Pale Lights

[Rynjin]

Pale Lights is pretty good but it could definitely benefit from having a single protagonist. Angharad is genuinely the mill around the story's neck at the moment. She has no interesting perspectives and is one of the characters whose defining characteristic is "fights good".

Tristan chapters feel like some of the best parts of The Black Company and other dark fantasy novels. He's conniving, but clearly has a heart of gold and the clear dissonance between his thoughts and actions is just *mwah*. Love characters who think they're bad people and overlook all the good they do.

I could read about Tristan sneaking around an dreading random documents and lore **** all day. This could be an action-less series and his chapters would likely still be compelling. he is just an inherently interesting person regardless of the situation.

Angharad chapters feel like getting an interlude from some random Good-aligned Named in PtGE who exists only to prove why Catherine's worldview is correct. She's born of a parasite class and is overall wishy-washy in her characterization. The cognitive dissonance this character has (preaching about honor while trying to fumble around loopholes and technicalities in her own self-imposed honor code) is not nearly as interesting.

Angharad's biggest contrast to Tristan is that she gets put in many interesting SITUATIONS and makes them less interesting by them being from her perspective.

Pacing...eh. I'm on that "wait until there's about 4 chapters to read at once" life at the moment. The story reads good at that pace TBH.