Brent Weeks
Author of The Way of Shadows
About the Author
New York Time bestselling author Brent Weeks was born and raised in Montana. He graduated from Hillsdale College and is the author of the Lightbringer series and the Night Angel series. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Travis Johnson Photography
Series
Works by Brent Weeks
Night Angel Trilogy: The Way of Shadows • Shadow's Edge • Beyond the Shadows (2009) 1,158 copies, 23 reviews
I, Night Angel 29 copies
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Weeks, Brent
- Legal name
- Weeks, Brent
- Birthdate
- 1977-03-07
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Hillsdale College (BA | English)
- Occupations
- high school English teacher (Salem Academy)
- Short biography
- Brent Weeks (born March 7, 1977) is an American fantasy writer. His debut novel, The Way of Shadows, hit The New York Times Best Seller list in April 2009. Each of the five books in his Lightbringer Series made the NYT list as well, starting with The Black Prism in 2010. He lives and works near Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kristi, and their two daughters.
Weeks was born in Whitefish, Montana on March 7, 1977. He attended Whitefish High School, and graduated from Hillsdale College in 2000 with a degree in English. He has said that he decided to try writing novels during a semester abroad at Oxford College, an experience that was influential to him personally and professionally. He briefly worked as a teacher at Salem Academy in Oregon and as a bartender before moving to writing full-time. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Montana, USA
- Places of residence
- Montana, USA
Portland, Oregon, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Discussions
Fiction Assassin story/ Orbs of power in Name that Book (March 2016)
The Black Prism - Brent Weeks in FF-Leesclub Forum (February 2011)
Reviews
There are few books, let alone series, that I would agree to re-read at the drop of a hat.
This is one of them.
I have so much fun, so much respect for the sheer audacity, the roaring plot-lines, the twists and the reveals, even the funny-ass quips, that I usually ignore or gloss over any ACTUAL problems I might have had with the writing. Or the original choice to make so many of our MCs so freakishly morally ambiguous. So full of glaring faults and so equally full of fantastic heroism.
When show more we finally get to this last book in the Lightbringer series, I'm hopelessly in love. There is nothing that could stop me from devouring this book and crying and raging and even scratching my head and then railing against it.
Huh? Railing against the book? Well... yeah. If anyone knows the Jonah story, and I assume everyone does, Weeks takes all aspects of it and weaves it heavily into the series. Swallowing characters into deep prisons, railing against fate, finally finding peace, if not forgiveness, for all the things that have been done? It's all here. But first we're made to WORK for it. And when I mean work, I mean we get to enjoy having our favorite morally grey characters get tortured and grow as people by the end.
I admit I am a super sucker for these kinds of storylines. I usually get pissed off at long series with characters who are essentially timeless and never learn s**t. If anything, the Lightbringer is ALL about learning. But most of the time it's "Oh, damn, no, that's horrible... I can't believe it's actually this bad... but no, it's worse... nooooooo.....". To have an end to this series that is actually uplifting and hopeful, if not perfect, is a REAL TREAT.
So what do I think about *spoiler* *spoiler* *spoiler*, or the fact that so much of the plot is resolved by way of *spoiler*?
I say I'm fine with it. It's not like we weren't prepared for it from the very first book. Or that the real burden is on true ethical behavior. You might say that the purpose of this book was to throw out the whole adage of "many shades of grey" and give it the full polychromatic treatment. And I loved it.
And now that I've finished this, I've gotta find the time to do all five again in a row! And start crying again. Yeah, I know... fanboy. show less
This is one of them.
I have so much fun, so much respect for the sheer audacity, the roaring plot-lines, the twists and the reveals, even the funny-ass quips, that I usually ignore or gloss over any ACTUAL problems I might have had with the writing. Or the original choice to make so many of our MCs so freakishly morally ambiguous. So full of glaring faults and so equally full of fantastic heroism.
When show more we finally get to this last book in the Lightbringer series, I'm hopelessly in love. There is nothing that could stop me from devouring this book and crying and raging and even scratching my head and then railing against it.
Huh? Railing against the book? Well... yeah. If anyone knows the Jonah story, and I assume everyone does, Weeks takes all aspects of it and weaves it heavily into the series. Swallowing characters into deep prisons, railing against fate, finally finding peace, if not forgiveness, for all the things that have been done? It's all here. But first we're made to WORK for it. And when I mean work, I mean we get to enjoy having our favorite morally grey characters get tortured and grow as people by the end.
I admit I am a super sucker for these kinds of storylines. I usually get pissed off at long series with characters who are essentially timeless and never learn s**t. If anything, the Lightbringer is ALL about learning. But most of the time it's "Oh, damn, no, that's horrible... I can't believe it's actually this bad... but no, it's worse... nooooooo.....". To have an end to this series that is actually uplifting and hopeful, if not perfect, is a REAL TREAT.
