Title: Pale Lights
Author: ErraticErrata
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure, Mystery
Status: First book complete, second book regularly updating
Summary:
Book I: Lost Things

Tristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, as his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.

It is also an opportunity to get even with the infanzones, the nobles he’s lived under all his life, and it so happens that Tristan has a full ledger’s worth of scores to settle with them.

Lady Angharad Tredegar has fled halfway across the world, leaving behind a ruin of a life: her family butchered by a ruthless enemy, their estate torched and their nobility revoked. Yet no matter how far she flees the blades of assassins follow, and she finds herself growing desperate for any protection. She has one relative left to call on, her estranged uncle, but she finds that the safety he offers comes at a cost.

Angharad has sworn revenge, however, and her honour will allow for no compromise. She will do what she must to survive so that one day bloody vengeance can be visited upon her enemies.

The paths of the two take them to the doorstep of the Watch, but for desperate souls like them enrolment is a lost cause. They will have to do it the hard way instead, by surviving the trials on the isle known as the Dominion of Lost Things.

Where every year many go, and few return.

Book II: Good Treasons

The trials of the Dominion are over.

The four survivors have become students of Scholomance, enrolling together as a cabal, yet even on those infamous grounds they soon learn none are beyond the reach of their pasts.

Angharad Tredegar is returned to a semblance of the world she left behind, but finds her honor sorely tested by bargains offered - every bit as tempting as in the stories and even deadlier.

Tristan Abrascal needs answers. Mysterious enemies keep trying to abduct him, his classroom does not exist and he’s now had several conversations with dead people. Worst of all, his carrots keep dying.

Maryam Khaimov is going mad, which would worry her less if it were happening on schedule. More frightening yet is the possibility that she is not, and there truly is someone else going around wearing her face.

Song Ren must forge the others into a functional unit, all the while fending off enemies on all sides: rival cabals, vengeful countrymen and the deluge of implacable foes her companions simply cannot seem to stop attracting.

Failure is not an option, for Song must bring back honor to her family’s name whatever the cost: it is the only way to keep their disgrace from literally eating them all alive.

And as the four chase shadows in Scholomance, in the distance looms the greater test awaiting them in the Asphodel Rectorate. Asphodel is a faded power, the rotten carcass of what it once was, but under that rot looms darker things - of which monsters might just be the least dangerous.

Besides, is treason really such an evil when you have the best of reasons for it?

Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/65058/pale-lights

Human civilization sits like a rock in the surf, weathering wave after wave, but a rock in the surf always becomes sand. Between the civilized world and the horrors of the dark, there is the Watch.

There are four main characters in this story in the second book, but in the first book, there are two: Tristan and Angharad. Tristan is a streetwise thief who, at the urging of a mysterious tutor and benefactor, finds himself being inducted into the Watch. Angharad is the wayward scion of a house blasted out of history by the internal politics of a feuding duchy. The two collide on the Dominion of Lost Things, the island where the Watch holds its trials, where new members are to be inducted. Each of them hosts a secret; they are contracted to old gods that grant them mysterious powers. There are more than a few contractors running around the world of Pale Lights, but the two of them are specifically contracted to very old gods that are long forgotten.

5/5

 

I've been really enjoying Pale Lights, although I don't think I'm going to love it the way I love Practical Guide. It's a very interesting, more original setting than PGTE - broadly, the entire world is now one vast cavern, containing seas and continents and civilisations and monsters, with the only natural light being the Glare - "the unblinking stare of the never-setting sun that destroyed the Old World" - coming through cracks in the top of that cavern.

Characters are strong, particularly Tristran and Angharad, although to be fair they've had focus for the entire series, whereas the other POV characters so far have only been given that POV in book 2. I'm really looking forward to seeing where it all ends up.

 

Really good, even if I'm a few chapters behind. Suggest not marking it as 'complete' though, even if the first book is.

 

I wouldn't mind a more detailed review of why this series is good

The OP and savage have given very bare bones reasons as to why this is good and since I just caught up to the latest chapter of Super Supportive(great series by the wat, but at 150+ chapters, I had hoped more substantial story arcs would have happened, still enjoyed the slice of life aspects, but our MC's gary stuness has begun to peak through), I am really jonesing for another RR original.

So what's particularly good about this series?

 

Solid character work and a continually intriguing setting as you really have very little explained to you about a very alien world and you have to piece it together from scraps.

 

I'm greatly enjoying this series.

Excellent world building, characters and character development. Tristan was my firm favorite but all of them have slowly grown to compete for the top spot.

If I have a complaint its that I sometimes feel I need to consult the lore page on the discord to keep track of it all.

 

Binged this- super readable and pretty entertaining but lacked depth and writing that wow-ed me. Felt like a 200k wc action flick. It’s a good time waster that I consider almost recommended material.

3/5

 

Compelling characters developing from allies of necessity to an actual team and potentially found family.
Intriguing setting with a lot of possibilities for fucked up and shocking events (from the sort of societal issues you'd expect in fantasy of this approximate era, to the array of monsters that the characters come up against as part of their training/jobs, to the very real possibility that both of the main power systems in the setting can eventually turn you into a lunatic and/or an eldritch horror, to the fact that the school they attend is

Spoiler

run by demons

).
If you've read Practical Guide to Evil, you'll know ErraticErrata has a knack for writing pretty engaging plots that flit from high politics to criminal gangs...although I'll admit, keeping track of the different cultural/political blocs can be taxing at times (possibly a consequence of reading a chapter a week?)
Good banter.
Good action; it's a relatively low powered fantasy, although the contracts can have some weird and wonderful/horrifying effects, so fight scenes are usually more about (sometimes supernaturally enhanced) skill or tactics.
Regular updates - every Friday, certainly. If I recall correctly, he updated twice, sometimes three times a week on PGTE, but there's been no word of that for Pale Lights that I'm aware of. I believe you can read ahead if you subscribe to the Patreon, but as far as I know there's no gated content for the story.