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Pale Lights
Vesper is a world built on the ruins of older ones: in the dark of that colossal cavern no one has ever known the edges of, empires rise and fall like flickering candles.
Civilization huddles around pits of the light that falls through the cracks in firmament, known by men as the Glare. It is the unblinking stare of the never-setting sun that destroyed the Old World, the cruel mortar that allows survival far below. Few venture beyond its cast, for in the monstrous and primordial darkness of the Gloam old gods and devils prowl as men made into darklings worship hateful powers. So it has been for millennia, from the fabled reign of the Antediluvians to these modern nights of blackpowder and sail. And now the times are changing again.
The fragile peace that emerged after the last of the Succession Wars is falling apart, the great powers squabbling over trade and colonies. Conspiracies bloom behind every throne, gods of the Old Night offer wicked pacts to those who would tear down the order things and of all Vesper only the Watch has seen the signs of the madness to come. God-killers whose duty is to enforce the peace between men and monsters, the Watch would hunt the shadows. Yet its captain-generals know the strength of their companies has waned, and to meet the coming doom measures will have to be taken.
It will begin with Scholomance, the ancient school of the order opened again for the first time in over a century, and the students who will walk its halls.
Civilization huddles around pits of the light that falls through the cracks in firmament, known by men as the Glare. It is the unblinking stare of the never-setting sun that destroyed the Old World, the cruel mortar that allows survival far below. Few venture beyond its cast, for in the monstrous and primordial darkness of the Gloam old gods and devils prowl as men made into darklings worship hateful powers. So it has been for millennia, from the fabled reign of the Antediluvians to these modern nights of blackpowder and sail. And now the times are changing again.
The fragile peace that emerged after the last of the Succession Wars is falling apart, the great powers squabbling over trade and colonies. Conspiracies bloom behind every throne, gods of the Old Night offer wicked pacts to those who would tear down the order things and of all Vesper only the Watch has seen the signs of the madness to come. God-killers whose duty is to enforce the peace between men and monsters, the Watch would hunt the shadows. Yet its captain-generals know the strength of their companies has waned, and to meet the coming doom measures will have to be taken.
It will begin with Scholomance, the ancient school of the order opened again for the first time in over a century, and the students who will walk its halls.
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July 8, 2026
Book 3!
Pale Lights is a (mostly) weekly web serial that’s been running for several years now. This review is for the third book of it, but I imagine it would be absolutely incomprehensible without starting from the beginning – and, being a web serial written and released week-by-week, each of those books reaches well into the hundreds of thousands of words. It’s thus pretty much impossible for me to give any real unbiased opinion here, as I’m sure I’ve been frog-boiled chapter by chapter about plenty of things and reading the whole thing in one go is a different experience entirely. All that said, I found this book weaker on the whole than the previous two – more bloated and meandering, with a cast that’s finally really sprawled out of control. Not to say it was bad, there were still plenty of big moments that worked perfectly and a few really lovely character arcs, but the web-serial-ness of it all has begun to grate.
The plot picks up with the beginning of the Unluckies’ second year in monster-killing mercenary order-militant officer-training-school, their reputation much-burnished by rumours of last book’s mess with the kaiju-sized skeleton god. They don’t have long to enjoy it, as the Scholomance campus is ravaged by the inexplicable appearance of a monstrous lemure, a scheming professor organizes a delve to chart a path through the bloodthirsty school itself in search of Lucifer’s own library, and each member of the cabal finds themselves entangled and endangered by their connections to the wider world in their own ways.
Which is maybe half the book’s major subplots. A lot happens in what is technically just the first half of the school year. Complaining about padding and wheel-spinning in a web serial is really just missing the point, but for the urgency and sense of a ticking plot the overarching plot was supposed to have I feel like cutting out some of the less compelling or urgent plotlines to keep any sort of narrative momentum would have really improved the reading experience.
This is in large part an issue of cast management, I think. Book 3 adds a fifth protagonist and roughly-equal point of view character to the cabal, and spends a decent amount of time laying the groundwork for the eventual inclusion of a sixth next book. Given that each comes complete with their own significant character arc and subplot and usually something of a personal supporting cast, this leads to a certain loss of focus. Splitting most chapters between some or all of them is probably preferable to not hearing from one for a month and a half cycling through them, but it does mean that a great deal of word count is spent basically checking in and making sure you remember who is who in between things actually happening.
I don’t have any general objection to sprawling casts and an impractically large number of POV characters, honestly – see my undying love of Downbelow Station – but aside from the bloat I think the heart of my issue here is that we have five different protagonists getting similar amounts of screen time all going similar trajectories on very roughly similar arcs. Which is to say, they’re all fantasy action/adventure protagonists who will end the book on a triumphant note, having reconciled with or overcome their personal issues and learned to trust in and draw strength from their friends and comrades. That most of them came to a head and were resolved almost at once during the climax of the book created an obvious enough pacing problem that the story resorts to some awkward timeline manoeuvring just to try and keep things slightly interesting. The niggling worry that for most of the Unluckies ‘positive character growth’ seems to some degree involve sanding off their funnest and most compelling traits really doesn’t help either.
I’m not sure why this irks me so much more than objectively similar structural issues in book 2 did? Maybe it was 4 protagonists instead of 5, or maybe just the very fact that we already did this last book. Though honestly it might just be that I found the specifics and execution of last book’s climax more compelling. There were certainly fewer ostensibly major villains who I just kind of forgot about by the time their big moment came.