So what do I think about *spoiler* *spoiler* *spoiler*, or the fact that so much of the plot is resolved by way of *spoiler*?
I say I'm fine with it. It's not like we weren't prepared for it from the very first book. Or that the real burden is on true ethical behavior. You might say that the purpose of this book was to throw out the whole adage of "many shades of grey" and give it the full polychromatic treatment. And I loved it.
And now that I've finished this, I've gotta find the time to do all five again in a row! And start crying again. Yeah, I know... fanboy. show less
Over the last few months, I've picked up and read books by quite a few rising stars of fantasy (The Name of the Wind, The Warded Man, for example.) Brent Weeks was the one author I'd been hearing a LOT about but hadn't read a book by yet, so I was pretty excited about The Way of Shadows.
Azoth has grown up on the streets with every aspect of his life subject to the whims of people stronger than him. He dreams of escape, ideally by apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint, the greatest master show more assassin alive. However, Blint famously does not take apprentices, and to be accepted, Azoth must prove himself by turning his back on his old identity, his friends and possibly his humanity.
New and edgy fantasy seems to have two major things - it's more gritty and realistic and strong women characters. Weeks definitely succeeds on the "gritty" count, there's plenty of rape, child sexual abuse, deaths of characters we like, a protagonist that kills innocent people for a living and so on. However, not only are there no strong women in the story, but all female characterisation seems to be derived from a hormonal teenager's view of the world. Every woman is either oversexed and isn't afraid to flaunt and use it (in an unflattering way, not in the unabashed and empowering way of the Kushiel's Legacy series), or she's a gentle and virginal soul that's prone to giggling adorably. And regardless of their type, they are all beautiful and have big breasts that are talked about endlessly. (Momma K might seem like an exception but she's actually just a hybrid of the two - the whore with a heart of gold.) The main love story of the book is laughable - I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that I prefer romances that develop slowly from getting to know people. I thought I was annoyed by Peter V. Brett's women in The Warded Man series, but this is way worse.
It's not like the characterisation of men is great, but it's still much better than that of the women. Azoth is a passable protagonist, but his motivations and thought process were never clear to me, so I was unable to connect with him. As a child, it was easy, he had a miserable life and Blint was the most feared man in the city and was likely to keep him safe. As he grew up, even though most of the book was from his point of view, it felt like I was watching him from a stranger's eyes. Blint seemed a bit more sympathetic, but his self-loathing is justified in the book. Logan is a Mary Sue with no real personality except perfection. The only characters I enjoyed were the three mages from Sho'cendi.
Another problem was that the book didn't flow well. We start with some scenes when Azoth was young, then there are some chapters where Azoth is portrayed at different ages with transitions like "Now he was sixteen." These sections don't seem to add anything to the plot, and were way too abrupt. There were also an innumerable amount of POV characters, often 3 or 4 in a chapter (and some characters got only one POV in the entire book.) There are some books in which this is executed well, but in this one, it was disjointed and seemed like a cheap way of letting the reader know what was going on while sacrificing characterisation and suspense.
There were some things I liked about the book, like the concept of a criminal underworld controlling the Kingdom, but not enough. I don't think I'll be bothering with Shadow's Edge. show less
Azoth has grown up on the streets with every aspect of his life subject to the whims of people stronger than him. He dreams of escape, ideally by apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint, the greatest master show more assassin alive. However, Blint famously does not take apprentices, and to be accepted, Azoth must prove himself by turning his back on his old identity, his friends and possibly his humanity.
New and edgy fantasy seems to have two major things - it's more gritty and realistic and strong women characters. Weeks definitely succeeds on the "gritty" count, there's plenty of rape, child sexual abuse, deaths of characters we like, a protagonist that kills innocent people for a living and so on. However, not only are there no strong women in the story, but all female characterisation seems to be derived from a hormonal teenager's view of the world. Every woman is either oversexed and isn't afraid to flaunt and use it (in an unflattering way, not in the unabashed and empowering way of the Kushiel's Legacy series), or she's a gentle and virginal soul that's prone to giggling adorably. And regardless of their type, they are all beautiful and have big breasts that are talked about endlessly. (Momma K might seem like an exception but she's actually just a hybrid of the two - the whore with a heart of gold.) The main love story of the book is laughable - I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that I prefer romances that develop slowly from getting to know people. I thought I was annoyed by Peter V. Brett's women in The Warded Man series, but this is way worse.
It's not like the characterisation of men is great, but it's still much better than that of the women. Azoth is a passable protagonist, but his motivations and thought process were never clear to me, so I was unable to connect with him. As a child, it was easy, he had a miserable life and Blint was the most feared man in the city and was likely to keep him safe. As he grew up, even though most of the book was from his point of view, it felt like I was watching him from a stranger's eyes. Blint seemed a bit more sympathetic, but his self-loathing is justified in the book. Logan is a Mary Sue with no real personality except perfection. The only characters I enjoyed were the three mages from Sho'cendi.
