“You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.”

The Fantasy Guild Book Club's pick for this month was The Black Prism by Brent Weeks, and though I did have somewhat good expectations for this book, it ended up being a roller coaster that left me teetering between mild contentment and frustration.

The story follows several characters living in a world where magic is produced through drafting specific colours. Each person can usually draft one colour, however, there are also people who can draft more than one, such as bichromes who can draft two, and polychromes who can draft several. The Prism is that one person who can draft every colour, hence being the most powerful being in existence who is responsible for ensuring equilibrium in the world.

It is obvious that this type of world has a lot potential, since the concept of a magical system based on colours is quite interesting for many people and is a nice twist to traditional fantasy. However, in my opinion, the author squandered this potential because of his very questionable writing choices.

If I were to describe this book in a clear-cut way, it would simply be a pretty dense book full of unnecessarily boring details as well as extremely crude and sexist humour that is quite past the level of being downright disgusting. I had already known that this book was criticized for being very sexist by many people, however, I did not expect it to be this bad. Below are a few examples:

“Your ass looks like a ten-year-old boy’s. Maybe it’s that dress. We’ll hope so. And your breasts. Your poor magnificent breasts. Where have they gone? They were bigger when you were fifteen!”

Yes, we do know that sexist men who objectify women this crudely exist, however, when literally every character in this entire book holds these beliefs and the author doesn't try to counter them in any way, one can clearly see that they reflect the author's personal views. But even so, the man is entitled to have his opinions, but what bothered me about reading this is the excessive vulgar and objectifying language that was everywhere in this book.

“She hadn’t noticed until after she jumped up, but her butt cheeks had been cold because her underclothes had been yanked up too.”

“The big woman stood to her full height, regaining her balance. She was much taller than Kip, and the move pressed big flat breasts onto either side of his face. Somehow his chin got caught in her dress’s gaping neckline as she stood and for a brief—but not nearly brief enough—moment, Kip’s face was fully engulfed in flabby cleavage”

What is the point of writing this? What does it add to the story?!

“Kip was more aware that his balls were aching and he was pretty much naked in front of the only girl he knew, and he was fat and gross and should cover himself immediately.”

Why do I care about a 15 year old's balls?!

“Watch it,” Commander Ironfist said. “You don’t want to run into someone with that little sword sticking out.”

Why do I need to read a sarcastic reference about a 15 year old boy's penis while he's aroused?

“General, I need to speak with you.” Liv Danavis had found her father on the roof of the Travertine Palace, checklists and reports spread all over a table. It wasn’t yet dawn, and he was bundled against the chill of the morning. He was standing, ignoring his work for the moment, his butt against the edge of his table, looking toward the east.”

How is the position of Liv's father's butt relevant to this scene?

“One moment, he’d been holding on to the woman, more concerned that as he clung to her his arms were touching her breasts and she was going to think he was groping her than worried about the exploding guns and coruscating magic.”

Yes, we really need to read another passage about a girl's breasts in the midst of a bloody battle.

There is much more of this in the book, but I hope I made my point clear. This just reminds me of a middle school boy who recently discovered female anatomy going crazy over women's bodies in the story. I'm not sure if the point of all this was to add a comedic aspect to the story, but it did nothing other than disgust me.



If only this was my only problem with the writing... Apart from having to read about breasts and butts and balls every few pages, I had to survive drowning in endless details about aspects of the world that I did not care about. Endless paragraphs about the technicalities of how certain things are drafted killed any interest I had in the story. The final epic battle that lasted more than 20 chapters was full of those details as well, and getting through it was painful.

What about characterization? Even that, I could not truly enjoy. Some characters like Karris and Liv felt indistinguishable to me, which shows me that Brent Weeks is painting all his female characters with the same brush. The male characters had a little bit of more variety, but nothing spectacular. Ironfist and The Omnichrome were the most interesting, though we don't get much of them here. Instead, we get long pages of Gavin, the Prism, who had typical Hercules tropes and wasn't very interesting to me, and Kip, the clumsy "fat" boy, a fact the author kept reminding us of every few pages, who started off as cute and interesting, but ended up being annoying with his whining. We had a lot of plot conveniences relating to him too, instances where he got "sudden innate power" that saved the day.

The deaths in this story had 0 emotional impact, and almost felt comical. I don't know if this was intentional or a consequence of the writing style.

To end this with a positive point, the story does have potential, but it was plagued with these problems that ruined the reading experience for me. I can't say I ended the book without caring at all about what might happen next, but I don't really have the energy to continue this series if it means enduring more 600+ page books with this writing style. I'm not axing this series from my list completely, and I might feel like continuing it one day, but I don't know how likely that is. The story itself is fun and mildly interesting, but the execution just wasn't for me.

I'm going to give this 2 stars, because despite all my issues with the book, the story itself alongside the world was a nice one, and if it was written better, I would have enjoyed it way more. I am still left mildly interested in the story with a small chance of continuing with the series, which is why I won't give it a 1 star rating. I truly hope the author worked on the aspects that made this book a difficult read for me, and that the future books of this series do the potential of the story justice.