Which is all very negative, as I’m judging this against the very high bar set by the earlier books in the series. On balance this is still a very well-done flintlock fantasy action/adventure series with an excellent setting and on-the-whole amazing character work. Tediously drawn-out (and just generally tedious) romance subplot aside, Tristan remains one of my absolute favourite not-quite-so-clever-as-they-think scheming bastards in fiction, and this was a great book for Song and (especially) Angharad as well. I’m slightly on the fence regarding the setting starting to really unfurl and show us its fundamental conflicts now – Lucifer and what we’ve seen of an angel were both magnificent, but I’m not confident that there’s any way to get the Unluckies to a point of being able to deal with them consistently which doesn’t break my engagement in the story one way or another. Still, I have enough faith to see where it goes.
I could keep listing the story’s positives, but it would largely be reiterating things said in my reviews of previous books. In the final analysis, I’m still very much looking forward to see where the story goes from here. Even if dear Manes I hope we leave the ‘semesters of magic university’ structure behind sooner rather than later.
Book 2!
Pale Lights has been, for the last few years, the only serial fiction I have been consistently reading week-to-week as each chapter drops. So I’m truly not sure if I can give any sort of objective recommendation on whether you should read it, both because I have long since lost all perspective and because reading this as a complete work is almost certainly an entirely different experience from inhaling each chapter as it comes out. That said: it’s really good! If you like janky epic fantasy webfics I would even say it’s actually the best out there (note that I hate most janky epic fantasy webfics).
Set in the subterranean, god-haunted, repeatedly post-apocalyptic and roughly early modern fantasy world of Vesper, Book 2 of Pale Lights picks up pretty quickly after Book 1 finished – though now with twice as many protagonists. Along with Tristan (alley rat, unrepentant thief, sole follower of a very involved and often unhelpful goddess of luck) and Angharad (noblewoman fleeing her family’s purge and massacre, masterful duellist, swore her soul to an ancient eldritch god for the strength to take vengeance) from the first book, the story now gives equal time to the POVs to their minders from the last trials: Song (expert sharpshooter, aspiring officer, heir to literally the most cursed and hated family name in the world) and Maryam (‘Navigator’ (sorceress), technically princess and first witch of a now-conquered and enslaved people, recipient of a ritual that was supposed to fill her with generations of occult knowledge and might which inexplicably failed). Together they form a cabal at the newly reopened Scholomance, the incredibly cursed and actively malevolent but otherwise extremely useful university used by the god-hunting Watch to train the next generation of their officer corps.
The book follows the four of them through their first year of studies, first at the Scholomance itself and then on a practical exam where the four of them are sent to the troubled principality of Asphodel to fulfill a contract for its ruling Lord Rector. As might be expected, nothing at anything point goes according to plan, and all four of them are hounded at every turn by the ghosts of their past. Also scheming gods, titanic monsters, and incredibly unwise romantic entanglements.
Now this is serialized web fiction, and has both the strengths and the weaknesses typical of the medium. You spend an immense amount of time just existing in all four protagonists’ brains, and every one of them is by the end intensely nuanced, interesting and compelling (likeable, even!) after getting their own richly detailed character arc through the book (The friends reading along with me week-to-week basically all disagreed, but for me at least the story managed the rare trick of not having a single POV I sighed in disappointment to realize was the focus of an update). The worldbuilding is also full of fun details and extraneous little complications that don’t serve any particular purpose in the story, but do an incredible job of making Vesper feel like an actual place with a real history and not just dark fantasy set dressing. On the other hand, the pacing is...let’s be nice and say unhurried. Some of those fun tangents outstay their welcome, and I literally needed a reference page to keep track of all the supporting characters at points. It was also written in pretty much real time across nearly two years, and you can definitely feel that it took some time to decide just what the defining arcs and conflicts of the main cast were going to be – not to even mention the number of plot hooks or details that were basically forgotten about as things progressed.
The plot is divided fairly sharply into two sections – first at the Scholomance and then on mission in Ashpodel. The break is sharp enough I wondered for a while why this wasn’t just broken into two books instead of one (it’s certainly long enough), but having actually finished it all four character arcs really do run through both sections and only get really satisfying thematic resolutions at the very end. Of the two, I vastly preferred the second half – but then, that’s at least mostly just because my tolerance for magical school/university plots has worn incredibly thin these days. (Even the Rectorate plot verged a bit too close to ‘this is all the protagonists running through their teacher’s rat maze and everything is going according to plan’ at times, especially with a couple late revelations that irked me for entirely petty and subjective reasons). But even the true university sections thankfully only spend a bare minimum of time on expository lectures and stressing about exams in favour of politics, vendettas, and kidnapping or murder attempts.
I really can’t figure out quite how to phrase this without sounding dismissive, but the overall shape of the story is basically about the power of friendship, and learning to implicitly trust and rely on (and risk and sacrifice for) your friends instead of trying to control or manage everything yourself. But it really genuinely works! In large part I think because all four protagonists have arcs that approach and reflect it in their own distinct ways and end up reinforcing each other (the big climax cutting between all of them as they culminated was incredibly well done) – but also just because the sheer length the medium enables let the story really dwell on the 2nd act where they’re all wounded and resentful and keeping increasingly dangerous secrets from each other. Entertaining, compelling dysfunction that almost convinced you they really were just going to fall apart.
