ridel@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Burning White by Brent Weeks (Lightbringer, book 5)
Conservative in Pacing, Imagination and Messaging
1 star
The Burning White is divisive ending, and a great deal of your enjoyment will be dependent on your relationship with the Christian God. I understand the hate. There are many great critiques that analyze this flaw so I will instead focus in a different direction. I found the novel to be entertaining, but ultimately hollow as I finished the climax and denoument.
The biggest failure with this book is its literal size. It's HUGE. It's two books bundled as one. My expectations grew larger with every page that passed. Unfortunately it tells a simple story using the three-act structure, which means the pacing is incredibly slow. Everything in the first half is inconsequential and repeated four times for all four main characters. All the revelations are in the back half. By keeping all the good stuff to the end, final battles with multi-book villains are short, underdeveloped, and their resolutions …
The Burning White is divisive ending, and a great deal of your enjoyment will be dependent on your relationship with the Christian God. I understand the hate. There are many great critiques that analyze this flaw so I will instead focus in a different direction. I found the novel to be entertaining, but ultimately hollow as I finished the climax and denoument.
The biggest failure with this book is its literal size. It's HUGE. It's two books bundled as one. My expectations grew larger with every page that passed. Unfortunately it tells a simple story using the three-act structure, which means the pacing is incredibly slow. Everything in the first half is inconsequential and repeated four times for all four main characters. All the revelations are in the back half. By keeping all the good stuff to the end, final battles with multi-book villains are short, underdeveloped, and their resolutions feel disappointing. As a reader, I simultaneously feel cheated at the story being insufficient AND frustrated at how long the novel is.
When a book is large, it telegraphs the author's intent to wrap up the series. Therein lies the second failure: insufficient imagination. The Burning White wraps up the most pressing story events, but fails to address themes from the last four novels. The author's story outline was too conservative; more consistent with Act Two than an attempt to wrap up a five novel epic. There was little effort to change the status quo and events unfolded as expected from the end of The Bloody Mirror.
Ultimately, I can't recommend this novel. I was entertained but the investment of time was not worth the result. Even overlooking the Christian elements, I'm left disappointed with the worldbuilding, cheap character arcs, and simplistic resolution to previously complex plotlines. I'm quite sad that this is how it ends.
Not Recommended. Better you never read this and use your imagination as to how it all ends.