Pale Lights
by ErraticErrata
- Graphic Violence
- Profanity
- Sexual Content
From the author of "A Practical Guide to Evil", comes the Pale Lights series.
Book I: Lost Things
Tristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, as his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.
It is also an opportunity to get even with the infanzones, the nobles he’s lived under all his life, and it so happens that Tristan has a full ledger’s worth of scores to settle with them.
Lady Angharad Tredegar has fled halfway across the world, leaving behind a ruin of a life: her family butchered by a ruthless enemy, their estate torched and their nobility revoked. Yet no matter how far she flees the blades of assassins follow, and she finds herself growing desperate for any protection. She has one relative left to call on, her estranged uncle, but she finds that the safety he offers comes at a cost.
Angharad has sworn revenge, however, and her honour will allow for no compromise. She will do what she must to survive so that one day bloody vengeance can be visited upon her enemies.
The paths of the two take them to the doorstep of the Watch, but for desperate souls like them enrolment is a lost cause. They will have to do it the hard way instead, by surviving the trials on the isle known as the Dominion of Lost Things.
Where every year many go, and few return.
Book II: Good Treasons
The trials of the Dominion are over.
The four survivors have become students of Scholomance, enrolling together as a cabal, yet even on those infamous grounds they soon learn none are beyond the reach of their pasts.
Angharad Tredegar is returned to a semblance of the world she left behind, but finds her honor sorely tested by bargains offered - every bit as tempting as in the stories and even deadlier.
Tristan Abrascal needs answers. Mysterious enemies keep trying to abduct him, his classroom does not exist and he’s now had several conversations with dead people. Worst of all, his carrots keep dying.
Maryam Khaimov is going mad, which would worry her less if it were happening on schedule. More frightening yet is the possibility that she is not, and there truly is someone else going around wearing her face.
Song Ren must forge the others into a functional unit, all the while fending off enemies on all sides: rival cabals, vengeful countrymen and the deluge of implacable foes her companions simply cannot seem to stop attracting.
Failure is not an option, for Song must bring back honor to her family’s name whatever the cost: it is the only way to keep their disgrace from literally eating them all alive.
And as the four chase shadows in Scholomance, in the distance looms the greater test awaiting them in the Asphodel Rectorate. Asphodel is a faded power, the rotten carcass of what it once was, but under that rot looms darker things - of which monsters might just be the least dangerous.
Besides, is treason really such an evil when you have the best of reasons for it?
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Update schedule: once a day until caught up to the wordpress version, then weekly on Fridays. My Patreon has three advance chapters.
Cover done by Gwennafran, whose work you can find here.
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Masterful
Reviewed at: Chapter 3
The plot is deep and multifaceted, with a cast of devious, brilliant and gifted individuals; all with their own motives and goals.
The worldbuilding is rich and nuanced, and the character development mostly delightful, though it would be nice for me to experience some more warming in the ice injected into the veins of most of these characters, but then again; the sociopathy adds to excitment, and it's a very exciting read.
The prose is mature and the content emotional. This isn't just some kid becoming the greatest blah blah blah, and a boring training arc for 1000 chapters. This is love, ambition, revenge, loss, insanity, psychopathy and courage. Needless to say, i'm having a blast. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
It's really good, just solid fantasy.
Reviewed at: Chapter 1
If you think you might enjoy this, you should read it.
It's slightly grimdark in spots, but more black company or Malazan levels of grim than truly grimdark.
Whilst I wouldn't say it is on par with the latter, not sure if that's possible in my opinion, this is worthy of print.
Head and shoulders above your average RR content.
love how flawed these characters are
Reviewed at: Chapter 11
not a fan of Ocean's 11 / heist type plots at all, detest them really, more POV usually means a lesser quality story, doesn't matter here as this author is something special, I love a good character driven story, write real complex characters with real complex motivations and honest not contrived faults and set them loose
One of the most enjoyable reads Ive found here.
Reviewed at: Chapter 43
This fantasy story weaves multiple characters together across a storyline of intrigue, adventure, and murder. The people are diverse, the dialog strong, and the storyline interesting from beginning to end. For a person who sometimes finds his eyes wandering when the prose gets too flowery I read every word, and on the whole enjoyed it.
But because I did read every word I saw the spelling errors and a few minor grammar issues, some of which slowed me down as I worked to figure out what the author meant.
If you like gunpowder high fantasies I bet you'll like this story. Even better, the author has a second book already in the works. I cant wait.
