Review: CHILDREN OF THE NAMELESS by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 2/5 stars

I’ve never played Magic: the Gathering but I wanted to read this story anyway in my quest to read all of Sanderson’s stories. You don’t need to know anything about Magic beforehand as I understood everything just fine, but I’m sure the story would mean more to you if you had that background knowledge.

The prologue hooked me so good. That was one of the most interesting prologues I’ve read in awhile; it completely had me wanting to know what happened next.

However, the story got a bit slower after that. I like Tacenda and Davriel—I especially love Davriel’s personality and humor—but I felt like the plot was going nowhere. Maybe it’s the time I read the novella, over the holidays when I was really busy and constantly tired, or maybe it was the story itself, but I just kept waiting for the story to pick up and something to happen.

Basically there’s been a village massacre and Davriel and Tacenda spend the entire story trying to figure out what happened, and of course there’s a classic Sanderson ending with a big twist that we didn’t see coming. It was a fine story, but I guess I was just hoping for something a bit more engaging and fast-paced. I wish the whole story could have been as good as the prologue was.

Review: STARSIGHT by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 5/5 stars

Starsight was even better than Skyward, which I did not expect. It went in directions I did not see coming and introduced us to all new characters and also let us revisit our beloved favorite characters from Skyward. *This entire review will be full of spoilers* because early in the book things happen that I cannot discuss without spoiling.

Okay. First of all, I was so shocked when all of a sudden Spensa is hyperjumping off to Starsight. She’s debating whether or not to go and Jorgen tells her to do it, so on a whim she leaves Detritus. I was so taken aback at that turn of events. I don’t know what I thought the plot of this book was going to be, but that sure wasn’t it. Starsight is really cool though. I love the idea of a centralized space station where all the different alien races can come and congregate.

I loved getting to know all the new characters and discovering the differences between the alien races. I think Sanderson did a great job of making them all different enough from each other with different genders, facial expressions, hand gestures, skin colors, etc. It was super cool, also, to see the Superiority cater to the needs of all the alien species with 17 different bathrooms, notes on the food about what is toxic to which species, and other details sprinkled throughout the narrative that make me feel like I could actually be on a space station. So so cool. I don’t read a lot of space-based science fiction so this is pretty much my introduction to novels about aliens, and I loved it way more than I expected to.

Morriumur was so precious and I loved their character arc throughout the story. I really enjoyed reading about the Dione race in general and all their mannerisms.
Cuna turned out to be way better than I expected them to be. I didn’t think they’d be on the good team but I’m pleasantly pleased they turned out to be not bad.
The kitsen race with the furry animal aliens was super cool and I loved how they all piloted one giant ship together. It’s sad that Hesho died in the end but I hope we get to see more of their race in future books with Kauri taking control or something.
And Vapor. I really like the idea of an invisible scent as an alien species. They’re called figments, and at one point it was mentioned that a lot of M-Bot’s technology was figment technology, so is there some connection there? I would really love to know where M-Bot came from and learn more about his origins. I’m also very curious why it was repeatedly mentioned that the delvers hate AI like M-Bot.

I was so sad at the end when M-Bot’s ship was destroyed and he had to save his AI coding on the drone. I hope Spensa can rebuild him into a ship or something! I loved seeing his arc throughout this story too. In Skyward he was constantly on about mushrooms, and in Starsight he was fixated on whether or not he was alive. And even though he’s a robot, he definitely is alive at this point. Able to change his coding, able to self-replicate, able to lie, and able to express feelings! M-Bot is hands-down my favorite character.

I’m so pleased the mushrooms actually were relevant to the story in Starsight and weren’t just some comic relief (although that was so good in the first book). Everything about Doomslug and the fungi—that totally blew my mind. Doomslug is a type of space slug called a taynix, and she’s a hyperdrive. The slugs are often found near fungi. That is why M-Bot is so interested in mushrooms, because he was programmed to look for more hyperdrive slugs. Truly amazing story going on there, and I did not see it coming at all.

I loved at the end Jorgen finding a room full of the slugs, all fluting together. That would be so amazing to see! As soon as that chapter started, I expected that’s what he would find, and I was right. So cool.

