The Blood Mirror

By: Brent Weeks

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

The nail-biting continuation of the Lightbringer series from New York Times best seller Brent Weeks. 

When does an empire fall? 

The Seven Satrapies have collapsed into four - and those are falling before the White King's armies. 

Gavin Guile, ex-emperor, ex-Prism, ex-galley slave, formerly the one man who might have averted war, is now lost, broken, and trapped in a prison crafted by his own hands to hold a great magical genius. But Gavin has no magic at all. Worse, in this prison Gavin may not be alone. 

Kip Guile will make a last desperate attempt to stop the White King's growing horde. Karris White attempts to knit together an empire falling apart, helped only by her murderous and possibly treasonous father-in-law, Andross Guile. 

Meanwhile Teia's new talents will find a darker use - and the cost might be too much to bear. Together they will fight to prevent a tainted empire from becoming something even worse. 

©2016 Brent Weeks (P)2016 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

Winner of Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel, 2013

Finalist of Endeavor, 2013

I waited to long to listen.

I read a review earlier on this book that said it was boring and all filler. I want go find that review and down vote it. There are massive plot advancements and bomb shells in this book. Action is a bit lite but dialogue is always deep and excellent. I freaking love this series. Rock on Mr. Weeks.

The start to get very interesting...

As this series approaches the finale some interesting bits of information are revealed that change the way you will view some of the main characters, none more so than Gavin Guile. No character arc has been more full of surprises than Gavin's and the revelations about his past in this book finally explain why he is known as the Black Prism. Gavin is in a bad spot for sure but he may yet play a key role in shaping the future of this world, but not for the reasons you think. He also isn't the only main character shaping up to be a major player in the outcome of the war as Andross, Kip, and Karris all find themselves jockeying for position in order to influence things to their preference. One thing is for certain, this book sets things up for a conclusion to the series that will be hard to predict.

Although I can see why some people walked away from this series at the beginning, I am glad that I didn't because the story continues to get more interesting and the character development goes in directions that I didn't see coming. That keeps the series fresh and enables it to stand out within a crowded genre where it is hard to be unique these days. Brent Weeks has done a great job at slowly revealing facts about each character's past that makes you rethink your views of the character as well as the likely outcome of the overall story arc. In my review of Brent's Night Angel Trilogy I commented that I liked how he shed new light on prior events from earlier in the series that made you think differently about the characters (and their motives) and he takes that concept to a whole new level in this series. One book remains and I will be eager to pick it up as soon as it is available.

Simon Vance does another excellent job and the combination of Weeks' writing with Vance's narration leads to an awesome listening experience.

Everything I told you in the last 3 books?

Just go ahead and forget about that stuff.

Seriously, there's so many plot twists that's be more accurate to describe the book as a plot knot. I think I wore "shocked face" for 3/4 or more of the book.

that's not to say it wasn't good, it was fantastic. but so many things get revealed that completely change everything that's happened and everything that we know that it's almost like we don't know this world after all, not after 3 books.

Great Book

this book was different than the others of the series. It gave so much insight to the characters and to the situation as a whole. The twists are very meaningful to you if you understand what they imply for the characters. excellent job!

Meh

Any additional comments?

This is the weakest book in the series. The entire book seemed to be focused on sex, and I mean the entire book...even ending with an author note on a medical issue regarding it. Clearly Weeks cares about the issue, but honestly it took away from the story. But whatever, even without that issue, the book itself didn't really go anywhere and was pretty boring. I usually listen straight through and couldn't do it with this one. I kept having to make myself finish it and listened to two other short audiobooks in between. While I do enjoy all the characters, this book felt like filler. Will still listen to the 5th book in the hopes it will improve. Simon Vance was excellent as always, thank goodness!

A jumble

A jumble of non sequitur conversations and bad bad things happening. I was so bord and let down at every anticlimactic scene.

good but not the worst of the 4 books

there's alot of cool insight to drafting and pretty cool plot twists , how ever unlike the other books kips story in this is less ... Dramatic ? the books really just one big set up for the fifth I guess.

A whole book of nothing but fluff.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea behind the series is a clever one. I really enjoyed the first two books as well as the character development and pace both were enough to keep me interested and wanting to know more. However, around the third book Weeks decided to start “fluffing” things up to justify his decision to turn a 3 book series into a 5 book one. I mean even in the middle of a conversation in the book between two characters where one needed to respond to the other, the character would go into a rant of internal monologue describing all of their fears, past experiences, observations, possibilities of possible outcomes, how they feel about theirselves and other nonsense, taking up paragraphs upon paragraphs. The simple conversation (that really wasn’t interesting in the first place) would end up taking up almost a whole chapter worth of writing. I wouldn’t be so critical if the rants proved to have valuable information, but it would just be pointless ranting and fluff.

Aside from the fluff, the book really has a lot of cringe moments with all of the adolescent humor and childish circumstances and thoughts. Vulgarity is used pretty frequently, so I guess I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend this book to a small child, but most of the situations and humor will probably only be appreciated by someone in their preteens or early teens. I won’t give any examples as I would like to keep this review 100% spoiler free.

I listened the audiobook for reference, and would sometimes listen for an hour or two straight with absolutely nothing interesting would be worth mentioning out of the whole stretch. When the twists and actual story progression would finally happen it would be very interesting and memorable , but all of the boredom leading up to it would almost take away from the excitement from it. It’s just mind boggling how this drug out, fluffed up story has gotten so much positive feedback. I have almost stopped listening to it several times but have been bound and determined on finishing it. However I may just be reading the cliff notes of the next book to find out what happens instead of wasting all of this time. The Blood mirror is not a recommendation I can make. Just read the summery (it will be short as there is not much substance in this whole book).

If the book would just stop getting so sidetracked (my guess is to add length to the book) the story would be an amazing one. Due to the possible greed (I’m assuming) this watered down half of a book is the stopping point for me. Like I said, I’ll probably just read the summary and skip all of the internal fears and monologues.

Also, read/listen to something by Brandon Sanderson if you would really like to be immersed in an amazing story. Brent Weeks isn’t even in the same Cosmere.

Filler book and not the good kind

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The first three books in the series have built up some credit so I would still recommend the series to friends but...The Blood Mirror is the bad kind of filler as it follows established characters for it's entirety but does not advance them by any measure that can be called story progress. We see little character growth on most and no growth in some. This stagnation also harms a few characters because we go through the book dealing with traits the character needs to over come in order to not seem one dimensional.

Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

However, even with the books short comings, Simon Vance still delivers a terrific performance.

Any additional comments?

I still feel invested enough in the world to read the next book, but if it's as stagnate and dull as this one was it may be time to say good bye to the Lightbringer series.

Not great

I didn't like this one as much as the previous 3 books. It does have some good parts but overall not much seems to happen in this book. It's also more into sexuality than I'd like. The reader changes several characters voices for no apparent reason. I hope the next one does better.