The worldbuilding is – well, hardly groundbreaking (the historical inspirations of every cultural are entirely transparent, though there’s at least a little twist on each), but a fantasy world that’s early modern rather than medieval in inspiration is honestly still refreshing enough to buy more goodwill than it’s ever needed from me. And the execution of how it’s portrayed does an immense amount to make the place feel lived in and just compelling – the different cultures and states all cohere and are full of enough bigotry, hypocrisy and petty vendettas to be believable, mostly. The gods, monsters, and magic is all genuinely eerie and on occasion awesome in the literal sense. The aesthetics of the whole series are just incredible, really - just don’t think too much about the whole ‘everything is a giant underground cavern’ thing when picturing scenes.
It helps that sheer constant, unrelenting practice have left Erratic really quite good on the level of prose. The banter and little slice of life moments are endearing and both heart-warming and funny as they’re supposed to be, and the dire ruminations and real drama almost always lands like it’s supposed to. Not always in either case, but honestly far more consistently than a great many traditionally published (and edited) authors seem to manage.
It’s impossible to really recommend sprawling web serials like this to 90% of people, but if you are in the market for a secondary world fantasy epic I really don’t think you can do better than this one.
-------------------------------
Okay technically this is a web serial, not a book but a) it’s divided into ‘books’ and the first one recently finished, b) I’ve read like 350,000 words of it at this point and c) I want to talk about it a bit.
So, Pale Lights is a fantasy adventure story, set in a world where some prehistoric cataclysm left humanity living in a truly vast (multi-continental) cavern beneath the earth, full of old gods and devils and a darkness that will sink into you if you go too long without exposing yourself to the Glare of light spilling down from various openings in the firmament (and potentially stored in a variety of magic devices). It stars Tristain, a conman and gutter rat who accidentally killed the wrong man, and Angharad, a minor noblewoman fleeing assassins after the slaughter of her family, as they flee their enemies into the theoretical safety of the Watch, a sovereign military order that might get you killed hunting down rogue devils but is more than powerful enough to offer amnesty to all its recruits and force everyone else to go along with it. Specifically they both try to join through the fastest and most guaranteed method there is – survive and pass the trials on the Dominion of Lost Things, and your spot among their ranks is totally assured.
As you might expect, this doesn’t exactly go according to plan for either of them.
The plot’s sufficiently full of twists and detours that I’m not going to bother trying to give any sort of detailed synopsis, but one incredibly endearing thing about the whole serial is that it’s structured around these three deadly trials intended to test one’s mettle and worthiness, and absolutely none of them go according to plan. Which, speaking as someone who is generally left pretty annoyed by stories where the entire plot is ‘and then the protagonist surpassed the entirely artifical problems an outside authority put in front of them, meeting expectations perfectly!’, I really did greatly enjoy.
The plot was also just satisfyingly and surprisingly brutal – EE’s previous gargantuan serial was explicitly (though increasingly theoretically as it went on) YA, and made plot armour an explicit part of the setting’s metaphysics. Pale Light is...very much that. There were several points where it felt like at least one named, fleshed out character with their own arc was dying horribly every chapter. Bracing! Relatedly, and necessary for that, the cast is big, into the dozens of fleshed out characters the plot leaves behind and goes back to whenever they’re relevant or on screen again. Which is the sort of indulgence you can get away with in a web serial. (I’ve actually seen a lot of people complain that the cast was too large or hard to keep to track of. Those people are weak.)
Speaking of characters – the supporting cast is great, and a decent number of them are well-drawn and earnestly compelling, but a story like this really lives or dies on the strength of its protagonists. And I’d say Pale Lights passes that test with flying colours – Tristain and Angharad are both more than strong enough to carry a story on their own, but jumping between them lets the story have a lot of fun with their biases and what they assume or overlook, and their (very different and often wildly misinformed) perspectives on each other, their goals, and the supporting cast are just a joy. EE’s always had a real talent for internal monologue and character voice (even in my least-favorite bits of A Practical Guide to Evil, Cat’s perspective was a consistent delight), and being able to consistently jump between and develop two here really makes them shine.
The fact that they’re both a) actually adults, b) morally dubious and c) incredibly devoted to a particular sense of morality and ethics that’s minimum 30 degrees off anything conventionally ‘good’ helps a lot, too. Tristain my beloved shameless vendetta-obsessed will-knife-anyone-but-his-closest-friends-without-a-second-thought gutter rat.
It’s actually really quite interesting how, despite one being a chivalry-obsessed bravo whose word is her bond and so finesses her oaths and promises like a mobbed up lawyer and the other being a street criminal second story man with a sideline in poisons, they’re both really incredibly defined by a fixation on loyalty and vengeance.
The setting is interesting, though the narrative does sometimes feel a bit like it’s straining under the weight of all the weirdness piled onto it, with the whole ‘everyone’s underground and 90% of light is artificial’ thing. The various gods are all interestingly eldritch, especially Tristain and Angharad’s patrons (Fortuna probably my third favourite character in the whole thing overall), the devils and lemures and monsters are all fucked up and horrifying in a really fun way, and the magic is appropriately occult-seeming.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, exactly, but I do find the utter shamelessness with which EE copies real world cultures to create fantasy counterparts kind of endearing? I really can’t overstate how incredibly obvious it is that, like, ‘this empire is based on the Aztecs. They border this feudal mess based on India, and this league of Republics based on China. The main city the story launched from is Venice. The big creepy cursed academy is called the Scholomance. The treaty with the devils binding them not to eat people is called the Iscariot Accord. Die mad about it.” Gives the whole thing a real tabletop RPG setting vibe, honestly.
