#pale lights

[st-just]

sell me on Pale Lights

Hmm. Difficult without knowing where you're starting from as far as web serials/the author goes, I think? But to take a stab at it:

Elevator Pitch: In a vaguely early-modern fantasy world build around antediluvian ruins and small isles of light in a world-sized cavern, the Watch are an ancient militant order dedicated to hunting ancient and rampant gods. To be one of their officers is to be one of the most clued in and influential groups in the world - and there is a yearly trial for anyone really desperate enough to earn a spot. Our heroes - a street rat contracted with an unknown and unhelpful goddess of luck, and a noble swordswoman seeking refuge after the massacre of her family - begin the story rushing to take their berth on the ship headed toward the Dominion of Lost Things, and their own last chances.

What's Good:

Characters/Relationships: EE (the author) is a goddamn genius at writing engaging and entertaining banter between characters, and making different people in a conversation sound different. Both (and in book 2, all) of the POVs have engaging personal arcs and interestingly distinct internal monologues and neuroses. (Also, none of them are the unimpeachable moral exemplar and they're all allowed to be assholes and idiots when it seems appropriate).

Setting: Is it to some extent 'fantasy setting plopped into the Underdark without thinking through the implications of what that would mean?' Sure, a bit - but take that as read and the world really does feel rich and interesting, with an actual sense of both history and politics. The world only gets wilder and weirder the most you learn of it too, which I always appreciate. .

Action: Do you like layers of weird magical bullshit clashing against each other? Then oh boy is this the setting for you. Honor duels and spiritual possession and an improbably number of Indiana Jones traps and exactly as many hungry and unhelpful gods as you would expect from the pitch up there. Just as importantly for me (who has sharply limited patience for them) none of the big action setpieces have really dragged or overstayed their welcome yet.

What's Not

It's a web serial. A very good one! but it has all the flaws of being written week to week with no revisions you expect, and the pacing is godawfully meandering.

[liliennacht]

Fortuna, Lady of Long Odds

[project-catgirlpillar]

Gods Song is so rational

[echodoctor]

What I've Been Reading Lately: Pale Lights

It is a truth universally acknowledged that H.P. Lovecraft was a little bitch.

Unlike Rhode Island's least beloved and most thalassophobic son, Pale Lights tells the story of a world where humanity exhibits the only natural response to eldritch horror: continuing to be a bunch of squabbling, scheming motherfuckers who honestly might collectively be more of a problem than the ancient gods of primordial darkness sharing this underground cavern/post-apocalyptic civilization with them.

It is the Fantasy Mediterranean and there are not two square goddamn feet in this giant cave world without something ancient and hungry lurking in it. Fortunately, we have the Watch, professional monster-hunters and tireless guardians of humanity!

Unfortunately, humanity is a perpetual motion machine of bad decision making, and there's always some asshole trying to start a cult to something that eats you.

There are boats! There are ancient magical technologies! There are elephants with a profoundly upsetting amount of heads!

This fascinating and intricate world is shown from two very different perspectives, as the book is split between our pair of protagonists: Angharad Tredegar, an honorable sword lesbian tragically forced into a very non-swords-and-women-related situation, and Tristan Abrascal, who would like you to understand that he's really just a little guy and to please ignore that completely unrelated trail of dead bodies.

Both of them are about to join the Watch or die trying.

The Watch will not be getting a choice in the matter.

The author does a fantastic job at balancing drama and humor, the mysteries and lingering questions are intriguing, and while the story can sometimes go dark places it never feels bleak or pointless.

Characters will try very hard to reach out into the dark and save people. Sometimes they succeed.

And even when they don't, it still matters that they tried.

Book one is fully complete, book two is updating every Friday, and both of them are available for free right here:

Contents include but are not limited to:

-Our Lady of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

-a man so handsome it almost makes up for his personality

-the early adoption of grenade-related technology

-Lucifer's abandoned hermit crabs

-an increasing amount of problems both caused by and solved with poison

-the Fantasy Communist Manifesto

-three to seven rats sharing the trench coat that is divinity

-and grandma

[fallowhearth]

This is why I keep up with Pale Lights.

[booksandchainmail]

“Song, Fortuna is terrible,” he said, tone heartfelt. “And I don’t mean it in some eldritch way, I mean that she is bad at existence.” Song paused. Opened her mouth, then closed it. Swallowed. “She couldn’t trick a child into doing her bidding even with an entire barrel of candied dates,” Tristan said, taking back his hand. “She has lost arguments to pigeons.” Pigeons. As in plural?

absolute failgoddess

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

“Yun Kang was assaulted at his residence last afternoon,” the commander informed her. “He was savagely beaten and right his leg broken in nine different places.” The gaze cooled again as it was turned on Wen. “He even has to be treated in the barracks, given the risks, since the primary suspect for this assault cannot legally be barred from having access to this room,” she said. Song paused, then slowly turned towards her patron. The bespectacled man popped a slice of orange into his mouth, loudly chewing before he swallowed even more loudly. Had he truly assaulted another blackcloaks on her behalf? Gods, she was… it was not a fine thing to attack someone else wearing the black, obviously, and quite illegal. Yet. “It is insulting I would be considered a suspect at all,” Captain Wen replied without batting an eye. “I was having coffee while it happened, as you know. There are three witnesses.”

