 Hello there, internet. So I finally, after many, many years of being asked, I finally got around to finishing the Lightbringer series. I know a couple of months ago I said I read the first book and I went over it briefly in a compilation video, but here I have the whole series, like first book is different sized, so I can't stack them the way I want to. It's kind of annoying. But yes, I did finally just finish reading all of it and I have mixed thoughts, let's say. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so I'll say right now I can't really do a non-spoiler section and a spoiler section for this book series because it's very difficult to talk about that way. So instead, it'll be minor and major spoilers. My overall thoughts are that the first two books, because remember I gave the first book a really solid review, the first two books are really, really good. After that it starts to go downhill. By the end, it it kind of fell apart. Mostly just in terms of like the story, you know, the plot, the things that actually happened that fell apart, but like characters and stuff. We're still pretty good. So minor spoilers. This series is about a guy named Gavin Guile, and he's basically a sort of pope or magical religious figure in this world. He is like, like on paper, he is the ruler of this empire, like he's what's known as the Prism, and he's somebody that can essentially just use magic way better than everybody else and be way more powerful as it, while doing it. However, like in reality, he only has like cultural authority, you know, cultural and religious authority. He's just a figurehead in all the political powers held by others. And basically there is a rebellion of pagans that starts up around the time the book starts, or rather a little before the book starts, and he has to try and fight against them, and that's the main, well at least it starts off as the main plot of the series. And then meanwhile, he also has to go and rescue a bastard son that he didn't know existed named Kip, and we also follow Kip a lot at the beginning, who again, he just discovered he's the bastard son of the Prism, which is a pretty big deal, and he also gets his home destroyed very early on, and most of his friends are killed, and his arc at the beginning is him becoming this kind of important person while he's always been just a nobody. So I think this is a great start, like at the beginning Gavin is the protagonist, like in the first book, he is the protagonist, we mostly follow him. However, from the second book onward, the protagonist is much more Kip, which I was okay with. I think they're both really good characters. They're obviously a lot different from one another. They're kind of the two archetypes for fantasy protagonists in Epic Fantasy nowadays, because we have Kip, who is only like 15 years old when the series begins, and he's just a kid who gets caught up in something way beyond himself, and he finds out he has these new powers that he didn't know about before, and he has to, you know, fight against bad guys, and it's sort of a coming-of-age story, watching him come into his own, and he has to learn to control his powers, and stuff like that, whereas Gavin is much older. He's in his 30s when it starts. Obviously, if he's gonna be Kip's father, he has to be quite a bit older than him, and he already has a past, you know, he has things that he's done that he's not proud of. He has things that have traumatized him in his past. He's done things that he is really proud of, and that people love him for, and so these are kind of the two archetypes of Epic Fantasy protagonists nowadays, and I think they're both done well, so I was perfectly happy when they switched over to focusing more on Kip, especially because Kip, at least at first, I identified with a lot more, because even though he is intelligent and likeable and stuff, he does have extremely low self-esteem, and he does struggle meeting people and making friends and stuff, so I did identify with him a bit more than with Gavin, who at times seemed too perfect, and you find out pretty early on, I know this seems like it would be a massive twist, but it is a minor spoiler, trust me, you find out pretty early on that Gavin Gile is not actually Gavin Gile. See, before the series began, around the time Kip was born, there was this conflict called the False Prisms War, where Gavin Gile's younger brother, Dazin, actually tried to overthrow him, and it was huge massive conflict, and at the end, the two of them fought each other, and Gavin killed Dazin, and the war ended, but we learned that it turns out actually Dazin killed Gavin, and then he stole his identity, so Gavin Gile that we follow is actually Dazin Gile, and more than that, his brother is still alive and being held prisoner, and all of the other characters are pretty solid too, or at least most of them are pretty solid too, like we have the mighty, who are Kip's friends in the Black Guard, which the Black Guard is supposed to be like these elite drafters, magic using is called drafting in this, just so we know, I'll get into a little bit more detail on that later, but you know, if I talk about drafters, that's what I'm talking about, and there's these elite Black Guards who are supposed to be like battle drafters, who are in charge of guarding the