Anyway, can’t really say to what degree my attachment to this was built from the Stockholm Syndrome of following it week-to-week, but probably one of my favourite stories read this year, and eagerly looking forward to book 2.
Pale Lights is a (mostly) weekly web serial that’s been running for several years now. This review is for the third book of it, but I imagine it would be absolutely incomprehensible without starting from the beginning – and, being a web serial written and released week-by-week, each of those books reaches well into the hundreds of thousands of words. It’s thus pretty much impossible for me to give any real unbiased opinion here, as I’m sure I’ve been frog-boiled chapter by chapter about plenty of things and reading the whole thing in one go is a different experience entirely. All that said, I found this book weaker on the whole than the previous two – more bloated and meandering, with a cast that’s finally really sprawled out of control. Not to say it was bad, there were still plenty of big moments that worked perfectly and a few really lovely character arcs, but the web-serial-ness of it all has begun to grate.
The plot picks up with the beginning of the Unluckies’ second year in monster-killing mercenary order-militant officer-training-school, their reputation much-burnished by rumours of last book’s mess with the kaiju-sized skeleton god. They don’t have long to enjoy it, as the Scholomance campus is ravaged by the inexplicable appearance of a monstrous lemure, a scheming professor organizes a delve to chart a path through the bloodthirsty school itself in search of Lucifer’s own library, and each member of the cabal finds themselves entangled and endangered by their connections to the wider world in their own ways.
Which is maybe half the book’s major subplots. A lot happens in what is technically just the first half of the school year. Complaining about padding and wheel-spinning in a web serial is really just missing the point, but for the urgency and sense of a ticking plot the overarching plot was supposed to have I feel like cutting out some of the less compelling or urgent plotlines to keep any sort of narrative momentum would have really improved the reading experience.
This is in large part an issue of cast management, I think. Book 3 adds a fifth protagonist and roughly-equal point of view character to the cabal, and spends a decent amount of time laying the groundwork for the eventual inclusion of a sixth next book. Given that each comes complete with their own significant character arc and subplot and usually something of a personal supporting cast, this leads to a certain loss of focus. Splitting most chapters between some or all of them is probably preferable to not hearing from one for a month and a half cycling through them, but it does mean that a great deal of word count is spent basically checking in and making sure you remember who is who in between things actually happening.
I don’t have any general objection to sprawling casts and an impractically large number of POV characters, honestly – see my undying love of Downbelow Station – but aside from the bloat I think the heart of my issue here is that we have five different protagonists getting similar amounts of screen time all going similar trajectories on very roughly similar arcs. Which is to say, they’re all fantasy action/adventure protagonists who will end the book on a triumphant note, having reconciled with or overcome their personal issues and learned to trust in and draw strength from their friends and comrades. That most of them came to a head and were resolved almost at once during the climax of the book created an obvious enough pacing problem that the story resorts to some awkward timeline manoeuvring just to try and keep things slightly interesting. The niggling worry that for most of the Unluckies ‘positive character growth’ seems to some degree involve sanding off their funnest and most compelling traits really doesn’t help either.
I’m not sure why this irks me so much more than objectively similar structural issues in book 2 did? Maybe it was 4 protagonists instead of 5, or maybe just the very fact that we already did this last book. Though honestly it might just be that I found the specifics and execution of last book’s climax more compelling. There were certainly fewer ostensibly major villains who I just kind of forgot about by the time their big moment came.
Which is all very negative, as I’m judging this against the very high bar set by the earlier books in the series. On balance this is still a very well-done flintlock fantasy action/adventure series with an excellent setting and on-the-whole amazing character work. Tediously drawn-out (and just generally tedious) romance subplot aside, Tristan remains one of my absolute favourite not-quite-so-clever-as-they-think scheming bastards in fiction, and this was a great book for Song and (especially) Angharad as well. I’m slightly on the fence regarding the setting starting to really unfurl and show us its fundamental conflicts now – Lucifer and what we’ve seen of an angel were both magnificent, but I’m not confident that there’s any way to get the Unluckies to a point of being able to deal with them consistently which doesn’t break my engagement in the story one way or another. Still, I have enough faith to see where it goes.
I could keep listing the story’s positives, but it would largely be reiterating things said in my reviews of previous books. In the final analysis, I’m still very much looking forward to see where the story goes from here. Even if dear Manes I hope we leave the ‘semesters of magic university’ structure behind sooner rather than later.
Book 2!
Pale Lights has been, for the last few years, the only serial fiction I have been consistently reading week-to-week as each chapter drops. So I’m truly not sure if I can give any sort of objective recommendation on whether you should read it, both because I have long since lost all perspective and because reading this as a complete work is almost certainly an entirely different experience from inhaling each chapter as it comes out. That said: it’s really good! If you like janky epic fantasy webfics I would even say it’s actually the best out there (note that I hate most janky epic fantasy webfics).