Quality writing
Reviewed at: Chapter 17
I think this wouldn't be out of place in a mass market hardcover in a book store. The characters are excellent as well. I wish I could find other books by this author. I am eager to see the rest of the story. The action scenes are well thought out.
An Excellent Story
Reviewed at: Chapter 42
The world building, characters, and story have all been excellent. The setting is incredibly unique in its base structure, with the world shrouded in dark and haunted by Eldritch things. The nations and cultures of the world all draw influence from real world cultures without being copies and with enough unique adaptations to let them fit in this strange world. The characters are all distinct, with their own backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, and biases which we can see influencing both their perspective and their voice, and I look forward to seeing them grow and change. The story is well plotted and satisfying, with each development making sense while also not being completely predictable. The prose is excellent. Every now and then there is a grammatical mistake, but the descriptions and dialogue are all amazing. Full disclosure ErraticErrata is one of my favorite authors, so this review is incredibly biased, so take that as you will.
Very good, some unfortunate grammar obstacles
Reviewed at: Chapter 58
Overall the story is very good. I liked the first book but the second is even better bringing you a complex but not convoluted story as well as relatable characters that are not your everyday heros.
The author gives us mostly four different perspectives through the four main characters. Most chapters are mixed in that the perspective changes in between the chapter, some have only one protagonist.
The setting, world building, character names, landscape descriptions etc. are pretty unique. Lots of cultures get mixed together to form something that I personally have not read before.
My one critique is that there are lots of small to medium grammatical errors that mostly don't but sometimes do interfere with the otherwise fluid and comprehensive experience that is reading this story. A lot of comments below the chapters highlight these errors but it seems like at least on plotgenre.com the author is not including the suggested fixes.
I hope the author looks at improving this but even if not the story is good enough to be a recommendation for anyone being interested in something not quite seen before here on royalroad (personal opinion with the limited things I have read).
Oh, now I am two words short so there you go...
Very Engaging
Reviewed at: Chapter 6
ErraticErrata is my favorite online author.
Pale Lights is his new book set in a fully original universe, with expansive worldbuilding and a massive cast, filled with interesting and intriguing characters. The main protagonists will often have opposing viewpoints, so be aware before you start reading, that all the characters are flawed and biased. If you trust both protagonists conclusions entirely all the time, you’ll end up in trouble. They both come with massive blinders, and it’ll be your task as a reader to figure out what these are. Critical thinking is advised.
This is the sort of story that quite literally will make me dedicate hours every week making fanart. My main warning would be that you may suddenly find yourself short on extra spare time after spending it on EE’s books.
Not a fan of multiple leads but this is something
Reviewed at: Chapter 39
Ok so this is a good as it gets in terms of prose. The story may seem a bit hard to get into early on but a few chapters in and you’re flabbergasted by the amount of thought and detail put into the story, the world building, the characters... a villain in the story is better written than plenty of mcs ... must read.
The world building might be the most impressive thing. Incredibly original, confusing at the beginning but extremely well explained in a very breadcrumbs per chapter kind of way.
The first arc might seem a bit slow but the amount of stuff that is explained more than justifies it. Now on the 2nd book the story is Really coming together in a way that feels really well earned and satisfactory.
Give it a try!
A Very Good Start
Reviewed at: Chapter 35
First, I should admit some bias as a huge fan of the author's previous work.
With that out of the way, Pale Lights is absolutely fantastic so far. 35 chapters in, we have 2 solid main characters with wildly diverging perspectives on the same events, as well as a supporting cast with some very strong personalities that make it easy to remember the dozens of relevant names.
The worldbuilding, which in my opinion has always been EE's greatest talent, is shaping up to be great. We still know relatively little about the wider world of Vesper, but every piece of information is both interesting and feels like a natural extension of what we've seen so far.
The mystery writing is fantastic. It's not a genre that EE did too much with in his last work, outside of brief interludes, but it's done very well here. Setting up a mystery with a huge number of new characters, rules that the readers and most characters don't yet know, in a location with no real-world analogues, is incredibly hard. EE manages to do it in a way that keeps your guesses just slightly behind the pace of reveals, or in rare moments if you're very sharp you might figure it out a chapter or two ahead, and it feels great. There are no simple characters, and everyone is constantly guessing at whose secrets are known by whom and what that means. It's solid political intrigue.
The only thing holding me back from giving this 5 stars is that it's still new, and has room to develop in ways that might not be as good as the beginning implies. I really cannot recommend strongly enough that you give it a try, though