The book ended with Spensa on Starsight, Doomslug in one arm and the M-Bot drone in the other arm, jumping through the black portal into an unknown location in outer space to escape Winzik’s Superiority forces chasing her. That’s a HUGE cliffhanger, and this is exactly the reason why I don’t normally read a series until all the books are released; I don’t want to wait two years to find out what’s going to happen! We don’t know the fate of Spensa, where she went, where Cuna is or what they are doing, how much control Winzik has, or why M-Bot could suddenly start thinking and talking normally once Spensa opened the cytonic portal when M-Bot functions on a non-cytonic processor. Could M-Bot maybe actually be evil? So many questions!

This book blew me away with its revelations and with how much I enjoyed it. I love this series and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

“A hero does not choose her trials. She steps into the darkness. Then she faces what comes next.”



The following are purely my notes about the world that I’ve collected so I can reread them and remember details before the next book comes out because I always forget the details, especially when I have to wait for the next installment.

About the Krell:
—The Krell were a group of aliens tasked with keeping the people confined on the planet Detritus.
—Krell is an acronym in some Superiority language for a phrase about keeping humans contained, not their actual race’s name.
—The Krell report to a larger galactic government called the Superiority.
—The Krell employed remote drones to fight the humans, piloted by aliens far away, controlling the drones via FTL communication.

About Spensa:
—Spensa is a cytonic: she can see into the space where FTL communication takes place. She calls this place the Nowhere.
—When she enters the Nowhere, that is when she uses cytonic hyperdrive to teleport.
—When she uses her ability too much, something looks out of the Nowhere to see her. Thousands of white lights: the eyes. The eyes hate her. The eyes are eyes of delvers.
—She can hear the stars. What this really means is she can hear the sound of FTL communications being sent through the Nowhere.
—Her cytonic ability is genetic. Her ancestors used it to move ancient starfleets around the galaxy.

About Detritus:
—The planet is surrounded by defensive shells of debris. It is made up of living quarters, shipyards, and weapons.
—The people have reclaimed the shells closest to the planet but the outer ones are autonomous and can harm both people and Krell that get too close.
—It is possible there is an unknown portal to the Nowhere somewhere underground on Detritus.
—Somewhere in the underground caverns is a huge slug population.
—There are also carvings and drawings of symbols on the walls of underground caves, but we do not know yet what these mean. These same symbols were seen on Starsight.

Review: THE STARLESS SEA by Erin Morgenstern

Rating: 5/5 stars

“A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun. . . . [Zachary] wonders how, exactly, he is supposed to continue a story he didn’t know he was in.”

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is everything and I love him so much. One day when he was a little boy, he discovered a painted door on the wall behind his mother’s shop, but he didn’t open it. The next day it was gone. Zachary spent many years thinking about this experience until one day he finds a book in his college’s library that has a collection of stories, and one of these stories is about him as a little boy finding a door. Intrigued by this mysterious book that’s older than he is but contains a story about him, Zachary follows clues to find out where this book came from and who wrote it.

The Starless Sea is a love letter to stories and books and all kinds of magical writings. It is a story for story devourers, a book for book lovers. It has so many stories within stories and interweaving threads between those stories, and I cannot express how much I loved every second of it. I knew at less than halfway through this book that it was going to be my favorite book of the year.

One of the best parts about this book is that it takes place in a subterranean library—
Side Note: Erin Morgenstern said in an interview that she doesn’t “want to use the L word for the space that’s in this book” because “it doesn’t really have librarians. So it’s not really a library, because a room with a lot of books in it without librarians is just a room with a lot of books in it.” And I disagree! I think a library IS a room with a lot of books in it. I have a home library: a room with a lot of books in it. One could say that I myself am the librarian of my own personal library, and maybe that’s true, but I still consider it my personal library, not my personal room with books in it. I even just looked up the dictionary definition of library and I more or less got that it’s a “room containing collections of books” etc. but nowhere in any of the definitions I looked up does it say a library has to have a librarian. So I will continue to tell you this book takes place in an underground library. Plus, I also love the L word and I will use it whenever I can.

I don’t even know how to properly review this book because there was just so much going on, so many interconnecting stories and overlapping narratives that I started to lose track of it all. At the beginning, I was really following the story and trying to figure out the clues, but by the end I was just kind of letting the story wash over me and not trying to figure anything out. This is definitely a book I will need to reread to understand everything properly, and I kind of do want to turn around and read it again immediately, but I’m going to save it for next year. I will have forgotten enough by then that some parts will seem new, but I’ll remember enough to put the pieces together from the beginning without waiting for the whole picture to be revealed.

