With the October 22 release of The Burning White, Brent Weeks will close the book on Lightbringer, the latest sprawling epic from the author of The Night Angel trilogy, which means it’s time once again to ask the question that has been bugging me ever since the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones made it socially acceptable to read 1,000-page epics on the train: namely, why isn’t everyone reading this series—one of the best examples of the modern multi-book fantasy saga, penned by an author who knows how to hit his deadlines?

Over the course of four books published at two-year intervals between 2010 and 2016—The Black Prism, The Blinding Knife, The Broken Eye, and The Blood Mirror—Weeks built an intriguing universe and expanded upon it brilliantly, upping the ante, deepening the characters, and enriching the worldbuilding, all while rocking one of the best magic systems ever imagined. If readers had to wait a year longer than usual for the concluding volume, well, that’s forgivable: better to spend a year in anticipation than an eternity in disappointment, and in the realms of fantasy, a year is practically no time at all.

If you’ve slept on this series so far, the good news is that now you can down the whole thing, no waiting at all. Here’s what you need to know about the Lightbringer series going in—and all the reasons fantasy lovers can’t afford to miss out on it. .

The World-Building

In these novels Weeks has crafted a wholly original and fascinating fictional universe that balances familiar fantasy tropes with smart innovations. The story in a (very small) nutshell: Lightbringer takes place in a world in which different frequencies of light can be used by “drafters” to create different forms of the magical substance luxin (some drafters can only work with a single color, while some are “bichromes” or “polychromes”). Luxin, in turn, can in turn be used for a nigh-infinite number of applications.

Seven kingdoms known as satrapies are organized around the seven primary colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, infrared, and ultraviolet). These seven members form the Spectrum, the ruling body of the Chromerian Empire. Supreme power is split between The White, who holds political power, and The Prism, a full-spectrum polychrome (able to draft in all the colors) as well as a lightsplitter, with the ability to split white light into a specific color (drafters require the presence of a color in order to work it). The Prism maintains balance between the colors (without their influence, the world will spin into chaos) and also serves as the earthly representative of Orholam, the main deity worshiped in this world.

The Light Bringer is a figure of legend and prophecy in the kingdoms—some believe he was the man who reorganized the world into its current political and spiritual state centuries before, some believe they’re a figure yet to come, destined to change the world in a similar way. The question of who—if anyone—will be the Light Bringer is central to the story, and a mystery yet to be revealed.

Got that? There’s so much more to the story—far too much to get into here. The Prism is essentially an emperor, but their real-world power is limited—and doomed to fade. All drafters suffer from a build up of luxin in their bodies which eventually poisons them, turning them into Color Wights; a Prism will eventually simply see their power fade within 7, 14, or 21 years after their ascension. As the series opens, the true Prism, Gavin Guile, has been imprisoned by his brother, Dazen, who is just as powerful, and who has been masquerading as Gavin. In the first of Weeks’ many major subversions of familiar plots and tropes, Dazen is not a power-hungry villain, and is in fact, and in almost every way, a better man than his brother. When Dazen discovers Gavin fathered a bastard through one of his many love affairs, Dazen claims and acknowledges the boy, Kip, who serves as the closest thing we get to a main character in this sprawling series—and who is seemingly destined to be the next Prism.

Living, Breathing Characters

Weeks excels at character development. He follows the Game of Thrones technique of following different characters in each chapter, rotating through their different subplots in turn. His characters come alive on the page, and just as importantly, they evolve and change. Kip is a prime example: when we meet him in The Black Prism, he’s an overweight boy thrust into the terrors of war and violence, dealing with the death of his mother and the destruction of the city he calls home. His special status forces him into training with the Black Guard, an elite group of warriors, and his time spent honing his skills is difficult and spotted with failure. Weeks paints a realistic portrait of the chosen one as a flawed individual: despite Kip’s outward maturation, he continues to see himself as a pudgy, awkward kid, even after he develops physically and mentally into a skilled warrior and leader. Weeks uses Kip’s relative innocence as a reader stand-in, allowing the author to slowly and gently expand our understanding of his universe and the events that have destabilized it.

The Colorful Magic of Chromaturgy

Simply put, Chromaturgy is a fantastic magic system. One of the best ways to explain the fundamentals of Chromaturgy is via the candle metaphor: when a candle burns, something physical is transformed into light. With chromaturgy, light is transformed into something physical (luxin)—and the type of light used (and how skilled the drafter is) determines what kind of things can be made with that luxin. Blue luxin, for example, is very strong and orderly, and thus can create large structures or other objects. The sheer variety of colors drafters can master (varying shades of a color also have varying effects) serve is both a metaphor for creativity in Weeks’ world, and a handy organizing principle for a magic system that pivots from the scientific complexity of light and color into imagined complexity of magic. At the same time, the built-in limitations of this power deliver baked-in conflict, and often force characters to think before they try to solve every problem with magic.

The Complexity

Weeks has put a lot of thought and planning into this series. Details that seem minor grace notes early in the story are revealed to have secret significance later, and characters show their worth in surprising ways. The Prism himself is a perfect example: as the fourth book, The Blood Mirror, opens, Dazen Guile is literally powerless, having lost his drafting abilities over the course of the three previous books (and being revealed as something completely unexpected in terms of his actual powers). He has become trapped in a prison he designed himself—and yet Weeks has also engineered the story so that Dazen is the only person who can defeat the antagonist who has become known as The White King. It’s a perfectly engineered cliffhanger that only serves to heighten expectations for the concluding volume, and Weeks manages this sort of character kung fu so effortlessly you might be fooled into thinking writing doorstopper epic fantasies is easy—but it’s not: this is talent at work, and it’s why Weeks has so quickly climbed the list of best fantasy writers working today.

If you’re not already a fan of the Lightbringer series, now is the times—The Burning White arrives this month.