The Broken Eye (Lightbringer 3) - Brent Weeks

⭐ 8.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

Pretty sure I've rated all 3 books as an 8 so far, and this one is pretty consistent with the others. This book is enormous, and I am halfway through the 4th already, so I kind of forget a bunch of the main plot points. The universe is expanding, it still has twists to pull, and it isn't afraid to kill characters. I kind of wish there was more of a focus on some of the villains, since we get so many POVs but rarely from the bad guys. But I feel very connected to a couple of these distinct characters and am fully invested in the story.

I think this book suffered from its length, and I found the Teia arc to be pretty tiring. It tries to do the palace intrigue crossed with a super secret spy organization stuff, but I found tracking the motivations of the characters to be difficult. Happy to see this is the longest of the series and I won't have to grind through the others.

Lots of creativity in this story, although perhaps leaning a bit too heavily on shocking moments of graphic violence and boyish sexuality. The moments of humour are a bit Sandersonian, that is to say, childish, and that contrasted with the mature themes just makes the author feel a bit... suspect. I can overlook that given the cool world he has built up and the compelling characters.