This book is very quotable. I can’t tell you how many sentences I wrote down because I didn’t want to forget them. The prose is truly stunning. Just like The Night Circus, The Starless Sea is also so beautifully written. This is a book I want to read again and again, and it’s the kind of book that will get better and better each time.

I loved both Zachary’s story and the many other stories within this book. I was very pleased that we got to actually read the many stories within the different books mentioned in The Starless Sea, so this was truly a book of many stories. I didn’t expect to love it this much but it was beautiful. The prose was ethereal and magical and breathtaking. I loved the motifs we see throughout the story of the obvious bee, key, and sword, and also of the heart, feather, and crown. I also loved the commentary on and references to video games interspersed throughout the novel. I just loved everything, okay?

“Reading a novel, he supposes, is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game.”

As soon as I finished this book, I immediately read The Night Circus because I needed more of Erin Morgenstern’s beautiful writing. While I loved that book also, I loved The Starless Sea even more. I’m running out of adjectives to use but this book was truly breathtakingly beautiful and atmospheric and perfect for me. If you like stories about stories, folklore, mythology, mysterious doors, key collectors, men with owl heads, masquerade balls, ice sculptures that speak, bees the size of dogs, lakes of honey, and rooms of books, you need to read this book. I know her flowing writing style isn’t going to work for everyone, but everything about it worked for me. This book has become one of my new favorite books ever.

Review: INFINITY BLADE: REDEMPTION by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 3/5 stars

So this story takes place after the second Infinity Blade game, and it starts at a place that doesn’t make sense if you haven’t played the games, which I haven’t. At the end of the first novella, Infinity Blade: Awakening, Siris is about to go on a journey. At the beginning of Infinity Blade: Redemption, Siris is imprisoned with the God King. How did he get there? There is no prologue to explain that, no information to get you caught up if you didn’t play the games, and that was a problem here. I had no idea what was going on in this story, whereas the first book was actually rather interesting and I was looking forward to seeing where it was going.

Despite being a little confused how we got to the events the beginning, and despite still not knowing what some things are in this world, I actually ended up really enjoying this story. It was actually a more engaging story than the first installment and it left me wanting to know more about this world.

We’re back to following the story of Siris and Raidriar, but we also have another story that takes place in our day of a man named Uriel. At first the stories don’t seem related at all, but in the end we find out how they are connected, and it’s a very Sanderson-style ending.

The story ends at a place that really is the beginning of another story, and I’m left wanting to know what happens next. I just may have to look up spoilers online because the games don’t exist anymore (as far as I know) and there are no more novellas in this world.

I ended up enjoying both Infinity Blade novellas way more than I expected to, especially knowing nothing about the game beforehand. I think if you played the games or you’re a Sanderson fan, you should definitely give these stories a read, although I think a wider audience would enjoy them as well, like if you like classic fantasy stories or want a fun, adventurous action novella.

Review: INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 3/5 stars

I’ve never played the Infinity Blade games and I don’t know anything about them, but I’ve been on a mission to read everything that Brandon Sanderson writes, which is why I picked this up.

I actually had a hard time finding access to these books. The ebooks were not available for purchase on iBooks or Kindle or for loan from my library. I eventually found one library on the other side of the state that had a copy of the audiobooks that I hurriedly requested because it was the only way I’d be able to read these novellas as far as I could tell. (I know this book used to be available in iBooks though because it used to be a bestseller when it was released 11 years ago, so I wonder what happened to cause them to no longer be available. Maybe when the game became unavailable to download, so did the books?)

So to the book. I felt like I had no idea what was going on, but also I kind of enjoyed the story?

Basically, Siris sets out to defeat the God King, and afterward he takes possession of the God King’s sword, which is the Infinity Blade, and then he goes on a journey looking for someone called the Worker of Secrets. This story had a classical medieval fantasy feel to it, and I haven’t read something like that in a while. It definitely had a Sanderson feel to it as well, which I appreciated.

I don’t feel like it’s necessary to play the games before reading these novellas, even though Infinity Blade: Awakening takes place between games 1 and 2, and Infinity Blade: Redemption takes place between games 2 and 3. I’m sure the stories would mean more to you if you did play the games first, although I obviously wouldn’t know. I don’t feel like my enjoyment was hindered in any way though by not having played the games.

Overall, I didn’t think I would enjoy this story but I did. It was fun and adventurous and humorous, and I’ll for sure be reading the next one.