Prisman stuff, and Kip and his friends are called the Mighty because they're new at being Black Guards, but they're very good at it, they're very powerful, and they all have their own personality, you know, they're all likable, they're all well-defined, like I remember what they're like, I remember Ben Haddad, and Fercuti, and Cruxer, and them, like they're all pretty solid side characters, even if they aren't major ones, and then we have people like Charis, who is Gavin's kind of sort of girlfriend, who in the first two books she doesn't have all that much to do, but later on she does, and she has a pretty unfortunate past, but she's still going on, you know, she's a very durable person, she's a very tough person, you know, I don't want to say tough really because that just seems cliched, but that's what she is, even though she's been hurt a lot and a lot of bad things have happened to her, she's still going, so it works, she is a very good character for that reason, and so on and so forth. The villains are less good, let's just say, like I think Andross Gile is a pretty good villain, at least semi-villain, because he is kind of a good guy, you know, he is seemingly on the same side as the heroes, they work for, their organization is called the Chromaria, you know, like the Chromaria is supposed to be the ruling body over this empire, but it doesn't really feel like one empire, if I'm being honest, it feels like a lot of places that just follow the same religion, but they still fight each other a lot, so this would seem more like Gavin is the Pope, and the Chromaria is the Vatican, so they have a lot of power and influence, but they aren't actually the rulers of this area, but I don't know whatever the point is. Andross Gile is working for the Chromaria, he's working with the good guys against the pagans, but at the same time he is scheming and ruthless and selfish, but I mean he is an intelligent guy and you get to know him over the course of the books, and you start seeing things a little bit more from his perspective, and you understand like, okay yeah, so he's not totally evil, he is at least a person, but he is still kind of a villain, and then we also have the Order of the Broken Eye, who are also not terrible, like they're just this faceless, mysterious, dangerous, assassins organization for most of the series, which does help build them up a bit, and they work well for a while, but then they're beaten too easily. The other villains just don't get enough time, you know, at the beginning we have King Garadul, who is kind of interesting, you know, he has some genuinely good reasons for rebelling against the Chromaria, but he's he's barely in the series, and then we also have like the Color Prince, who is kind of interesting, has interesting reasons for rebelling, but he's barely in it. We have Zymoon, who is kind of a really entertaining character for a while, but it seems like the author just didn't know what to do with him, and so he's barely in things, and he goes away. And then we have Abaddon, who is again barely in this, like, you know, it seems like these villains are all coming from different directions, and so as a result, most of them don't get a chance to really shine. They don't get a chance to be good villains. And that really is a failure of the story, like the story is pulled in a bunch of different directions, you know. Is this about the rebellious pagans? Kind of. Is it about the political schemes and intrigue in the Chromaria? Kind of. Is it about Kip training and becoming a Black Guard, and later achieving more and more authority for himself? Well, kind of. You know, like, ideally you'd be able to have all of these going on at once and roll them together, but they just feel a bit too disconnected. It, weirdly enough, it kind of reminded me of Spider-Man 3. You know, if I describe any of the individual plotlines, those all sound pretty good, but they just distract from each other too much. You know, like, we have Peter Parker in the Black Goo Spider-Man suit, which could be an interesting storyline, but it doesn't get enough time to shine. We have him and Sandman. We have him and learning that Sandman is actually the one who killed his uncle. We have him and Mary Jane's romance. We have him and Harry trying to become friends again even after Harry became a supervillain. We have him and Venom. You're like, you know, there's just so much of this stuff going on that none of it really gets a chance to work properly. And this series, this series really falls into that same trap. Like, I would genuinely say that the last two books could be combined. And you can see these are not exactly short, but I for real don't remember a lot of stuff that happens in the fourth book, The Blood Mirror, because it just feels like a lot of it wasn't needed and it wasn't all that interesting. Because, you know, after the first, let's say, two books, we are following a lot of different storylines. And sometimes they don't connect all that well, like I said. And without going into too much detail, Gavin's storyline in particular gets really bad in the third book. And then it gets better again in the fourth and fifth ones. But it's also not that long. So you combine that one without too much issue, and then you could cut out the less interesting ones. And so just