R. Scott Bakker, The Great Ordeal

Domination.  Over lives and nations.  Over history and ignorance.  Over existence itself, down through the leaves of reality's countless skins.  No mortal had possessed such might.  His was a power and potency that not even the Gods, who must ration themselves across all times, could hope to counter, short of scooping themselves hollow and forever dwelling as phantoms...

No soul had no owned Circumstance.  He, and he alone, was the Place, the point of maximal convergence.  Nations hung from his whim.  Reality grovelled before his song.  The Outside itself railed against him.

And yet for all of it darkness still encircled him, the obscurity of before, the blackness of after.

For those who worshipped him as a god, he remaine a mortal man, possessing but one intellect and two hands – great, perhaps, in proportion to his innumerable slaves, but scarcely a mote on the surface of something inconceivable.  He was no more a prophet than an architect or any other who wrenches his conception into labourious reality.  All the futures he had raised had been the issue of his toil...

He suffered visions, certainly, but he had long ceased to trust them. (pp. 120-121)

Despite its many flaws in form, there is something about modern epic fantasies that attracts me to read them still on occasion.  Perhaps it is the partial erasure of modernity, with its rejection of intentionalist world-views, and the resulting construction of a structured reality that is potentially pregnant with meaning in a fashion that just cannot exist today.  Struggles that are made concrete, externalized and presented frequently in anthropomorphic forms, yes, there is the possibility that something profound that could be said about life itself without reducing our own concerns to those of worker bees.  But too often, these promises of profundity dissipate into trite truisms that ring hollow, with various reiterations of pre-modern (usually) Western societies collapsing under the weight of perceived gaps in understanding humanity and its propensity to war against itself.

I have been reading R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse novels for a little over twelve years now.  His mixture of philosophical concepts of mind and reality (or rather, the artificiality of such) within the trappings of a constructed society in which there is a true, "objective" reality where religious texts possess a literal meaning captured my attention when I first read The Darkness That Comes Before back in 2004.  Over the intervening years, I have struggled at times to process what Bakker is exploring, as there are several uncomfortable elements within his fiction that can be off-putting when the reader compares them to modern debates on issues such as gender, race, and general parity between individuals.  His writing is very dense, full of concepts that do not necessarily reflect those of the author himself, but instead of the mindsets that went into the construction of religious/social milieus during the pre-modern era.  It certainly takes some patience and a willingness to trust Bakker to forge on beyond the rapes, the coercions, the general "darkness" of the series to see just where he is going with his arguments and with his characters.

His sixth novel in the overall series (and third in The Aspect-Emperor sub-series), The Great Ordeal, is a revelatory one in many senses.  We come to understand the import behind certain choices made earlier in the series, such as the effects of consuming the enemy Sranc upon the titular Great Ordeal as it moves toward its dread goal or the fate of the Emperor Kellhus's natal Ishuäl.  The reader also learns more of the Non-men and the dreadful effects of their artificial immortality.  Isolated into plot developments, these events alone would provide some fodder for fans of the series to digest until the last volume in The Aspect-Emperor sub-series, The Unholy Consult, appears in the next year.  However, there are certain metaphysical points of contention raised within The Great Ordeal that provide a greater depth to these events.

One of Bakker's concerns throughout this novel, spread as it is among scenes within the Great Ordeal, Ishuäl, the Non-men mansion of Ishterebinth, and the imperial capital of Momemn, is to illustrate how various characters try to grasp the concept of the Absolute.  The quote above, which occurs before a pivotal (and perhaps problematic) scene involving Kellhus, deals with the confluence of reality and lives into a concrete Place where the Absolute dwells.  In this passage, we see some of Kellhus's mentality laid bare for us, with conceits and self-deception ever lurking on the edges of his frank self-portrayal.  This (perhaps deserved?) arrogance, mixed with an ever-growing sense of "love" that threatens to "corrupt" the Thousandfold Thought that has conditioned his path to power, serves as a partial explanation to the events that immediately follow.  By itself, it's a deep look into one of the more mysterious characters in the series, but when viewed in conjunction with scenes that transpire late in the Ishterebinth and Ishuäl chapters, it morphs into something less lofty and more fallible in terms of how Kellhus's conception of the Place/Absolute may be something beyond his ken. 

For readers who have been disturbed in the past by Eärwa's treatment of women (particularly the numerous rapes within the previous novels), Bakker tries to make explicit, through the vision of "Whale Mothers" that Mimara has, that depiction does not equal endorsement.  There are several hints that this "objective" reduction of women to beings lesser than men is due to arbitrariness on the part of those collective beings whose intentions have driven reality in this setting.  Yet despite this, there are still moments where it seems that the female characters in three of the key scenes (Ishterebinth, Ishuäl, Momemn) fall too readily into subordinate roles even when taking into consideration the unfolding situations about them.