Review: THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 4/5 stars

I really enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale, so I was very interested to read the sequel. I don’t particularly think the book needed a sequel, but with the release of the show and the way it progressed the story beyond the book, I think a continuation novel was inevitable.

While I did like this book, I didn’t feel like it aligned in tone with the previous book or with the show (which this book clearly takes influence from). I feel like the Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale and in the Hulu adaption was a lot more brutal and strict. Everyone is too nice in this book. Maybe it’s because we get inside perspectives in this book of an Aunt and of a daughter in a prestigious household instead of that of a handmaid that it just feels different, I don’t know, but the tone is completely different between the stories.

We follow three perspectives: Aunt Lydia; Offred’s first daughter, raised in Gilead; and Offred’s second daughter, Nicole, smuggled from Gilead and raised in free Canada. The story mostly follows Nicole in Canada, and Gilead’s efforts to try to return her to Gilead and the Resistance’s efforts to take down Gilead. First of all, the whole basis of The Testaments seems faulty to me. Nicole is not the first baby or person to leave Gilead, but there is a HUGE media presence in Canada about returning Baby Nicole to Gilead and that Canada stole her, etc. I legitimately do not understand why this is the case and why they don’t just let it go. They didn’t try to get anyone else back, so why Baby Nicole?

Anyway, I want to talk about Aunt Lydia now. Her characterization did not at all match the Aunt Lydia we knew from the first book and the show. I really can’t see her having the thoughts that she did in her parts of this book. I guess everyone had a normal life before Gilead, but to think that she was a judge and that she had an abortion then turns around and so hypocritically tells the handmaids it’s a sin, I just can’t imagine her ever being like that. And in the TV show, Aunt Lydia repeatedly told a girl who was raped that it was her fault. Now we have The Testaments, where Aunt Lydia told a girl who was presumably raped that the man would be punished in time. This is the complete opposite reaction.

I just don’t get how Aunt Lydia could be as ruthless as she was if she truly was against the regime in Gilead. She made a comment early in this book that she was going to get back at them, whatever it would take, yet she seemed to enjoy her role of power as an Aunt, inflicting pain on others and terrifying those whom she spoke to. I wish her characterization would have been more consistent.

Also, I completely don’t understand how or why she was deified in this book. They erected a freaking statue of her? Are you kidding me? In Gilead, that seems highly unlikely. Why not a statue of God since they claim to be so pious? Or of the founder of Gilead at least. But Aunt Lydia? I’m not buying that at all.

Fun fact though: the actress who plays Aunt Lydia on the TV show is the voice actor for Aunt Lydia in the audiobook and I loved that so much. As soon as chapter one started I knew it was her.

It’s interesting to learn how Aunts are chosen and raised. They’re allowed to read. If only they didn’t force young girls to marry old, sterile men and raise them the way they do, then maybe they would actually want to marry and have children, which I should remind everyone is the whole reason Gilead was set up—to grow the population.

There are so many hypocritical things in this society. In the first book, I was angry because of the injustices in Gilead, but I thought the book was a great critical look into society and what could become. Now with this book, I’m angry because of the hypocrisy and the inconsistencies between the books’ details. Before, it felt like a cult. Now it just feels unrealistic. I can’t clearly explain my thoughts but ultimately I don’t think this book was necessary. There is an allure to the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale, the ambiguous cliffhanger of what will happen next. That book was so real and controversial, whereas this book feels like a forced follow-up (because it is) with holes and consistency errors that do not align with the original story.

I like the way the TV series has expanded on the story, but TV has the right to take creative liberties. But the author coming back thirty-five years later with a sequel, that feels cheap. What I don’t like is that it feels like you need to watch the show to understand this book. Because that’s how I knew who the characters were. Baby Nicole was named in the show, but not in the first book; in the first book, Offred didn’t have a second baby. I haven’t seen all of the show’s episodes yet though, so I don’t know how they fully compare.

On its own, The Testaments is nearly a five-star book, but when I compare it to The Handmaid’s Tale in terms of quality and also as a follow-up to the story, where characters already existed with predetermined personalities, this is a four-star book. Maybe even three because of how many issues I had, but I love Atwood’s writing style so much that I’m giving it four stars.

