In a world where magic is drawn from light, the most powerful person alive is the Prism — the one drafter who can split white light into every color of luxin and hold the fractious Seven Satrapies together. Gavin Guile is that man: charming, brilliant, and running out of time, with only a handful of years left before his power kills him and secrets that could shatter everything he has built.
Far away, an orphaned teenager named Kip watches his town burned by a rogue warlord's army. When Kip survives, he discovers a connection to Gavin and to the war that scarred the satrapies a generation ago — a war whose losers and winners have never stopped fighting. Pulled into the Chromeria, the seat of magical power, Kip must learn to draft and to navigate a court where nearly everyone is lying about something.
The first book in Brent Weeks's Lightbringer series, The Black Prism launches an epic fantasy built on one of the genre's most inventive magic systems, full of political intrigue, buried history, and morally tangled characters.