Reddit reviews The Black Prism (Lightbringer Book 1)

Brian's book is just one of the novels in the Orbit Cyber Monday sale. All are $2.99 and a list of the fantasy titles is provided here:

Title|Author|Book #|Series|Rating | # Ratings
:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:
The Fifth Season | N.K. Jemisin | 1 | Broken Earth | 4.31 | 34,271
The Black Prism | Brent Weeks | 1 | Lightbringer | 4.24 | 68,494
The Last Wish | Andrzej Sapkowski | 1 | Introducing the Witcher | 4.20 | 58,433
Blood of Elves | Andrzej Sapkowski | 1 | The Witcher | 4.23 | 32,039
The Shadow of What Was Lost | James Islington | 1 | Licanius Trilogy | 4.16 | 9,656
Sins of Empire | Brian McClellan | 1 | Gods of Blood and Powder | 4.47 | 3,727
Promise of Blood | Brian McClellan | 1 | Powder Mage| 4.16| 26,245
The Blade Itself | Joe Abercrombie | 1 | First Law | 4.14| 111,811
Theft of Swords^1 | Michael J. Sullivan | 1 | Riyria Revelations | 4.21 | 38,525
The City Stained Red | Sam Sykes | 1 | Bring Down Heaven | 3.68 | 1,088
The Red Knight | Miles Cameron | 1 | Traitor Son Cycle | 4.12 | 10,607
Skyborn | David Dalglish | 1 | Seraphim | 3.92 | 1,010

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^1 In full disclosure - this is a book that I wrote.

I can't believe I'm the first person to suggest this, but you probably want Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe. The kid is not an overly powerful mage, but has to traverse the tower of death traps using his wits and clever ways no one has thought of before with his magic. Feel is sort of a D&D campaign/ dungeon crawl but with LitRPG overtones and protagonist who might just be on the spectrum.

Will Wight's Cradle series is a more Asian inspired take on magic with the protag again being considered deficient magically and having to think his way around the situations in unconventional ways to gain strength. Even by the middle of the third book, he's still not brimming with power.

Brent Week's Lightbringerhas some VERY powerful characters in it (in fact one of the POVs is the most powerful man alive), but one of the POVs is a kid just getting his feet under him. Good series, but probably the least similar to what you're asking for here.

The Secret Texts by Holly Lisle has a system that sounds like what you're looking for. If I remember correctly, the practitioners use blood to power their magic, and there are 3 types of practitioners.

The first group (the Falcons) are secretive and only use their own blood to power their magic. Their power is the weakest of the three, but they receive minimal downsides from using their magic (aside from blood loss) and are the only group who's magic is silent to other practitioners.

The second type (the Wolves) use a ritual circle to power their magic, using the blood of others. It loses any sort of stealth that the Falcons have (other practitioners know when they use it), but becomes more powerful as a result. It also carries a side effect: the practitioners spontaneously mutate at random, gaining monstrous patchwork appearances (claws, scales, fur etc over various parts of their bodies). Practitioners become marked for life.

I remember less of the third group (the Dragons), except that they are all dead at the start of the story. While not stealthy like the Falcons, their magic is the most potent. Users require no ritual circle like the Wolves do in order to use the blood of non-consenting victims. I don't remember the downsides to their magic though.

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Another good series that includes a price on magic is the Lightbringer Trilogy by Brent Weeks. Practitioners bend the different colors of light into magical substances with properties dependent on the type of light they were cast from. Blue is hard/smooth, green is springy, red is supa-flamable, ultraviolet is lightweight and invisible, etc. Not all users can use all the colors of the light, so the light they use must refracted from useless white light. Are you trapped in a blue box but can only use red light? Sucks to be you.

The main downside though is that the users have only a limited amount of color they can cast before a critical amount of substance builds up in their eyes. Once it fills their irises, they fall unconscious and wake up dangerous and very much insane. Since the government makes hunting down these insane users a top priority, practitioners have very short lifespans (usually about ~30 years if I remember correctly).

Eh, hope I helped.

Edit: Formatting and hyperlinks.

[The Black Prism]
[Summoner Series]
[Sorcery Ascendant Sequence]

I love the Kingkiller Chronicles! Have you read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson? If you're looking for something to keep you occupied, it's a long book and the beginning of his Stormlight Archive series. The second book just came out Tuesday, and I'm hoping to begin it soon! Another series by Sanderson that I like is the Mistborn trilogy. I also like the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. In terms of things I've read recently that weren't epic fantasy, I liked The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker, The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood, NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, and everything by Neil Gaiman.

I'm reading The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel right now, but I'm not loving it.

Did anyone just get a big flashback of The Black Prism?

The Black Prism. It's the first in an amazing series! I also really love The Night Angel Trilogy but it is really dark so I usually don't recommend it to people I don't know personally. The description:

>For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art-and he is the city's most accomplished artist.
For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he's grown up in the slums, and learned to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.
But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death.

What about the The Black Prism ? Pretty political centered and you couldn’t ask for better character building, although it is a bit more fantasy heavy than game of thrones. Promise of blood is super good but also has more fantasy than GOT.

The Way of Shadows By Brent Weeks is excellent too. I read this series when it first came out years ago (I was working at a book store) and I loved it. It's his debut series so it's a little clunky at times, but I thought it was fantastic. He has another really good series out too now The Lightbringer Series. I've read the first book in this series and was not disappointed.

Glad I could help!

Yea, you can if you want. But the thousands of other people who read his books say otherwise. http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Prism-Brent-Weeks-ebook/dp/B003JTHY76

All of his books together average at 9/10.