The Blinding Knife / Brent Weeks

The Blinding Knife

(Lightbringer 2)

by Brent Weeks

fantasy

copyright 2013

read in March 2017

rated 6/10: read to pass the time

Lightbringer 1 was a teenage boy's escapist fantasy. Book 2 has similar elements but is for older readers... in my opinion. Partly becase the violence is more... violent. Also, the treenage hero has less time in the limelight; other characters -- male, female, old, young -- are equally prominent. (Though the teenage hero is still annoyingly down on himself.)

On the other hand... it's still aimed at young(?) men. Men who see physical power as the ultimate sign of superiority. Sure, the best fighters use magic. But their magic, as often as not, is used to create a bigger and better sword. Or cudgel.

Still, it's a lot of fun. Violent fun. Action-packed adventurous fun.

Spoilt, somewhat, by the enforced moral turpitude of many of the characters. (Just double-checked that. Yes, turpitude: depraved or wicked behaviour. Lovely word :-)

If there's a character who wants to do good -- they will be blackmailed into doing bad. Okay, not every good character. Just so very, very many of them. And they never seem to confess to a friend, to get help. They just suffer alone.

It's one of those things on the checklist for writing a blockbuster novel: make the characters suffer. I know that it works. I just don't enjoy it. I like a happy medium, where the characters seem to have some chance to succeed. Without being scarred for life.

Not that these characters will be scarred for life... It seems to be a book where the good guys will win, eventually. Though some may die, heroically.

On the other hand, in *this* book, the good guys do not win. Yes, there are victories on the way. But at the end of the book -- half the characters seem to be hanging by their fingernails off the edge of a cliff.

By this stage, though -- book two of three -- that's not a great worry. Particularly since I have book three lined up, ready to be read. The multi-cliff-hanger ending is a bit annoying but not unexpected. And I can read straight past the cliff-hangers. ("With a mighty leap..."?)

It's complex, it's fun, it's exciting, it's violent. If I'd started with this book I may never have bothered with books one and three. As it is -- reading in the correct order -- I'm enjoying the series. I'm happy to read to the end.

It's entertaining. The older hero seems to have the best of intentions. The world -- and its magic -- are interesting and completely over the top. Some of its corruption may be removed, by the end of book three. (I hope.)

Read to pass the time. But read book one first.

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23oct20: It took me a chapter or two to remember that I have read this book before. Not to worry, I thought, it's probably good fun.

I was wrong.

As an aside: the magic is continually growing. Put a character into an impossible situation and suddenly, the magic expands, a new feature is found.

There's a lot of violence. A lot of betrayal. A lot of really nasty people, a lot of really nasty situations. The world itself is nasty. The only measure of success is power. Let's just look at one aspect of the current "civilisation": slavery.

The major city-state group uses slavery. Any minor misdemeanour and you could become a slave -- with absolutely no rights. Fighting against the city-state is a proto-empire which rejects slavery -- to be replaced with a pure version of "might is right". The more powerful have the absolute right to do whatever they like to those with less power. Two opposing views. Two versions of evil.

There is a small handful of people who  are "nice". At the end of the book, they are prisoners, slaves, or in servitude to people who would kill them without a second thought.

First time I read this book I was able to continue reading the next book in the series. So the prisoners could quickly be freed, to continue their adventures. (Apart from that, the next book was very disappointing.) This time... it is just a miserable and inconclusive ending.

In the author's Acknowledgements, "where things look really bad, and you suggested something to make it utterly horrible? Yeah, I'm totally stealing that." If you enjoy books with "utterly horrible" situations, this series is for you. For me, no, thanks, I can do without "utterly horrible".

Rating this book now -- reading it alone, with neither book one nor three -- it is worth a bare five: readable but only if there is nothing else.

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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." … Arthur Eddington