Another problem was that the book didn't flow well. We start with some scenes when Azoth was young, then there are some chapters where Azoth is portrayed at different ages with transitions like "Now he was sixteen." These sections don't seem to add anything to the plot, and were way too abrupt. There were also an innumerable amount of POV characters, often 3 or 4 in a chapter (and some characters got only one POV in the entire book.) There are some books in which this is executed well, but in this one, it was disjointed and seemed like a cheap way of letting the reader know what was going on while sacrificing characterisation and suspense.
There were some things I liked about the book, like the concept of a criminal underworld controlling the Kingdom, but not enough. I don't think I'll be bothering with Shadow's Edge. show less
Gave up at 174 pages. Really, I'd given up a hundred pages before that, but it was a day or two before I could get to the library. It didn't give me any reason to reconsider.
Two stars because there's nothing utterly wrong with this except the fact it's completely standard world-fantasy. There's a teenage male protagonist who's going to have his world turned upside down, manifest some powers, discover some parentage, probably save the world, though in the first 170 pages the book never really show more got around to establishing what form the forces of darkness/destruction were going to take. OK fine, sure. Yawn.
But really, the sins of this book that made me put it down were:
1) Such mediocre prose. Not just is there is no joy in language to be had through this book, but it always felt on the verge of clunky. Unnecessary simplistic actions described, just to move the character around the space. No grace. No style. An occasional sense of humour. Bully for you.
2) The bloody magic system. For starters, it was so tremendously complicated that whole chapters had to be devoted to basically showing how it worked, and the narrative still had to have little explanations sprinkled through it. I really like to be able to know what's going on, not because you've told me, but because it makes sense. I like to be able to predict and intuit. Plus, everything was so brightly coloured it was like wargames with the Wiggles.
3) I didn't like any of the characters (all two of them - though by the time I finally put the book down, there was a third. I didn't like her either). Oh, there were hints of a more fulsome depth to our main character, and a wonderfully interesting dark past that seemed to have all the good, intriguing story in it. But it became clear I was going to have to sit through a whole lot of wankery as these cardboard cutouts (failed to) develop in predictable ways. And nuts to that. The problem with "fast-paced" fantasy, is that the characters don't have any time to show anything like character (and what little they did show was unsympathetic, you smug git) before they launched into a hundred and twenty pages of action.
A hundred and twenty pages of action is not a bad thing by itself (hello, Neal Stephenson). But I have to care. And I didn't. show less
Two stars because there's nothing utterly wrong with this except the fact it's completely standard world-fantasy. There's a teenage male protagonist who's going to have his world turned upside down, manifest some powers, discover some parentage, probably save the world, though in the first 170 pages the book never really show more got around to establishing what form the forces of darkness/destruction were going to take. OK fine, sure. Yawn.
But really, the sins of this book that made me put it down were:
1) Such mediocre prose. Not just is there is no joy in language to be had through this book, but it always felt on the verge of clunky. Unnecessary simplistic actions described, just to move the character around the space. No grace. No style. An occasional sense of humour. Bully for you.
2) The bloody magic system. For starters, it was so tremendously complicated that whole chapters had to be devoted to basically showing how it worked, and the narrative still had to have little explanations sprinkled through it. I really like to be able to know what's going on, not because you've told me, but because it makes sense. I like to be able to predict and intuit. Plus, everything was so brightly coloured it was like wargames with the Wiggles.
3) I didn't like any of the characters (all two of them - though by the time I finally put the book down, there was a third. I didn't like her either). Oh, there were hints of a more fulsome depth to our main character, and a wonderfully interesting dark past that seemed to have all the good, intriguing story in it. But it became clear I was going to have to sit through a whole lot of wankery as these cardboard cutouts (failed to) develop in predictable ways. And nuts to that. The problem with "fast-paced" fantasy, is that the characters don't have any time to show anything like character (and what little they did show was unsympathetic, you smug git) before they launched into a hundred and twenty pages of action.
A hundred and twenty pages of action is not a bad thing by itself (hello, Neal Stephenson). But I have to care. And I didn't. show less
Azoth is an 11-year-old boy barely surviving in the streets of Cenaria City. He's part of a brutal gang of children who will do anything in order to survive. But Azoth wants to do more than survive; he wants a way out of the Warrens and he sees an apprenticeship with master assassin Durzo Blint as his ticket. Now if he can just find Durzo and persuade him of the same thing...
My sister shoved this book into my hands and said, "Read this. Now. It will be your next book crack fix." That might show more have set my hopes a little too high, but it was still a great read.