basically the pacing would have been a lot better if this was only four books instead of five. Now, I've heard a lot of people complain about this series, particularly the ending, because the ending is unconventional. Like they said, Brent Weeks made some unconventional choices. And a lot of people didn't like that. But honestly, I disagree. Like, it feels pretty conventional for a modern epic fantasy series. Like, once you get to the end, it feels like, yeah, I could pretty much expect a lot of this happening for a while. But it's just done kind of incompetently. And as I said, the pacing is all over the place. So it doesn't really feel as satisfying as it could be, even if I should be, you know, really happy that these characters that I like, because I want to emphasize that the characters are usually pretty good. Watching them like save the day and everything. Yeah, I feel like I should be enjoying this more than I am. But it's, I guess it's not the worst thing ever. It's just not done that well. And I will, I will say that part of the issue there is that it never really addresses why we should want the heroes to defeat the pagans. Because, you know, the pagans do make some pretty good criticisms of the current regime of the current way things are run. And they aren't necessarily better. But the series kind of just treats it as we should want the chrome area to win just by default. Because the good guys are fighting with them. Therefore, we want them to win. But why are the good guys fighting with them? Well, because the chrome area should win. They're the good guys. Like it's just, it just feels kind of circular. And so I think that's part of the reason why the story never grabbed me quite as much as it probably should have. Overall, the story by the end is just kind of a mess. And the only reason it's not really terrible is that it's held together with good characters and really cool magic. Because I do think the magic system in this is cool. As the name of the series suggests, it is all built around light. You know, what you can do is there are seven colors, the colors of the rainbow. And you can, if you see them, then you can sort of absorb that color into your eyes. And then you can pull this substance called luxin out of your body and use it. You can make it solid and use it to like build structures and stuff. And each color is kind of different. Like blue is really hard and rigid. So if you made like a shield or a spear or something with that, you could throw it, that would work really well. And then you have red, which is not nearly as strong. So you couldn't really use it to build a house or anything, but it is flammable. So there are situations where that's useful. And I said in my kind of review of the first book a while ago that I felt all of the colors were a little too similar to one another. They do fix that later on. You know, by the end of the series, I thought they were a bit more distinct from one another. And we do get some insight into other colors outside of the main seven. But yeah, overall, I think it's a cool magic system. But then it also has stuff like will casting, which seems like it falls outside of the drafting spectrum, but they don't go into all that much detail about it, which was a little disappointing. I feel like if you're gonna have this really cool hard magic system, and then you're gonna have a soft system as well on top of that, then you should at least use the soft magic system, you know, kind of like the way the name of the wind does where you have a really cool hard system and a cool soft system. But the soft system actually gets some time to shine. So it's justified in being there. Like this one doesn't really have that. And I also do wish that the main characters were a bit more limited in what they could do with their powers, because there is a part where Gavin kind of complains about, or rather he notes that other drafters don't have the luxury of just using all colors like he can, like they have to be a bit more creative with it. Whereas with him, he can just go, oh, okay, yellow would work best here, so I'll use yellow. Whereas other ones who may not have yellow would be like, okay, I can't use yellow here, but how can I use green and blue and red to try and compensate for that. And so it forces them to be more creative. Whereas, and again, this is another minor spoiler, but it's not that, it's just not that big a deal. Because in the first book, they say that Kip is a bio chromat, he can use green and yellow. But then in the second one, it's revealed he's a full spectrum drafter, so he can use all of them. And so he winds up kind of having the same thing as Gavin, where whenever he runs into a situation, he can draft his way out of it without being creative with it. And I would have liked to see more creative problem solving from him, and some of the other main characters. So that was a bit disappointing as well, but I guess it's not the end of the world. The world is kind of neat too. Like for some reason, the map is upside down in the book, like south is up and north is down for some reason. I don't know why they did that, all it did was confuse me for a little while. But the world is kind of neat. You know, it seems more Persian inspired than European, which is good. I wish we explored more of it. But you