The Blinding Knife – Brent Weeks
Review by: Noelle Nichols
If you’re reading this review, I’m assuming you’ve finished the first book. If you haven’t, there are spoilers . Read at your own risk.
This book picks up shortly after the ending of the first ,with Gavin Guile, who we know is Dazen Guile, losing his ability to draft one of the colors. Which means his reign as Prism is unfortunately fated to be short. Book two is where I would say the plot really thickens and where things start coming together. If you don’t read epic fantasy, this is when you get out. Things tend to spiral out of control in big series like this, and I was not surprised to see that gods were wound into this tale.
A very watered-down version of the plot is: the Color Prince, is trying to take over the Seven Strapies, Gavin/Dazen is trying to maintain control while he’s losing his power, making him more and more like a normal human being (the horror!).
That blasted dagger we were supposed to care about in the first book, finally has a purpose.
The plot of Dazen/Gavin thickens and comes to a head. One of my favorite parts has been the details and intricacies that went into creating the prison for Gavin. They show how meticulous and calculating a character he is. My favorite kind of villain…er, I mean hero? It can really go both ways in this book, depending on who’s backstory you sympathize with most, which adds a bit of depth to all of the characters and tension between everyone involved, and makes it fun for the reader to see how this ends up. There are multiple times I was confused as to who was who, but Brent Weeks does a good job of reminding us in the narrative
The appendix has grown since the first book, and the amount of passion and dedication to the series is well shown in the notes and descriptions.
Again, I’m going to say the brilliance behind this book lies in the small moments. The intricacies in the things that don’t seem like a big deal, but then are wound into a much bigger plot. I was pleasantly surprised with a few seemingly inconsequential tangents that ended up being really cool stories in and of themselves. I can see why this series is so large.
I particularly enjoyed liking Kip a little more in this book, as I had not been fond of him in the previous book. He’s okay now. Karris is still okay, though we get a bit more solved between her and Gavin/Dazen. Liv is as despicable as she was in the first book.
To sum up this book: things get complicated.
Oh, and on annoyance in the paperback. The formatting changed from book one and I’m not sure why. It didn’t save paper, so I’m curious as to why it happened. I like my books to look the same, so the inconsistency threw me cracking open the second book. To me, page numbers in the margins look tacky, but that’s a petty comment on my part.