically reshaped the world, and is hugely important in terms of the religion and society of the book, as well as having a significant impact on the very nature of magic.But we didn't know that until 113 chapters into this book, when a character you most likely forgot about goes 'by the way'. Followed by a bit more detail in the second epilogue where they're trying to fix an artifact that is central to the story, but we didn't even know it was broken until two lines before they fix it.Because of things like this the series has the feel of a three-book story set in a world with six books of history, and the attempts to fill us in on all of this leave it feeling bloated.The book overall is still a huge step up from Blood Mirror, though. The plot lines are well structured and progress methodically, as opposed to the somewhat slapdash fashion of the last book. For all that it's slow, you know full well that it's building to grand finale. Things feel like they have weight and consequence, and I genuinely cared what happened to (most of) the characters.I don't feel there's much I can say about the ending without giving too much away. Being as vague as possible, I feel that the style of ending was probably correct (or at least inevitable) based on the setup of the previous book, but it was done in such a manner that it robs the finale of a lot of impact (in my opinion).But overall I found it to be an enjoyable read. If you've come this far in the series there's no reason not to get this book.