The main question I had while reading The Handmaid’s Tale and while watching the show didn’t even get answered though! I wanted to know why Gilead is so intent on killing people who don’t follow their laws when the whole purpose of setting up Gilead and its laws in the first place was to force procreation to keep the population growing. It can’t grow if you kill off everyone. Margaret Atwood said that the idea for The Testaments came from all the questions she got from readers over the decades about her original story, and this sequel is supposed to be answers to those questions. I think the most important question though is why the government kills so many people when they’re trying to expand the population, and I really think that should have been addressed. I guess it’s just because their society has become so manic and power-hungry at this point that they’ve lost focus on the original reason of creating Gilead and are more focused on being in control.

I liked this book, don’t get me wrong. I liked all three perspectives, although Daisy’s was my favorite. But I can’t help but compare this book to the original story of The Handmaid’s Tale, which is where I find faults. It didn’t feel like a genuine sequel because the characterization of Aunt Lydia and the society of Gilead were not how they were portrayed to be in the first book. There were a lot of inconsistencies, which was my biggest issue. Atwood still has given us a well-written book though—I do enjoy her prose—and that’s what really worked for me in this book. Of course with a dystopian society like Gilead, we always want to know more, we want to know what happens after the end. But sometimes it’s better not to know, and sometimes the story is stronger with a vague ending. This story is one of those times.

There’s something about the open-endedness of The Handmaid’s Tale that leaves the reader questioning what happened to Offred and Gilead that has a certain mystifying quality. But to know what happened later, and what happened behind the scenes, it takes away some of that ethereal quality. The Testaments is still an excellent book, and while I’m grateful for it as I’m the kind of reader who wants a wrapped-up ending with all my questions answered, I don’t think it was quite necessary. Something about the allure of The Handmaid’s Tale is that it was written thirty-five years ago but is still relevant today in its egregiousness, whereas The Testaments was written in today’s age and there’s just a different feel to it.

I think if you’re highly interested in The Handmaid’s Tale and are dying to know more about the continuation of Gilead or you’re a huge Atwood fan, pick this up. But if you were satisfied with the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale and are on the fence about whether or not to read the sequel, I think it’s a safe pass. Enjoy the mystique that the first book left you and move on.

Review: I HATE DRAGONS by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: 3/5 stars

This story was actually amazing, and I think this concept needs to be turned into a full-length novel for all the word lovers out there like me.

Skip’s knack, or special ability, is that he smells good to dragons. But he’s tired of being dragon bait for all the hunters. What he really wants to be is a lexicographer because his other knacks are the ability to hear spelling and the ability to hear punctuation when people talk. He wants to compile all the words in the world into a book so everyone knows how to spell them right. A dictionary! He wants to make a dictionary!

I love the idea of a fantasy world like this that has magic in it but also has a protagonist who’s focused on words and grammar. I love words myself and the making of dictionaries is a really fascinating concept to me. I need to see this story played out in a longer novel because I know it would be perfection.

I enjoyed this short little story, although of course I wish it were longer. It’s hard for me to rate short stories very high because of the lack of world building, characterization, plot, etc. present in the story, but what we were given with this one was good; although, I’m not a fan that the dragons talk here, but that’s a minor detail. I do hope someday Sanderson or someone else takes the idea behind this story and expands on it to create a rich fantasy world where the main character is creating that world’s first dictionary. I can’t tell you how much I love that idea. Plus, we need more of this story anyway because I need to know what happens after that cliffhanger!

“Did you know that fourteen thousand people died last year because of a misspelling? It was in a peace treaty. The scribe wrote the word ‘peace’ as ‘piece.’ ‘We will continue to dwell in freedom, and you will continue in piece.’ It started a war. They thought he meant ‘continue in pieces.’ Fourteen thousand died before they found the problem.”

Review: THE BURNING WHITE by Brent Weeks

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

This was my most anticipated book of the year. It was good, very good even, but the ending left me wanting more and disappointed me for a few reasons I’ll talk about below. I would still 100% recommend this series, but know that this conclusion will not answer all the questions you’ve gathered up throughout the five books and will leave you wondering why certain details weren’t included in the narrative even though their answers felt necessary to the story. I am very conflicted about my feelings for this book because what we got was great, but there was also so much that we didn’t get that we needed, and that was the biggest detriment to this book, sadly.

The beginning of this book had me feeling like it was much bleaker and more political than the other books. I remember having so much fun with the first four books in this series when I read them earlier this year, but this book didn’t feel the same. There was less drafting and character relationships and more planning and “important conversations.”

This book has a lot of talking about drafting but not a lot of actual drafting in the beginning. We do learn a lot more about chi and paryl in this installment though, which is really nice because the other four books focus on the main colors in the spectrum and give us very little information about the outer-spectrum colors.

