The Blinding Knife

Executive Summary: A vast improvement over [b:The Black Prism 7165300 The Black Prism (Lightbringer, #1) Brent Weeks https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327921884s/7165300.jpg 7534979]. It still has all the same flaws of the that book, but in far less quantity.Audio book: I read rather than listened to the first book in this series. The fact that [a:Simon Vance 5602 Simon Vance https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1240014151p2/5602.jpg] was the narrator helped push me over the edge on continuing this series after being rather underwhelmed by the first book.As expected, he does an excellent job with a great variety of voices and inflections that just make the story come alive. If you do audio books and want to read this book, I highly recommend going this route.Full ReviewI'm hard pressed to say why I like this book so much better than [b:The Black Prism 7165300 The Black Prism (Lightbringer, #1) Brent Weeks https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327921884s/7165300.jpg 7534979]. It contains all the same elements that drove me nuts in the first book: Cartoonish villains, juvenile wish fulfillment, and stupid and obnoxious characters; albeit in lesser quantities.I think it's a combination of things. I love the magic school trope, and we get a lot of that here, at least to some degree. We also get more of Iron Fist who was probably the only character from the first book I liked the entire time. There is the addition of Teia, who I like a lot despite sharing some of the same annoying characteristics of Karris. However, she's got more of an excuse.You also finally get a lot more explanation of the magic that I found lacking in the first book. There is still a hand waving, but I found myself no longer caring as much.Kip is still obnoxious though. I think this book would be a lot better with a different protagonist. I like the idea of doing a parody of the chosen one trope, and I think it works well for this series. I just wish he did it different somehow. I did find myself much more tolerant of Kip by the end of the book however, but far from liking him.Gavin and Karris are both mostly enjoyable, though some of their parts were pretty eye rolling. Andross Guile makes for an interesting antagonist at times, but is over the top in his actions far too often. At least he's less of a cartoon character than some of the other antagonists.I think that this series is going to be relegated to “guilty pleasure”. I don't find it to be a book that can be held up as excellent as some might, but it is a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next book much more than I was looking forward to this one.