Set in the subterranean, god-haunted, repeatedly post-apocalyptic and roughly early modern fantasy world of Vesper, Book 2 of Pale Lights picks up pretty quickly after Book 1 finished – though now with twice as many protagonists. Along with Tristan (alley rat, unrepentant thief, sole follower of a very involved and often unhelpful goddess of luck) and Angharad (noblewoman fleeing her family’s purge and massacre, masterful duellist, swore her soul to an ancient eldritch god for the strength to take vengeance) from the first book, the story now gives equal time to the POVs to their minders from the last trials: Song (expert sharpshooter, aspiring officer, heir to literally the most cursed and hated family name in the world) and Maryam (‘Navigator’ (sorceress), technically princess and first witch of a now-conquered and enslaved people, recipient of a ritual that was supposed to fill her with generations of occult knowledge and might which inexplicably failed). Together they form a cabal at the newly reopened Scholomance, the incredibly cursed and actively malevolent but otherwise extremely useful university used by the god-hunting Watch to train the next generation of their officer corps.
The book follows the four of them through their first year of studies, first at the Scholomance itself and then on a practical exam where the four of them are sent to the troubled principality of Asphodel to fulfill a contract for its ruling Lord Rector. As might be expected, nothing at anything point goes according to plan, and all four of them are hounded at every turn by the ghosts of their past. Also scheming gods, titanic monsters, and incredibly unwise romantic entanglements.
Now this is serialized web fiction, and has both the strengths and the weaknesses typical of the medium. You spend an immense amount of time just existing in all four protagonists’ brains, and every one of them is by the end intensely nuanced, interesting and compelling (likeable, even!) after getting their own richly detailed character arc through the book (The friends reading along with me week-to-week basically all disagreed, but for me at least the story managed the rare trick of not having a single POV I sighed in disappointment to realize was the focus of an update). The worldbuilding is also full of fun details and extraneous little complications that don’t serve any particular purpose in the story, but do an incredible job of making Vesper feel like an actual place with a real history and not just dark fantasy set dressing. On the other hand, the pacing is...let’s be nice and say unhurried. Some of those fun tangents outstay their welcome, and I literally needed a reference page to keep track of all the supporting characters at points. It was also written in pretty much real time across nearly two years, and you can definitely feel that it took some time to decide just what the defining arcs and conflicts of the main cast were going to be – not to even mention the number of plot hooks or details that were basically forgotten about as things progressed.
The plot is divided fairly sharply into two sections – first at the Scholomance and then on mission in Ashpodel. The break is sharp enough I wondered for a while why this wasn’t just broken into two books instead of one (it’s certainly long enough), but having actually finished it all four character arcs really do run through both sections and only get really satisfying thematic resolutions at the very end. Of the two, I vastly preferred the second half – but then, that’s at least mostly just because my tolerance for magical school/university plots has worn incredibly thin these days. (Even the Rectorate plot verged a bit too close to ‘this is all the protagonists running through their teacher’s rat maze and everything is going according to plan’ at times, especially with a couple late revelations that irked me for entirely petty and subjective reasons). But even the true university sections thankfully only spend a bare minimum of time on expository lectures and stressing about exams in favour of politics, vendettas, and kidnapping or murder attempts.
I really can’t figure out quite how to phrase this without sounding dismissive, but the overall shape of the story is basically about the power of friendship, and learning to implicitly trust and rely on (and risk and sacrifice for) your friends instead of trying to control or manage everything yourself. But it really genuinely works! In large part I think because all four protagonists have arcs that approach and reflect it in their own distinct ways and end up reinforcing each other (the big climax cutting between all of them as they culminated was incredibly well done) – but also just because the sheer length the medium enables let the story really dwell on the 2nd act where they’re all wounded and resentful and keeping increasingly dangerous secrets from each other. Entertaining, compelling dysfunction that almost convinced you they really were just going to fall apart.
The worldbuilding is – well, hardly groundbreaking (the historical inspirations of every cultural are entirely transparent, though there’s at least a little twist on each), but a fantasy world that’s early modern rather than medieval in inspiration is honestly still refreshing enough to buy more goodwill than it’s ever needed from me. And the execution of how it’s portrayed does an immense amount to make the place feel lived in and just compelling – the different cultures and states all cohere and are full of enough bigotry, hypocrisy and petty vendettas to be believable, mostly. The gods, monsters, and magic is all genuinely eerie and on occasion awesome in the literal sense. The aesthetics of the whole series are just incredible, really - just don’t think too much about the whole ‘everything is a giant underground cavern’ thing when picturing scenes.
It helps that sheer constant, unrelenting practice have left Erratic really quite good on the level of prose. The banter and little slice of life moments are endearing and both heart-warming and funny as they’re supposed to be, and the dire ruminations and real drama almost always lands like it’s supposed to. Not always in either case, but honestly far more consistently than a great many traditionally published (and edited) authors seem to manage.
It’s impossible to really recommend sprawling web serials like this to 90% of people, but if you are in the market for a secondary world fantasy epic I really don’t think you can do better than this one.
-------------------------------
Okay technically this is a web serial, not a book but a) it’s divided into ‘books’ and the first one recently finished, b) I’ve read like 350,000 words of it at this point and c) I want to talk about it a bit.
