marruman

Pale Lights - Think of The Story

Song, Angharad and Maryam

Pale Lights book 3, chapter 61

Pale Lights is a webnovel that a friend recommended to me the other week and it has Eaten my *Mind* for the last half month or so.

It's a DEEPLY character-driven dark fantasy story about people, backed into a corner in a hostile world, showing the best and worst of themselves.

The deuteragonists of the first book are Tristan Abrascal, a thief contracted to the goddess of Luck and Long Odds, and Angharad Tredegar, a swordmistress and last scion of a murdered noble house whose contract with an enigmatic elder god grants her limited precognition, each find themself forced to take a perilous Test to join the Watch, a powerful organization of ruthless peacekeepers who are tasked with keeping international laws related to abuses of supernatural powers and divine contracts. They hunt monsters, they kill gods, and if you strike one down the entire organization will hunt you to the ends of the world. Earning membership with them may be the only thing that can keep either of them alive in the face of all the people who want them dead.

This book is *phenomenally* written, making incredible use of the multiple points of view to showcase the differences between the two leads and highlight the world around them and the other characters by painting them in the shadows of what the *other* lead does or does *not* notice about them.

The world itself is fascinating in an "I want to set a tabletop game here so badly it *burns*" kind of way. The world of Vesper does not have a Sun or Stars the way *we* know those things to be, instead it is shrouded in the Gloam, supernatural darkness that roves and storms like clouds, and above it all rests a Firmament, a physical barrier through which the Glare occasionally has formed cracks, resulting in patches of growth and life, though far too few to provide for Everyone. In addition to the cracks in the Firmament, there are ancient wonders of the peoples who came before, great engines of whirling lights and "Stars" hung far above that shine some light below to Navigate by.