The first 300 pages or so were rather slow-moving, and I honestly can’t remember what happened in them. Maybe some content could have been cut from there to make room for all the questions we needed answers for but didn’t get.

There are *MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD* for the whole series.

First I want to talk about the characters. Surprisingly, I didn’t enjoy reading from Kip’s perspective in this book as much as I did in the other books. In the transition from book four to five, which occurred back to back with no time gap in the story, Kip seemed to have aged emotionally about ten years. He has become a military commander and lost a lot of his fun-loving personality that we saw in the earlier books. That personality change was too abrupt to feel natural and made me not like Kip’s POV as much as I used to, which is sad.

Another surprise for me was how much I grew to like Andross in this book. He’s such a divisive character, completely despicable but also respectable, and his character arc across this series is truly incredible. I loved seeing his flashback scenes because I loved seeing his relationship with Felia. He has so much respect for her. Plus you learn so many answers during these Nine Kings card scenes to questions we’ve had since book one. I was super happy to see one last game of Nine Kings in this book. I’m glad Kip was able to get one up on Andross, too. He deserved it, plus how he came about that victory was beautiful. But are we seriously supposed to believe Andross was a full-spectrum polychrome his whole life but never drafted any colors but red?? He’s way too prideful to hide the fact that he can draft more colors than others so I really don’t think he was hiding that piece of information for his whole life. Either he lied or Brent Weeks pulled that reveal out of his butt as a really out-of-character thing to attribute to Andross; I refuse to believe he spent over forty years hiding that secret.

One of the best POVs, in my opinion, was that of Teia. I absolutely loved watching her slowly take down the Order of the Broken Eye, and then slay the entire Order all at once at the end. Everything about the execution of that plan was amazing. I really thought she died there for awhile. She was one of my favorite characters, so I’m happy she survived, but also (and I’ll talk about this more later) I think her survival kind of felt like she cheated death since she drank the same poison that four hundred other people drank and she was the sole survivor. Like really? I don’t like unbelievable plot twists.

Another perspective that I really enjoyed here was Karris’s. I loved watching her trial of faith at the beginning of the book as the White. I’m happy she lived until the end. She was truly one of my favorite characters. I love her fierce but soft demeanor. She’s a great role model. I’m also really happy we got to see what was in all those documents that Orea left her.

It was shocking to learn from those papers that the Prisms had been killing innocent children every seven years to keep up the pretense of being the Prism throughout the years. I was very curious to learn about how Prisms operated before Gavin, so I’m glad we got at least some information about that. That still doesn’t explain how they didn’t halo though. Them not haloing was one detail I really wanted to know but still didn’t find out, unless it was buried somewhere in the details and I missed it.

Also, at the end, it was mentioned that Gavin/Dazen couldn’t exactly become the Prism again, but did Weeks ever say who would be the new Prism? I don’t remember that. He also does not ever clarify who the true Lightbringer is and that bothered me.

We learn that Sevastian is a Lightbringer. (And to find out that Andross made Gavin kill Sevastian? I was questioning if he actually died from a blue wight; turns out he didn’t.) I’m not that surprised he’s a Lightbringer because it has been told to us since the beginning that Kip is the Lightbringer so it seemed like there had to be some twist with that. How can there be more than one Lightbringer though? I don’t understand.

It’s clear that Andross became the public figure of the Lightbringer, but who was the prophecy actually referring to? I personally think it was supposed to be Sevastian, but once he died, the Lightbringer kind of became all the Guiles together, each fulfilling part of the prophecy. Andross directed the light, Kip summoned the light with his white luxin blast, and Dazen sent the light. Sevastian would have likely been “The Lightbringer” if he lived, but since he didn’t, it took Kip, Dazen, and Andross together to do what the Lightbringer would have done. Also to support this theory is the fact that in the Lightbringer prophecy it says he will “cleave father and father and father and son,” and Sevastian’s death did that between Andross and Dazen and between Dazen and Kip. But if Sevastian hadn’t died then I don’t think that falling out would have occurred, so maybe the prophecy accounted for him dying and knew it would take more than one other to fulfill it later on? I know Andross took up the title of “Lightbringer” but it’s not actually him, that much is clear.

This is one example of a detail that would have been so easy to just pop into the narrative, clearly identifying who the Lightbringer is, you know because it’s the series namesake after all, but it was left out. Maybe even intentionally left vague to make us guess. I will say though, Kip and Andross fighting over who should be the Lightbringer but trying to get the other one to accept it, that was hilarious. What a turnaround of their relationship from how they were at the beginning of the series.