The prose was another challenging element.  While I understand Bakker's desire to create a narrative that would reflect (and at times, reveal internal contradictions) ancient historical and religious texts, there were times where the writing was perhaps too opaque in its descriptions of event and its import.  This was especially true in those scenes where characters were considering Love in context of the world about them.  It is one thing to express the importance (and possible deceptions) of Love, but another to weave it in seamlessly with the greater narrative.  Too frequently, I felt as though I were temporarily "tossed out" of reading the text through perceiving the maladroit integration of certain concepts within the narrative.  Yet there were times, especially with the "Boatman" scene, where Bakker's prose creates a heightened sense of horror that goes beyond the visceral into something less definable yet no less terrifying when considered at length.  On the whole, the prose did serve to create a more "alien" mindscape, especially in the Ishterebinth scenes, than what might have occurred if Bakker's prose had been more direct.

For the most part, I was fascinated (I hesitate to use the word "enjoyed," considering the unsettling nature of many of the plot revelations) by many of the scenes present within the novel, yet ultimately I felt as though it ended weakly.  Many of the scenes end on the cusp of something important happening or in the midst of key developments, lacking in any sort of firm developments to help make sense of them.  There were few, if any, "natural" end places for these character/plot arcs and by the time the last page was turned, I was acutely aware that The Great Ordeal was but the first part of a larger narrative arc.  This put a damper on my overall engagement with the novel, as it felt like I was having to abandon it at an earlier place than perhaps it should have concluded.  Now I have to wait for The Unholy Consult's arrival to be able to judge better if what I had just read was as good as I found it to be for the majority of its pages.  The Great Ordeal ultimately is a good, yet flawed, volume in the Second Apocalypse series. 

A few thoughts regarding the tempests surrounding Scott Bakker's writing and blog posts

A warmth climbs through her as she speaks, an unaccountable assurance, as if out of all her crazed burdens, confession is the only real encumbrance.  Secrecy mars the nature of every former slave, and she is no different.  They hoard knowledge, not for the actual power it affords, but for the taste of that power.  All this time, even before Achamian's captivity, she has been accumulating facts and suspicions.  All this time she has fooled herself the way all men fool themselves, thinking that she alone possessed the highest vantage and that she alone commanded the field.

All this time she has been a fool.

– The White Luck Warrior, p. 431-432, Canadian edition

For the past several months, there have been a series of arguments, starting first with a revival of old complaints on Bakker's Three Pound Brain blog regarding comments made on the Requires Only That You Hate blog, before a recent diffusion of these issues and comments to several blogs, including those operated by authors such as John Scalzi and Catherynne Valente, as well as several threads over on Westeros.  Outside of a few comments months ago on Bakker's blog (I want to say it was something like the third out of what appears to be nearly a dozen or so long essays referencing his detractors) and bemusement on Twitter, I have largely stayed out of the main points of contention:  the issue of Bakker's texts being misogynistic, the author's claims to be battling for feminism (among other such claims; I believe these were made on another blog or LiveJournal), questions of evolutionary psychology, whether or not there is a "rape module" to be discovered inside of humans, and most recently, gang-raping dolphins.  It is enough to make the mind hurt trying to process the various iterations of these arguments.

I held off writing anything substantive on this because I had more important (NB:  "selfish") matters to deal with recently:  health and exam preparations.  Now that I'm nearing the end game of waiting to set up job interviews for ESL/English/Social Studies, I have a spare hour or so to devote to noting briefly some of the issues that I have with Bakker's text and his approach to introducing/discussing controversial ideas/research.  Having met the man personally nearly eight years ago, I am not able to place my opinions in reductionist terms; people are, as Whitman notes, are "large" and "contain multitudes" within themselves.

The issue of female agency and the reduction of female roles in his fictions to largely variations on the crone/whore/victim triad has dominated most of the discussions.  It certainly is an issue that has been problematic for me for years, although I have been willing enough to give the author just enough of a shadow of a doubt to see if his hinted plans to deconstruct both ancient/biblical and modern (and presumably "postmodern"?) conceptualizations of gender/gender roles will come to fruition.  I certainly can see where the text itself supports an interpretation that women are sexualized beings that are either passive recipients of male lust/violence or are the wanton harlots that trigger those reactions in males.  I wish I could lie and say I am puzzled as to why Bakker cannot commit to just a simple "yes, the text is problematic as it stands now, but future developments will hopefully show that there is much more going on under the surface," but I cannot.

What has dragged this out for months largely (but not exclusively) deals with Bakker's truer intent in his fiction, that of exploding conceptualizations of how things are.  He seems to be challenging the assumptions that underlie the reactions.  If anything, one could make the argument that he and his texts are not as much misogynistic as they are misanthropic; humans are fallible creatures whose base motives are rooted in violence and desire to dominate/control power.  This is not precisely "nihilistic," as there are meanings to be found to these actions, but it certainly is a very dark and potentially disturbing world-view.

