Night Angel Nemesis

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BW: The reason I wanted to shift narrative styles in this one was partly to give this series its own identity. But another huge part is, as a writer I’m always looking for new narrative challenges. I’m trying to grow my skills, and I’m trying to do different things. I know I could probably make a really great living doing books just like the Night Angeltrilogy yearly, and just put out the same thing, change the names a little bit, change who Kylar’s killing this week. I could spin that out for a long time and have a very lucrative career, but that’s just not the kind of personality I have. If I do that, boredom is death for my art. So I always need to be doing new things, I always want to be stretching myself and trying things that are hard and scary for me. After the war that cost him so much, Kylar Stern is broken and alone. He’s determined not to kill again, but an impending amnesty will pardon the one murderer he can’t let walk free. He promises himself this is the last time. One last hit to tie up the loose ends of his old, lost life. As for the writing itself, I think it will divide readers. Kylar is a 20-year-old dude and acts like it; he’s often immature or acts out in cringeworthy ways. This is believable for his character, but it’s easy to imagine how it could turn off some readers. For instance, he constantly objectifies the book’s female characters. And while Weeks does make a point of actively examining this particular flaw of Kylar’s, it’s still frequent and distracting enough that it jarred me out of the story more than once.

Again, this was a tough read for me. I was forced to confront my naive hope for a happy ending and accept that these characters have been through a lot and that healing doesn’t come so fast, or so easy. I will never see them the same again, but that doesn’t change my hope for their futures. Life is hard, especially for magical assassins, but there is always hope.One of the reasons that the worlds hang together or that you feel like there’s this foreshadowing…is the first novel I wrote was set in this world but 20 years later. I had this one really amazing character show up — I actually had three or four characters cross over, and I love these characters but the novel was broken. I’d done some things wrong structurally. And so when I threw it away I was like you know what…I like some of the worldbuilding I did, and I know where things are going. I know where history is headed. And in that [book] there was this one character who showed up and I was like that guys’ a badass. He’s scary and yet he’s got this code. And so…who is he?

The incredible return to the New York Times bestselling world of the Night Angel, where master assassin Kylar Stern embarks on a new adventure as the High King Logan Gyre calls on him to save his kingdom and the hope of peace. Weeks has truly cemented his place among the great epic fantasy writers of our time‘ British Fantasy SocietySo I love that he kind of took the genre and he just ran his own way with it. He was like, yeah, I’m doing my own thing and your’e gonna have these super long chapters, which I thought were brilliant. When I was a young writer, I actually studied [his work and writing techniques]. Weeks creates a rich blend of politics, culture and character . . . then throws in magic-using assassins‘ Peter V. Brett With rumors that a ka'kari may be found, adversaries both old and new are on the hunt. And if Kylar has learned anything, it’s that ancient magics are better left in the hands of those he can trust. BW: Great questions. So the Night Angeltrilogy is a trilogy, it’s books one through three, it tells a complete story. But it is also books one through three of The Ka’kari Codex. And The Kylar Chronicles[are a standalone trilogy], but they are books four, five, and six in The Ka’kari Codex. And then we will have a pivot again to probably a focus on different characters, and maybe a jump in time. I have a couple little different narrative options that I’m still experimenting with, so I expect another pivot there. And then I’m going to revisit some of the major events that I wrote in that original book. Maybe one or two of the characters I will keep, the rest of it, I’m not even gonna look at it again. The big things I wanted to happen, those are still going to happen. The core of the characters are still going to be there. But man, I’m not going to try to save writing that I did as a 19-year-old. It would be too painful for me to look at. [Laughs] While Night Angel Nemesisfunctions as an immediate sequel to Brent Weeks’ original Night Angeltrilogy, the author has said more than once that you canread this latest novel without having read his older works. Night Angelis one of those series I’ve had recommended to me many times over the years, and with Nemesis coming out it felt like time to finally take the plunge. I read both this new book and started in on the old series at the same time.