So, Pale Lights is a fantasy adventure story, set in a world where some prehistoric cataclysm left humanity living in a truly vast (multi-continental) cavern beneath the earth, full of old gods and devils and a darkness that will sink into you if you go too long without exposing yourself to the Glare of light spilling down from various openings in the firmament (and potentially stored in a variety of magic devices). It stars Tristain, a conman and gutter rat who accidentally killed the wrong man, and Angharad, a minor noblewoman fleeing assassins after the slaughter of her family, as they flee their enemies into the theoretical safety of the Watch, a sovereign military order that might get you killed hunting down rogue devils but is more than powerful enough to offer amnesty to all its recruits and force everyone else to go along with it. Specifically they both try to join through the fastest and most guaranteed method there is – survive and pass the trials on the Dominion of Lost Things, and your spot among their ranks is totally assured.
As you might expect, this doesn’t exactly go according to plan for either of them.
The plot’s sufficiently full of twists and detours that I’m not going to bother trying to give any sort of detailed synopsis, but one incredibly endearing thing about the whole serial is that it’s structured around these three deadly trials intended to test one’s mettle and worthiness, and absolutely none of them go according to plan. Which, speaking as someone who is generally left pretty annoyed by stories where the entire plot is ‘and then the protagonist surpassed the entirely artifical problems an outside authority put in front of them, meeting expectations perfectly!’, I really did greatly enjoy.
The plot was also just satisfyingly and surprisingly brutal – EE’s previous gargantuan serial was explicitly (though increasingly theoretically as it went on) YA, and made plot armour an explicit part of the setting’s metaphysics. Pale Light is...very much that. There were several points where it felt like at least one named, fleshed out character with their own arc was dying horribly every chapter. Bracing! Relatedly, and necessary for that, the cast is big, into the dozens of fleshed out characters the plot leaves behind and goes back to whenever they’re relevant or on screen again. Which is the sort of indulgence you can get away with in a web serial. (I’ve actually seen a lot of people complain that the cast was too large or hard to keep to track of. Those people are weak.)
Speaking of characters – the supporting cast is great, and a decent number of them are well-drawn and earnestly compelling, but a story like this really lives or dies on the strength of its protagonists. And I’d say Pale Lights passes that test with flying colours – Tristain and Angharad are both more than strong enough to carry a story on their own, but jumping between them lets the story have a lot of fun with their biases and what they assume or overlook, and their (very different and often wildly misinformed) perspectives on each other, their goals, and the supporting cast are just a joy. EE’s always had a real talent for internal monologue and character voice (even in my least-favorite bits of A Practical Guide to Evil, Cat’s perspective was a consistent delight), and being able to consistently jump between and develop two here really makes them shine.
The fact that they’re both a) actually adults, b) morally dubious and c) incredibly devoted to a particular sense of morality and ethics that’s minimum 30 degrees off anything conventionally ‘good’ helps a lot, too. Tristain my beloved shameless vendetta-obsessed will-knife-anyone-but-his-closest-friends-without-a-second-thought gutter rat.
It’s actually really quite interesting how, despite one being a chivalry-obsessed bravo whose word is her bond and so finesses her oaths and promises like a mobbed up lawyer and the other being a street criminal second story man with a sideline in poisons, they’re both really incredibly defined by a fixation on loyalty and vengeance.
The setting is interesting, though the narrative does sometimes feel a bit like it’s straining under the weight of all the weirdness piled onto it, with the whole ‘everyone’s underground and 90% of light is artificial’ thing. The various gods are all interestingly eldritch, especially Tristain and Angharad’s patrons (Fortuna probably my third favourite character in the whole thing overall), the devils and lemures and monsters are all fucked up and horrifying in a really fun way, and the magic is appropriately occult-seeming.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, exactly, but I do find the utter shamelessness with which EE copies real world cultures to create fantasy counterparts kind of endearing? I really can’t overstate how incredibly obvious it is that, like, ‘this empire is based on the Aztecs. They border this feudal mess based on India, and this league of Republics based on China. The main city the story launched from is Venice. The big creepy cursed academy is called the Scholomance. The treaty with the devils binding them not to eat people is called the Iscariot Accord. Die mad about it.” Gives the whole thing a real tabletop RPG setting vibe, honestly.
Anyway, can’t really say to what degree my attachment to this was built from the Stockholm Syndrome of following it week-to-week, but probably one of my favourite stories read this year, and eagerly looking forward to book 2.
August 16, 2023
Pale Lights book one is The Lies of Locke Lamora crossed with Battle Royale. We have heists, intrigue, and murder most foul. Crosses. Double-crosses. Triple- crosses. A fascinating magic system, worthy of Brandon Sanderson. Dead gods. Old gods. New gods. It has it all.
I particularly like the dialogue, this author knows how to write smart characters who adapt to their surroundings.
If I'm forced to find criticism, and you would have to force me, it's minor: the story kicks off with a large cast of characters to remember. There is some fan-art of the entire cast at various stages of the story linked in the Royal Road comments section: that helps a lot and I’d encourage the author to reach out to that artist to integrate it if possible (if it’s not already been commissioned).
The other thing that could be useful, is more maps and diagrams, particularly of the island as a whole for the Trial of Lines, the forts and maze in the Trial of Ruins, and the town in the Trial of Weeds
In addition, in the web novel initial version, there are some minor typos that appear to be actual typing mistakes - as opposed to the bad spelling and grammar seen from bad writers. I am more than happy to consume these if it means the author can continue to keep up the publishing pace.