I found it very interesting that in Gavin’s chapters, he kept switching between referring to himself as Gavin and as Dazen, depending on which side of his personality was dominant at that moment. It wasn’t until we read “The old Gavin finally, finally breathed his last, and died” that Dazen stops being referred to as Gavin. He is just himself from that point on. But we never see a public announcement of this. The whole world is just expected to know that Gavin was actually Dazen the whole time. Really? I know a select few people already knew, but we should at least have seen him telling a crowd at the Chromeria and seeing them come to terms with it or something. But no. I really think this scene should have been included.

I don’t understand how Gavin Dazen was able to do some of the stuff he did at the end, like raise the towers and turn the mirrors, but I guess he had the literal hand of God helping him. There was quite literally deus ex machina happening. I’ve never seen that before, the actual God in an actual machine. That was really funny.

I personally love the religious parallels in this book. There are SO many patterns, phrases, metaphors, etc. in this book that relate directly to Christian theology. I don’t know why but I love seeing religion play such a large and critical role in fantasy novels. This one obviously relies heavily on it, maybe even to its detriment because the deus ex machina does feel like cheating in a way (especially since Kip actually wishes for a magical solution on page 666), but I’ll forgive it because this wasn’t even the biggest problem I had with this story.

In my review of The Blood Mirror, I listed some predictions for things that would be revealed in The Burning White. Some of them were touched on but some of them weren’t.

What I still want to know is what was Gavin’s seventh goal? His goals were such a big deal in the earlier books but didn’t matter at all in this one.

Also, I wish we found out more about the Two Hundred and the old gods. I feel like we didn’t get any concrete answers regarding them. They were the ones actually in the luxin cells with Dazen down there, and real Gavin was never actually down there it seems. They can “inhabit” a human host body. They can sometimes be seen by people when necessary, like with Kip receiving help from Rea Siluz. But like what else do we know? Not much. What was their purpose? Why even include them in the book?

One of my biggest disappointments with The Burning White is that I kept expecting to hear something about the Everdark Gates but we got NOTHING. Honestly, that was the biggest mystery to me at the end of The Blood Mirror, that the final battle of the series would have something to do with the Everdark Gates. They kept referring to it in the first four books, even had a prophecy about it and the Two Hundred, but nothing came of it. In my opinion, it should never have been brought up at all if it wasn’t going to be important in the end. Seriously, what was the point of them at all then? I’m truly upset that this thread was forgotten about because it was so important early on.

There were a lot of details in this series that I expected to get explained fully in this final installment, but they didn’t. I’m disappointed in that. This was a great book and had some amazing character arcs and battle scenes, but as the final book in a long series that has had some crazy twists and turns and misdirections, I expected more clarity than we got regarding certain topics.

It felt like a lot of threads were opened up in this book and then never touched on again. I’m actually really disappointed at the amount of abstract loose ends left dangling because Weeks’s other Lightbringer books were so tightly woven in my opinion, and with how long it took for this book to release, I expected it to be edited better. As an editor for a book/series this big, you need to write down every question and plot point you have while reading and then cross off the ones that get answered later in the book. Anything left open at the end either needs to be addressed or cut, and it really shows here that is not how this editor worked.

Along with the Everdark Gates not being mentioned at all in this book, we also have that one conversation with Katalina’s father when he comes to visit Andross and says he needs to tell Andross something, and then we never find out what that was. That whole scene had no purpose because it was never brought up again. Also, there is the scene with the kopi seller at the end of the book. We never find out who that is either. Karris was freaking out like, “YOU! I know who you are!” And everyone else was like, “Who?” but we never learn anything else about him. Was he the same man who appeared to help Cruxer? I don’t know.

Also, who is Kip’s real father? I thought it was Andross? But then when they are talking together, Kip is like, “Felia was afraid I was your bastard wasn’t she?” And Andross responds, “Yes. Wrongly.” So is he just hiding it from Kip or is he not actually his father? Because we know from his card that he actually did seduce Katalina. But at the beginning of the series, Katalina tells Kip, “Kill your father. Kill Gavin Guile.” We know Katalina seduced Gavin to get the Blinding Knife, so maybe even she doesn’t know who Kip’s real father is. It’s either Andross or Gavin. My guess is that it’s Gavin because Andross compares Kip to Felia so many times that I think that was foreshadowing that she is related to him, and if Andross was his father then Felia wouldn’t be biologically related to Kip in any way. Plus Gavin being the father fits in with the Lightbringer prophecy better than if Andross was his father. So I think Gavin is Kip’s real father.

Although The Burning White did have some killer scenes and some great character growth and depth, there was still a lot missing from this story. I was worried going into the book, even with its length of almost 1,000 pages, it wouldn’t wrap everything up, and I was right.

We had some amazing moments in this book, particularly toward the end, like when we learned that Ironfist’s true allegiance wasn’t to the Order but to the Chromeria. For a while there I actually thought he died, not sure how I misread that, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him alive at the end, and on the side of good. His plan of killing Grinwoody was a good one; too bad he didn’t get to follow through with it.

But then Teia eliminates the whole Order in one night. That was one of my favorite scenes, hands down. And then the postlude where she kills Grinwoody, that was good too. I was also soooo satisfied with Quentin killing Zymun. That was amazing, and way to redeem himself. I was waiting the whole dang book for Zymun to meet his justice, and it was served hot. But the best part was the “true ending” on Weeks’s website where everyone dies. That was the best scene of all.

And then we obviously have Karris stabbing Koios and him falling off the tower, man that was a good moment too. I also think it’s hilarious that Koios’s name changes from White King to Wight King. So fitting.

But then to counteract these great moments, we have my least favorite trope ever: when the dead person comes back to life. That usually feels so fake and like the author is trying to give us something dramatic but also soften the blow. In this book, Kip comes back to life. I obviously didn’t want Kip to die, but how was he able to come back to life? I know the power of God can do anything, but still, WHY did it happen? Because it’s taboo to kill off the protagonist? I’m not mad Kip lives again, but it contributes to my feelings that this book pushes the limits on reality a little too much to be plausible within this world’s limits, so it was something I didn’t totally believe happening but that I had to just accept and move on regardless.

It also seems like cheating that Dazen was restored anew, his fingers returned, his tooth replaced, a new eye given to him, and the ability to draft all colors restored to him. That’s too happy of an ending (sorry) for how this series was going. I already feel like with the final battle of the series we didn’t get enough major deaths and then on top of that, Dazen is made whole once more. At least he’s alive, why did he have to become perfect again? It’s too cleanly wrapped up.

The story felt like there needed to be more people who died for it to be believable, and it needed some people to stay dead who were dead. I’m happy Brent Weeks didn’t kill off people unnecessarily, but it still didn’t feel like there was enough death for the final book in an epic fantasy series that has a two-hundred-page-long final battle scene. The only death I feel like we got was Cruxer’s. I knew there had to be some deaths in the Mighty or it wouldn’t feel realistic, but I didn’t expect it to be him. I did notice the fun banter between the Mighty kind of died out after Cruxer’s death though. Their quips and jokes to one another was some of the best dialogue of this whole series. But back to the deaths: yes, the whole Order died, and yes, the White King and his army died, and yes, Zymun died, but those are all bad guys. Good guys die too, but who died besides Cruxer? I can’t remember anyone else, and that’s not believable to me.

I would really have loved to see an epilogue or something about the future of the Chromeria, like how it changed after this major battle, how Karris as the White changed the nature of the politics on the Jaspers, how the Freeings became different after learning what was really going on with Prisms, how the Lightbringer and the Prism each affect the future of the society differently, how the training of new Blackguards will be different, if the Chromeria will begin to respect all color drafters and not only the main spectrum drafters. Basically, the story ended without telling us the repercussions on the society of the final battle. I want to know how the five books’ worth of information changed the future of this world and if the Chromeria will ever change its ways. There is truly SO MUCH left to tell us that we will never know.

Lightbringer is still one of my favorite fantasy series, and I plan to reread it someday; hopefully I’ll be able to catch on to more details I missed the first time around. I really hope Weeks releases more books in the world of the Lightbringer because I truly feel like this book could have massively benefitted from another hundred pages or so to answer some questions that were entirely skipped. We needed more answers than we got, but overall it was a good story and I’m so happy to have read this series.

As long as you can speak, you’re not helpless, and you’re not powerless until you’re too afraid to. If you’re trapped in the darkness all alone, how do you know you’re alone and not actually surrounded by an army of friends, also silent, also afraid in the dark, merely waiting for the sound of one voice to rouse them from fear, to fight for freedom?