The beginning was a bit startling. Fairly or not, I think of my baby sister (who is 30, by the way) as being more innocent than I am. So when the book is suddenly talking about rape as a means of subduing the boys in the gang, I was appalled. It wasn't graphic, but there was no question what was going on. I started texting her about it. She didn't remember it at all. "Oh, maybe that's why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo didn't bother me." Blink. Blink. Okay.... But the author addresses this in his interview at the end. He says, "Hope isn't vibrant unless it has to be chosen over despair. Redemption is cheap unless there's a suffocating darkness in which even a hero is tempted to hide....without that, light and peace are meaningless, worthless, boring." OK. I get it. I actually make this same argument to my husband whenever he asks why I read "stuff like that." Granted, what I normally read doesn't get this dark, but he has to listen to me working out what's going on within the darker parts of my books. He doesn't know that's what he's doing, and I just realized it myself. He's my sounding board to make sense of the darkness. Hmmm.
Philosophical meanderings aside...
This twisted and turned a lot. That's why my sister loved it. Sometime over the past several years I've actually gotten decent at predicting where a story will go, but I never knew with this book. I was absolutely clueless. And I still feel clueless about where the sequels will go.
I liked Azoth quite a bit. He's doing such terrible things for such a good reason. It's not just about his own survival, but that's all I'll say. He's conflicted but he's good at what he does. He ends up living a double life and making some friends, despite Durzo Blint teaching him to stay detached from everything. Blint's philosophy seems to be, "If you don't care, it doesn't hurt." Azoth just can't bring himself to live his life that way.
I mostly liked the other characters as well. I loved Mama K and wish I knew more about her. Her role is not very big, but it is hugely surprising. I like Azoth's friends a lot but I don't want to go into details. There are even some fairly minor characters that I want to know more about. I hope they get more page time in the rest of the series. I can't bring myself to like Blint. Even knowing more about him, I just can't like him. His aloof attitude turns me right off. What's the point of a life lived only for killing with no love or friendship mixed in? Yet that's what he chooses.
After a certain point, I did have a hard time putting the book down. The real action gets started, twists turn on twists, and I just had to see what was going to happen next.
If you can make it through the bleakness and violence of the first 75 pages or so, I do recommend this book. Azoth is a character you'll want to meet. show less
My sister shoved this book into my hands and said, "Read this. Now. It will be your next book crack fix." That might show more have set my hopes a little too high, but it was still a great read.
The beginning was a bit startling. Fairly or not, I think of my baby sister (who is 30, by the way) as being more innocent than I am. So when the book is suddenly talking about rape as a means of subduing the boys in the gang, I was appalled. It wasn't graphic, but there was no question what was going on. I started texting her about it. She didn't remember it at all. "Oh, maybe that's why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo didn't bother me." Blink. Blink. Okay.... But the author addresses this in his interview at the end. He says, "Hope isn't vibrant unless it has to be chosen over despair. Redemption is cheap unless there's a suffocating darkness in which even a hero is tempted to hide....without that, light and peace are meaningless, worthless, boring." OK. I get it. I actually make this same argument to my husband whenever he asks why I read "stuff like that." Granted, what I normally read doesn't get this dark, but he has to listen to me working out what's going on within the darker parts of my books. He doesn't know that's what he's doing, and I just realized it myself. He's my sounding board to make sense of the darkness. Hmmm.
Philosophical meanderings aside...
This twisted and turned a lot. That's why my sister loved it. Sometime over the past several years I've actually gotten decent at predicting where a story will go, but I never knew with this book. I was absolutely clueless. And I still feel clueless about where the sequels will go.
I liked Azoth quite a bit. He's doing such terrible things for such a good reason. It's not just about his own survival, but that's all I'll say. He's conflicted but he's good at what he does. He ends up living a double life and making some friends, despite Durzo Blint teaching him to stay detached from everything. Blint's philosophy seems to be, "If you don't care, it doesn't hurt." Azoth just can't bring himself to live his life that way.
I mostly liked the other characters as well. I loved Mama K and wish I knew more about her. Her role is not very big, but it is hugely surprising. I like Azoth's friends a lot but I don't want to go into details. There are even some fairly minor characters that I want to know more about. I hope they get more page time in the rest of the series. I can't bring myself to like Blint. Even knowing more about him, I just can't like him. His aloof attitude turns me right off. What's the point of a life lived only for killing with no love or friendship mixed in? Yet that's what he chooses.
After a certain point, I did have a hard time putting the book down. The real action gets started, twists turn on twists, and I just had to see what was going to happen next.
If you can make it through the bleakness and violence of the first 75 pages or so, I do recommend this book. Azoth is a character you'll want to meet. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 40
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 25,929
- Popularity
- #802
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 622
- ISBNs
- 314
- Languages
- 11
- Favorited
- 71