Wen hasn't really stood out to me before now but after this chapter he definitely has my attention

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 26 – Pale Lights by ErraticErrata

Okay technically this is a web serial, not a book – you can find it here – 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.

[gwennafran]

Pale Lights, Book 2 chapter 28 - Tolomontera residents

Sizakele is messing up the evening teachers format. Or well, technically the Marshal’s impeccable fashion sense is my real foil here. But that can’t be right. That feather is perfect!

Sizakele: Went for her 10-year-old look. Because that by far is the one that stands out the most. I picked a red ribbons look that I think works with more than just the child look, though. Even if some big red bows holding braids in high pig tails would be adorable. She looks so small and adorable.

Cozen: I grabbed the round cheeks description and ran with it. No regrets.

It was suggested I add Lady Knit to deities. So, I added what we got so far.

-

Side challenge: Besides the double row of teeth, try to catch the small art trick I use to signal someone is a devil.

[lilyblisslys]

After finishing my PTGE reread I’m starting Pale Lights over again! I remember disliking the first book, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes this time around.

Already I’ll say I do like how Tristan and Angharad’s POV chapters show the same events happening on very different levels-the more recent chapters with all 4 POV characters are likewise good about that, even if they’re still a little messy. Angharad’s schtick is a liiiiittle overdone, and I remember it getting more severe and not less, so that’ll be something.

Knowing that you only really have to care about like, 6 characters in the first book kinda helps and hurts the experience. It’s nice knowing I don’t need to give a shit/remember details about all 40, but some of them are actually good characters, so….

I didn’t catch it the first time around, but I think the reason the worldbuilding doesn’t work super great for me is it tries to do A LOT straight from the jump. I think PGTE worked well because it really only gave you 3 broad factions to care about (Callow, Praes, Procer) at the start, and then it expanded from there *slowly*. Pale lights throws Sacramonte, the Malani, the Tianxi, the Watch, the Aztlan, and Maryam’s people at you pretty much all immediately, and each of those groups are both too complicated and not given enough depth to really land.

I think it shows how good PGTE was for setting up its worldbuilding stuff, outlining factions in simple terms at first and then adding complexity as time goes on (it helped that part of PGTE’s schtick was painting stuff with a broad brush and then showing the shades of grey). It makes sense that Pale Lights has this issue, since it’s EE’s second big project, but idk it’s worth noting. Maybe I’ll feel different later 🤷‍♀️

[apollo-cackling]

re: counterpart cultures in Pale Lights

ErraticErrata really likes counterpart cultures, to the point where the PGTE rewrite with an editor made him rename a bunch of stuff so it wasn't real-world cities/regions/ethnic groups

Something that might be helpful is this map of the world of Pale Lights: https://imgbb.com/TYS4h1c, should have no spoilers except maybe a few country names

oh that's cool, ty! I've never been good at keeping track of locations in my head so that'd be useful to keep on hand lol

[st-just]

"Make your entire main cast walk into a magic thing that plunges them into a nightmare of their deepest darkest fears realized' really is an absolutely amazing character exploration cheat.

[liliennacht]

First Meeting

[project-catgirlpillar]

Fortuna losing arguments to pidgeons vs Tristan losing a Battle of wits to a magpie they definitely deserve each other

[codex-doctrinae]

Unwillingly thinking about the Magical School Genre modifier because of Red OSP and realizing yeah, the only such Magical School series I've actually enjoyed in the past decade are the ones that don't try to insulate the characters from the risks and dangers of the setting with School Nonsense Either happy slice of life where the broader setting is precisely as safe as the 'wow I wanna go there' school, or horrific cosmic horror where the school is precisely as dangerous as the 'wow just kill me now'' setting There are innumerable examples of the first, but of the second my favorite example is probably Pale Lights, which spends the entire first book on the Watch's no-questions-asked enlistment test/mass sacrifice ritual so that when The Bad Luck Brigade rolls into Scholomance for their post grad studies in Applied Deicide and Delayed Eschatology we the audience don't blink when on their first weekend they get sent to the Torment Nexus for two minutes each because it'll do neat things to their souls

[fallowhearth]

You know I'm still not sure whether Mephistopheline is a perfectly normal cat or a Perfectly Normal Cat (don't worry about it). Could go either way.