The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks

Book One: The Black Prism

Kip Delauria is scrounging for shards of luxin on a battlefield of the False Prism’s War outside Rekton. He comes upon a green wight, Gaspar Elos, bound and trying to escape. Satrap Garadul has declared himself king and is planning to lay waste to Rekton; there is an army camped not far away. Kip races to the home of red dyer Master Danavis, who urges Kip to find his friends and run. During his escape attempt, Kip inadvertently drafts. Later he finds his mother, Lina, gravely injured, hidden in a cave with one of his friends. She gives him a rosewood box containing a mysterious jewel-encrusted dagger before dying.

At the Chromeria, Prism Gavin Guile receives a message from Lina, telling him that he has a son in Rekton named Kip. Gavin soon sets off with Blackguard Karris White Oak. They make their way to Tyrea on a luxin skimmer/glider of his own creation, which allows them to cross the entire Cerulean Sea in a day. Upon their arrival they discover that Rekton has been destroyed, and they find Kip trying to defend himself from Garadul’s Mirrormen. Gavin quickly dispatches the soldiers, realizing that Garadul is trying to set up his own Chromeria and has declared himself king. Gavin recognizes Kip as his bastard and claims him; Garadul takes the dagger before they leave.

Gavin and Kip make their way back to the Chromeria, where Kip is immediately tested to see what he can draft. He is discovered to be a superchromat and is revealed to be a blue/green bichrome. He also reunites with Aliviana (Liv) Danavis—a friend from his hometown and daughter of Corvan.

Meanwhile in Tyrea, Karris has set out on her own. She finds Corvan Danavis—Dazen’s greatest general in the False Prism’s War—in a basement, the lone survivor of the brutal massacre in Rekton. Karris is captured by the king’s forces, and she discovers that King Garadul’s right hand, a polychrome wight who calls himself the Color Prince, is the one inciting rebellion. He is Karris’s brother, whom she’d thought long dead. Corvan begins to make his way to Garriston to warn the governor.

Back at the Chromeria, it is revealed that Gavin is in fact Dazen, masquerading as his older brother. The real Gavin Guile (‘the prisoner’) is still alive, held in a blue luxin prison far beneath the Prism’s Tower. Prism Guile meets with the Spectrum, the governing body of the Seven Satrapies, and tells them what Garadul is planning. Gavin decides to make his way to Garriston with Kip, Blackguard Commander Ironfist, and Liv—who is to be Kip’s tutor. Once they arrive in Garriston, Gavin deposes Governor Crassos and takes command. He reunites with and reinstates General Danavis, giving his old friend command of Garriston’s defenses.

Gavin plans to build a magnificent yellow luxin wall around Garriston in an attempt to save the otherwise vulnerable city. Brightwater Wall is nearly complete when a cannonball destroys the gate as Gavin is finishing it. Meanwhile, Kip sneaks away to infiltrate Garadul’s camp as a spy to find Karris, and Liv goes with him; Kip is captured, and Liv is invited to join the Color Prince. Liv saves both Kip and Karris by agreeing to join the Color Prince if he’ll spare Kip’s and Gavin’s lives.

During the Battle of Garriston, Gavin goes down after drafting white luxin, Kip kills King Garadul, and the rest of the forces retreat to the docks. Kip helps rescue Ironfist, and they run across the ocean to one of the barges, where Kip races to meet another threat: a young polychrome, Zymun, who has been assigned to assassinate Gavin. Zymun’s attempt fails when Kip intercedes. Kip takes the dagger Zymun used and realizes it is the same blade his mother gave him; he recovers the knife, which now has a blue gem in the hilt.

Gavin realizes he has lost the ability to see or draft blue. The prisoner has broken out of the blue prison to find himself inside a green one.

Book Two: The Blinding Knife

Gavin and the refugees from Garriston are aboard the barges, and he tries to reconcile with the fact that he has lost blue. He saves the refugees from a sea demon, then departs with Karris for Seers Island, where he negotiates with the Third Eye, a powerful Seer, to get permission for the refugees to build a home on her island. The Third Eye knows who he really is and that he has already lost blue. She gives Gavin