If you enjoy great characters, intrigue, and superb world-building, all wrapped up in fantastic writing, you'll love this. Highly recommended.
I particularly like the dialogue, this author knows how to write smart characters who adapt to their surroundings.
If I'm forced to find criticism, and you would have to force me, it's minor: the story kicks off with a large cast of characters to remember. There is some fan-art of the entire cast at various stages of the story linked in the Royal Road comments section: that helps a lot and I’d encourage the author to reach out to that artist to integrate it if possible (if it’s not already been commissioned).
The other thing that could be useful, is more maps and diagrams, particularly of the island as a whole for the Trial of Lines, the forts and maze in the Trial of Ruins, and the town in the Trial of Weeds
In addition, in the web novel initial version, there are some minor typos that appear to be actual typing mistakes - as opposed to the bad spelling and grammar seen from bad writers. I am more than happy to consume these if it means the author can continue to keep up the publishing pace.
If you enjoy great characters, intrigue, and superb world-building, all wrapped up in fantastic writing, you'll love this. Highly recommended.
February 14, 2025
EE's previous work,a practical guide to evil, was fun; actually reached a satisfying resolution; and executed every chapter, even the weaker ones, as an enjoyable standalone experience.
Pale lights is a big step forward. It trades out a stereotypical fantasy and sometimes awkward tropes for colonial era countries squabbling over slowly diminishing resources in a haunted underground sea. Something happened in prehistory that resulted in the current environment, something with numerous eras of success and failure, but all that's been confirmed for now is staying outside the light from above too long (the light that's deadly topside) changes you into something no longer legally recognized as human (and I do love the ambiguity here).
A set of rotating character viewpoints serve to flesh out the world and cultures within. Sometimes it's a bit obvious that every viewpoint character gets “their” allotted share of plot and screentime (the aspholdian arc specifically might have felt a bit more organic if each character didn't have a color coded set of adversaries), but the individual plotlines and characters are great.
Pale lights is currently my 3rd favorite piece of web fiction among everything I've ever read, right behind unsong and the shadow unit.
Pale lights is a big step forward. It trades out a stereotypical fantasy and sometimes awkward tropes for colonial era countries squabbling over slowly diminishing resources in a haunted underground sea. Something happened in prehistory that resulted in the current environment, something with numerous eras of success and failure, but all that's been confirmed for now is staying outside the light from above too long (the light that's deadly topside) changes you into something no longer legally recognized as human (and I do love the ambiguity here).
A set of rotating character viewpoints serve to flesh out the world and cultures within. Sometimes it's a bit obvious that every viewpoint character gets “their” allotted share of plot and screentime (the aspholdian arc specifically might have felt a bit more organic if each character didn't have a color coded set of adversaries), but the individual plotlines and characters are great.
Pale lights is currently my 3rd favorite piece of web fiction among everything I've ever read, right behind unsong and the shadow unit.
October 16, 2025
ErraticErrata определено показва голямо израстване като автор и е забележимо и силно подобрил стила си в сравнение с първата си популярна книга.
Pale Lights определено е достатъчно добра, за да бъде четена от вече пораснали читатели, с отлично разгръщане на героите и интригата и чудесно построен и интересен свят.
Големият й негатив за мен е прекалено бавното действие, дори за самия жанр на писаните в интернет истории, които често са по няколко хиляди страници. Ако харесвате да четете истории, където повече внимание се обръща на сложните отношения между героите и вътрешните им терзания и развитие, отколкото на действието - тя е точно като за вас.
Pale Lights определено е достатъчно добра, за да бъде четена от вече пораснали читатели, с отлично разгръщане на героите и интригата и чудесно построен и интересен свят.
Големият й негатив за мен е прекалено бавното действие, дори за самия жанр на писаните в интернет истории, които често са по няколко хиляди страници. Ако харесвате да четете истории, където повече внимание се обръща на сложните отношения между героите и вътрешните им терзания и развитие, отколкото на действието - тя е точно като за вас.
May 24, 2024
I’m gonna bust.
A story to be enjoyed by those who enjoy thrilling
action and politicking.
I think it’s the end of chapter 7 or so when you realize what the trajectory of the first arc will be. The first arc of the story has a mixture of action, horror, and politicking— leaning moreso towards the former. The arc ends just right when I was feeling a bit fatigued from it.
The second arc has more delicious politicking and is far less oppressive than the former arc. It’s even got fluff which still feeds into the plot.
The blurb for the story does not do it justice. The author has made a tremendous jump in quality from his first story: the practical guide to evil.
A story to be enjoyed by those who enjoy thrilling
action and politicking.
I think it’s the end of chapter 7 or so when you realize what the trajectory of the first arc will be. The first arc of the story has a mixture of action, horror, and politicking— leaning moreso towards the former. The arc ends just right when I was feeling a bit fatigued from it.
The second arc has more delicious politicking and is far less oppressive than the former arc. It’s even got fluff which still feeds into the plot.
The blurb for the story does not do it justice. The author has made a tremendous jump in quality from his first story: the practical guide to evil.
June 15, 2025
EE once again produced a great book. The characters are extraordinarily well written and their ties to their homelands make up large parts of the characters without defining them. The story strikes an interesting balance where characters are still fragile despite the strength of the powers. A brilliant story at every step.
August 26, 2023
Volume 1 - 8/26/2023
December 13, 2023
I liked the ending a lot, so I’ll probably continue reading.
