Unfortunately not as compelling as the Way of Shadows trilogy, the Black Prism still has its high points.

The magic system, which author Brent Weeks promoted on his website for months before the book came out, is as original as promised: practitioners can draw light into their bodies and manifest it as solid material. Each color has different physical properties, and in the combination of these colors magic-users can produce some pretty impressive effects.

So the magic works, but it's still not quite as smooth as I would like it to be. In some places, it feels completely natural and makes sense with the world--in other places, it feels like they're making up magical rules as they go, or ignoring the rules they've already set. It's a little shaky, but not too bad.

Sadly, the place where the novel loses out the most is in the characters. The main character, Gavin, is the Prism: the single person in charge of all magic-users everywhere, and the "only" person who can use magic in all seven colors. He's by far the most interesting character, and you find out very early in the story that he's actually keeping his own twin brother held captive in a magical prison he personally designed. This is the good guy, folks.

So Gavin's an intriguing character, but there are two more protagonists left: Gavin's son Kip, who's chock full of insecurities and possesses very few redeeming qualities, and some girl named Liv. I say "some girl" because honestly I can't think of any defining traits she has. She plays very little role in the plot, but at least when we're reading her perspective we can't hear Kip whining.

But I want to be clear: there's a lot working in this novel. The only reason I've been as critical as I have is because I keep comparing this book to the Way of Shadows trilogy, author Brent Weeks' only other work. That trilogy is awesome, probably one of the top twenty books in fantasy, and this one...isn't. It's still a B+, but that's disappointing after Weeks showed us what he's capable of delivering in WoS.