know, at least what we did see was a little different, because all of the different regions of the Empire are referred to as satrapies and the people who rule over them are satraps, which is what the Occamanted Persian Empire called its various provinces and governors. And then the story of Gavin stealing someone's identity and taking power is kind of similar to the story of Darius the Great. Like there's similarities there. So the world, while it's not amazing, I don't think, I don't really have many complaints about it. I just wish we got to see more of it, because a huge chunk of the series is just taking place at the Chromaria with people either training or going through some political intrigue. And while it's all competent, I just wish we got to see more variety in what goes on. Okay, so overall, this is about the end of the minor spoiler section. So overall, it's difficult to recommend this book series because it's good. Like it's difficult for me to just say, Hey, y'all should read this. It's really good. It's really interesting. Because I don't think it stays that way throughout the whole series. Like it just doesn't. But even when it's bad, it's kind of interesting. And there's always good parts to it. So I would still recommend you at least start with it. And I mean, if by the end, you start losing interest, or before the end, you start losing interest, then you can probably just stop because it's probably not for you. And it's just not going to get better. Okay, so now major spoilers, which like for real, if you don't want to hear this, then leave now. The first thing I want to talk about is how Gavin's story gets really, really bad after the second book. Like in the at the end of the second book, he winds up losing his powers and he gets taken captive as a slave on a ship. And at first in the third book, he is working to escape from that. And that's actually pretty good. And then he escapes. And then he's caught again by somebody else and taken prisoner. And then he's just rotting in prison for a while. And then he gets broken out by some of his friends and he escapes again. And then he's caught again. And so he ends the book just in a different prison than he was before, even though he already ended the last book as a prisoner, like it feels like there was no progress made. You know, I feel like you could have cut out the majority of that, like just have him be taken captive by Captain Gunner at the end of the second book, same as before. And then he just gets ransomed off to his father, who then puts him in prison again, which is exactly how it happens. Like we just skip a whole lot of crap in the middle. And if you still wanted to add the bits about him being tortured, you could still add that in. Like you'd still have him get his eye gouged out, you could still have him lose his fingers. And we just would not waste an entire book's worth of time. Now I will say that Gavin goes through some really good character developments during all this. It's just not done in a good way. Like, you know, we have to watch him adjust to not having powers and not being the prism, which is kind of neat. And in the last book as well, he finally goes around back to doing things and helps the good guys win the day. But it's just, I don't know, it's good character development. It's not done in a good way, which is what I was saying before, like it's mostly plot issues that I have with the latter part of the series. And then we have Kip's storyline too, where he progresses from being this lonely fat kid to being a really talented, confident warrior by the end of it. And at first it's great. Like it's fine that he is a talented drafter. It's fine that he is a pretty good fighter. It's fine that he's intelligent, because as I said, he does have some short comings as well. That's all fine. But by the end, he gets too perfect. I could no longer really identify with him. Because by the end, he's also a great tactician and he's also a great politician and he's also kind of the chosen one. It's just too much. I think if he had to rely on other people more, then I think this would have worked a lot better. If he was an inspiring leader and he was able to gather up soldiers to help fight against the pagan army, just by being charismatic or something, I think that'd be fine if he was not actually that good of a tactician and he had to rely on one of his friends or something to actually do the planning of the battles. Because when he's just too good at everything, he just becomes more unrelatable and I couldn't get quite as into him. Whereas Charis on the other hand, even though she is a competent character and everything, she does have to rely on others to help her, especially in the latter part of the series. So she never falls into that trap. And then we have stuff like Abaddon and the Immortals that live in other dimensions. They just sort of pop up and then they leave the story for a while and they don't affect anything. And then they pop up again and then they're defeated really easily. Like why are they even there? You know, they don't come into things until the third book. And when it first happened, I thought, oh okay, this changes things quite a bit. I want to see how this alters the series going forward and it really doesn't. Like you could literally cut that out and nothing would change. It's not even like other changes where you'd have to cut stuff out and maybe tweak some of the stuff around it to make it fit better. Whereas with Abaddon and all that, you could literally just cut it out and nothing would change. It would just make things go by slightly quicker. Like I just don't even know why it's there. And then Xymoon at first, again, he's a neat villain. He's like Karris's son who she kind of had to abandon. And he came back and became a psycho. But he's still a really powerful psycho and he's working for the bad guys. So he's kind of interesting to watch. And honestly, when you get into his head at a couple of points, you realize, man, this guy is nuts and he cannot be allowed anywhere near power. But we barely get any of him, you know? We don't see his relationships much. We don't see well, I mean, I just said we don't see his relationships much. I was about to say we don't see how he interacts with other people. But like, no, no shit. That's what that means. But, you know, we don't get to see him like really try and gain more power for himself. He kind of just gets everything handed to him. And then he gets defeated and killed in the last book. And it just, it doesn't, it doesn't quite work. And then we have characters like Liv, who is around for a while, and she's actually the person we follow in the Color Prince's army. And so we see what's going on with him. And then she kind of leaves his army and she becomes evil. And then she vanishes from the story mostly. So we don't really get to see what's going on in the Color Prince's army after that. And then she dies at the end. And it's not all that satisfying. It doesn't make that big of a difference. And then I kind of mentioned this before. The Color Prince and the Rebels have some good points when they're criticizing the Chromeria, particularly with the way it relies a lot on slavery. But these points are never properly addressed. And so because those points are never properly addressed, it never, it doesn't feel that satisfying that they were defeated. You know, it doesn't feel like, okay, yes, they had some good points, but they were going about it all wrong. And the good guys are going to reform things and help make the world a better place the right way. It doesn't even feel like that. It just feels like, yep, these were some guys that tried to take power and then they were defeated. So it's just not as satisfying. Like, there's a lot of setups here, which are not, they don't get a payoff, or at least they don't get a proper payoff. Like, yeah, I could go into a little more detail about that, but I don't think I need to. Like, it's just, it's not very good at that. So overall, this is not a bad series. I don't think I could say it's a bad series because when I was into it, I was really into it. Like, Brent Weeks does have some talents as an author. I think he's really good at setups. I think he's really good at writing characters when he allows them to, you know, have time to properly be characters. I think he's really good at writing action scenes. And a lot of the problems here are problems that he also had with the Night Angel trilogy. Because this series, while it's not as obnoxiously edgy as the Night Angel trilogy was, it also has setups that don't really lead anywhere and has villains that don't really get a chance to be proper villains. Because like, in the Night Angel trilogy, the storyline was kind of finished by the end of the second book. And so the third book kind of felt like Weeks was scrambling around trying to find a proper villain for the heroes to face off against, and it just doesn't quite work. And this series has similar problems, you know? I don't know. I just think if you're an epic fantasy fan, you should check it out just to see if maybe the issues don't bother you as much as they did me. And especially if you're any sort of like fiction writer, or you want to do anything creative, I think you should still check this out just to see what it does right and what it does wrong. Because even when it does things wrong, it at least does them wrong in an interesting way. Like, there's always a little seed of something there that could have been better. And yeah, that's about it. This is a long series. It is a bit of a commitment, so I don't blame you if you feel a little intimidated by it. But at the very least, I will say the first two books are really, really good. And that's all. Goodbye. Special thanks to everyone who watched this far, including and especially my patrons and channel members. My $10 up patrons include Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rand, Brother Santotys, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Christopher Quinten, Dan, Dan, Echo, Joel, Carcat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Marilyn Roxy, microphone, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vaivictus, and of course, all the other names listed here. You guys are great. Without you, I wouldn't be able to do this. If you want to get your name put up here, then consider becoming a patron. You get stuff like early access to my videos. And if you don't want that, then how about maybe just becoming a channel member or dropping me a tip over on PayPal or just sharing this video. Yeah, you get the picture. Goodbye. Bye.