The second third was denseeee though :/
The second third was denseeee though :/
February 7, 2024
Book I: Lost Things done 05-feb-2024
Book 2 up-to-date Feb 07 2024
Book 2 up-to-date Feb 07 2024
November 25, 2025
at the moment its excelent, its like the night's watch of GoT but with minor gods
February 10, 2026
Peak webfiction, strongly recommend. Rich world, excellent characters. Humorous and insightful.
May 13, 2026
Pale Lights is a wonderful, ongoing series that is fundamentally a character-driven story.
Within the first book, the story alternates between the perspectives of two very different characters who are very interesting foils for one another. Their strengths, backgrounds, morals, and perspectives are completely different, yet they both feel like completely functional and 3-dimensional characters who exist completely independent from one another.
That is not just an honor reserved for the main characters - one of this story's greatest strengths is that supporting characters all have their own backstories and motivations, leading to them acting and feeling like real people rather than props or accessories to the main characters. (This is also tied to one of the weaknesses of the series - there are about 30 characters dropped all at once in chapter 3. However, fanart made on a chapter-by-chapter basis goes a long way to helping readers keep track.)
This brings me to my next point: character development. Each character has very interesting flaws which are slowly explored and resolved over the course of the book. Obviously, not everything is resolved by the end of Book 1. However, they've both come a long way and go even further in Book 2. Never does the character development feel forced or out of character, but rather adds to the picture of who they are. I am consistently blown away by how real the characters, their flaws, and their responses to them feel over the course of the entire series. The flaws aren't resolved instantly, either. It is a slow creep towards being better for the protagonists, with believable milestones and hesitation and moments where they choose the right thing to do where they might not have before.
The character development also ties in beautifully to the plot, with each element driving the other as they both progress. The plot never fails to hook my interest and the climaxes at the end of Book 2 were absolutely magnificent. Survival, cleverness, the unearthing of secrets and plots, politics, mini-heists, character relationships, and action have all been featured throughout the first two books, along with calm moments for the characters. It's truly astonishing how well it's been plotted out.
The dialogue is wonderful. It never feels forced, and the banter is always excellent. Hearing the characters go back-and-forth with each other is always something to look forward to and never fails to make me smile.
The worldbuilding is another very compelling part of the series. The basics are very easy to understand right from the beginning, with the more complicated pieces being revealed slowly as the characters learn. It is extremely well thought out and I look forward to learning even more about it. It's a very interesting system that lets the characters do some very cool, believable things while still being constrained by interesting, believable limits.
The prose is fantastic (there are errors with spelling and grammar, but nothing that detracts from the reading experience). The author has 3.5 million words of experience with his previous work, A Practical Guide to Evil, and it shows in the quality of this series straight from chapter 1.
I highly, highly recommend reading this series, and I look forward to continuing to do so myself as more chapters release.
Within the first book, the story alternates between the perspectives of two very different characters who are very interesting foils for one another. Their strengths, backgrounds, morals, and perspectives are completely different, yet they both feel like completely functional and 3-dimensional characters who exist completely independent from one another.
That is not just an honor reserved for the main characters - one of this story's greatest strengths is that supporting characters all have their own backstories and motivations, leading to them acting and feeling like real people rather than props or accessories to the main characters. (This is also tied to one of the weaknesses of the series - there are about 30 characters dropped all at once in chapter 3. However, fanart made on a chapter-by-chapter basis goes a long way to helping readers keep track.)
This brings me to my next point: character development. Each character has very interesting flaws which are slowly explored and resolved over the course of the book. Obviously, not everything is resolved by the end of Book 1. However, they've both come a long way and go even further in Book 2. Never does the character development feel forced or out of character, but rather adds to the picture of who they are. I am consistently blown away by how real the characters, their flaws, and their responses to them feel over the course of the entire series. The flaws aren't resolved instantly, either. It is a slow creep towards being better for the protagonists, with believable milestones and hesitation and moments where they choose the right thing to do where they might not have before.
The character development also ties in beautifully to the plot, with each element driving the other as they both progress. The plot never fails to hook my interest and the climaxes at the end of Book 2 were absolutely magnificent. Survival, cleverness, the unearthing of secrets and plots, politics, mini-heists, character relationships, and action have all been featured throughout the first two books, along with calm moments for the characters. It's truly astonishing how well it's been plotted out.
The dialogue is wonderful. It never feels forced, and the banter is always excellent. Hearing the characters go back-and-forth with each other is always something to look forward to and never fails to make me smile.
The worldbuilding is another very compelling part of the series. The basics are very easy to understand right from the beginning, with the more complicated pieces being revealed slowly as the characters learn. It is extremely well thought out and I look forward to learning even more about it. It's a very interesting system that lets the characters do some very cool, believable things while still being constrained by interesting, believable limits.
The prose is fantastic (there are errors with spelling and grammar, but nothing that detracts from the reading experience). The author has 3.5 million words of experience with his previous work, A Practical Guide to Evil, and it shows in the quality of this series straight from chapter 1.
I highly, highly recommend reading this series, and I look forward to continuing to do so myself as more chapters release.
November 1, 2025
2023/10/27 - book 1 finished
oh I forgot to update huh.
2025/09/06 - book 2 finished
oh I forgot to update huh.
2025/09/06 - book 2 finished
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews