The Blood Mirror by Brent Weeks is the fourth in a planned series of five epic fantasy books. The series has a wonderfully imaginative magic system in which magic users can turn light into a physical substance. luxin. Each spectrum of light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) produces luxin with different properties and uses. If you’ve not yet started this series, I heartily recommend it. Go start with The Black Prism. I strongly suggest experiencing this series in audiobook format due to the excellence of the narrator, Simon Vance. Initially, the series was planned to be a trilogy; then four books and recently Weeks announced he would need five books to tie up his series. The Blood Mirror is the penultimate entry and sets up things for the finale. What I liked The romance. While it is not a focal point of the series or book, there is a love story in The Blood Mirror and it is beautiful. It focusses on that very first serious/sexual relationship in which a character must learn to love another real life person, warts and all, and not just a fantasy crush. Our protagonist’s learning to accept his partner, emotions, needs, strengths…
As you will see from my picture, I got my hands on a copy of Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin! This is the sequel to Wolf by Wolf which I adored. You can read my review. Those of you who follow my blog will know that I missed out on this one at BEA in Chicago, and that it was one of my most anticipated reads for 2016. Hachette Canada was kind enough to send me an Advanced Reader Copy. Thank you soooooo much. Expect me to share my thoughts on it over the next week or two. Blood for Blood will be released on November 1st 2016. More exciting news, this time from the world of audiobooks. Brent Weeks announced this week that Simon Vance has recorded The Black Prism, the first book in Weeks’ Lightbringer series. It was originally recorded by Cristofer Jean, and Vance took over narration duties from book two, The Blinding Knife. Now, no disrespect to Mr. Jean, but this is Simon Vance we’re talking about. Winner of multiple Audies and other awards and a damn good narrator. I personally credit Brent Weeks and Simon Vance for my love of audiobooks. When listening to…
The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks is the third and penultimate in his Lightbringer series following on from The Black Prism and The Blinding Knife. It continues the story of Prism Gavin Guile and his illegitimate son Kip and their attempt to stop the Seven Satrapies from collapsing under the pressure of the Color Prince and his new gods. My impression of this book was that it was very much a middle book – concentrating more on positioning the characters for the final assault. It concentrated more on character development than moving the plot forward. While there were a couple of eyebrow raising moments for me, but nothing compared to the couple of WTF?!? moments of the previous books. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. What I liked The magic system. For this series Weeks has created a wonderfully developed magic system. I usually consider Brandon Sanderson the master of magic system development, but with this colour-based system Weeks could give him a run for his money. In essence, Weeks’ magic system works in the opposite manner to a candle. A candle takes a physical substance – wax – and converts it into light. Weeks’ magic users (drafters)…
It always seems to happen this way. I’d placed holds on three library e-books and all three became available within a few days of each other! On my reading list I now have: Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort by J.K. Rowling. (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in French). For some reason it really amuses me to see how the Potter-specific terms were translated into French; “Muggle” becomes “Moldu”, “Squib” becomes “Cracmol” and “Crumple-Horned Snorkack” becomes “Ronflak Cornu.” However, Quidditch remains Quidditch. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen. I think this was a recommendation I picked up from GoodReads. I don’t know much about it, other than that it’s a well written memoir by a Pulitzer prize winning author but it seemed an interesting read. It was free to borrow from the library, so I thought I’d give it a go. Rapture by Kate Lauren. This is the fourth and final part of Lauren’s Young Adult fantasy series about angels and demons. It’s not the best series in the world, and probably not one I’ll invest in to buy, but again, I don’t mind borrowing it from the library to see how it ends….