The black prism is a story that felt incohesive. There were a lot of different moving parts and they didn’t really come together in a satisfying way. The world has deep lore and it is relatively interesting, but from the viewpoint of the characters, it doesn’t matter all that much. The characters themselves are also just not very compelling. The only one that I felt some sort of attachment to was the prism himself (Gavin), but that was mostly because of his past. His backstory is definitely the most interesting part of the book and that’s rough, because it switches perspectives quite a bit.

I also want to mention the unnecessary sexualization of a couple of the female characters. Additionally, there’s some gratuitous gore that comes out of nowhere. These things kind of pop up randomly and don’t really serve any purpose. It’s weird because it feels like the story wants to be mature, but the way it depicts some things comes across as childish. Now Kip, being a hormonal teenager, sees many things sexually and that makes sense. Basically any time a girl talks to him, he overthinks it. However, the story itself does the sexualization even when he’s not around. There were scenes where the “strong female character” kept ripping her dress and slowly unveiling more skin. I get that she’s a sexy bad ass, but the fact that this happened in the heat of a warzone made it feel completely misplaced.

The random scenes of gore that are especially detailed also pulled me out of the experience. I understand that it’s a war torn world; it seems to be somewhat of a dark fantasy after all. However, these depictions didn’t really fit into the narrative for me. It’s kind of a journey of self discovery for a teenage boy, so having 2 or 3 hyper-detailed scenes of mutilation were off-putting.

Kip is supposed to be sympathetic, and while he has no real faith in himself, he has that special main character energy. This is only in theory though, because he is almost unbearable throughout the story. There are some moments where he really makes a stand, but generally, he’s kind of a wet blanket. Now Liv is way more interesting and I’m glad that she’s in the story because she feels a lot more grounded than the rest of them. She makes some decisions that are morally difficult but I can understand because of her background. Then there’s the prism and his whole deal was really what kept me reading. His dark secret was that driving force, and though it wasn’t resolved in this book, I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series. It just seems like this book wasn’t sure what it wanted to be and that led to a story that didn’t leave any real impact on me. Now if you like medieval dark fantasy, you would probably enjoy this, but you would need to overlook the fact that this story has no real direction, so I would urge you start a different series altogether.