I say "potentially disturbing" because there likely are going to be many who challenge these presumptions.  In making his larger case, Bakker often resorts to the language found in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology research.  In particular, he has frequently cited Jonathan Haidt's work in discussing how humans organize themselves into particular group structures.  While I cannot say that I am familiar enough with Haidt's theories to give expert opinion, what I have noticed based on Bakker's references to them that they seem to be simplistic reductions of a myriad of complex impulses and rationales that appear to be too heavily rooted in Anglo-American political culture to be of much use in discussing more "global" matters.  Leaving aside the inevitable uncertainties of evaluations made on incomplete information, it appears that Bakker is being too uncritical in using arguments such as Haidt's that appear to be based on faulty or non-testable methodologies.

That in and of itself is relatively minor.  But when such terminologies are being applied as retorts to those who question (sometimes vociferously and occasionally in a very acerbic fashion) his motives and rationale for his statements regarding gender roles and potential latent and/or active sexism and/or misogyny in his fiction, the terms of the debate are shifted too much toward the semantics of the debated terms and too much away from anything really substantive when it comes to the issues at hand.  After reflecting upon this for some time, something occurred to me that perhaps some will see as ancillary to the long-running arguments, but for myself it may be key toward understanding my own growing ambivalence toward the storytelling mechanisms around which the debates have been centered.

Above is a passage from late in his latest novel, the epic fantasy The White-Luck Warrior.  The character providing these thoughts, Mimara, is reflecting back upon her past while trying to negotiate the rapids of her present travel through a dead and ancient land.  There are descriptions of her experiences after the degradations of her past as a brothel-slave (her mother sold her into sex slavery in a moment of desperation).  This passage, I suspect, is meant to be a foreshadowing of something greater revolving around the setting and how the characters within it have their world perspectives stripped away.  Yet a close reading of that quoted passage reveals a structural issue that plagues much of Bakker's writing.  Note the distant reflective voice present within this quote.  Does it feel like something that a human being, particularly one who is still relatively young and who has experienced repeated traumas over at least ten years, would actually think?

Too often, Bakker does not trust the narrative and the characters within it.  There are moments where instead of presenting a more "naturalistic" character perspective on the world and surrounding events, there is this separation, as if the point found in the chapter epigraphs must be reinforced and referenced repeatedly by the characters.  Nuances and subtleties are often removed or obscured by this narrative intrusion.  Instead of reacting and processing with the characters, readers often have notions that they, like the characters, are self-deluded fools who will go automatically for the easy and pleasurable while ignoring the hard truths around them.  It is little surprise that many take umbrage at this, sensing (even when they may not be able to articulate it fully) that these challenging asides may be flawed, that there is something else besides what Bakker, through the narrative structure, is attempting to hammer down into them.

Yes, there are times when reader reactions are going to fall in line with Bakker's expectations.  But I cannot help but sense there is much not being covered.  Even when granting times in which cultural training and possible behavioral tendencies guide us subconsciously toward reactions that we little understand ourselves, it rarely is simply a simple issue of "being hardwired," as Bakker often puts it.  The "software," our acculturation processes and our own unique reactions to environment and societies, is not a significant part of his story.  That makes me suspicious of the underlying intent and how effective it truly is.

This suspicion does not deny that when considered, Bakker is making some intriguing arguments regarding human volition.  The issue, however, becomes that of efficacy.  His relative lack of nuance and engagement with societal (as opposed to strict biological) conditioning weakens the story in crucial places for me.  Take for instance the so-called "rape aliens," the Inchoroi.  Their lasciviousness, their seduction and coercion of human wills to perform obscene sex acts, this is meant to be the awful counter to the absolute moral strictures of this setting (one in which damnation is a physically real and present occurance).  They are meant to be horrifying, but Bakker largely reduces them to being mere grotesques.  Their actions are revolting, but there is little true horror behind them because of the narrative emphasis on revelation and (self-)deception.  Some of the themes tied into the Inchoroi and their Sranc creations resemble in some aspects those covered in some of Thomas Ligotti's works.  Where Ligotti utilizes the narrative structure to accentuate the alienation and anguish present in human deceit, Bakker's narrative intrudes too much into the processing realm, interrupting the reader's ongoing interpretation of the textual themes.  While this does not destroy the power of certain key narrative developments, it does weaken them, making some interpretations, such as that of human sexuality and the treatment of women in a world whose intentional misogyny (itself "confirmed" by the local metaphysics, at least through the fifth volume) muddled.  This gives validity to those who argue that the writer either implicitly (or explicitly) endorses these problematic views or he really has no understanding at all when it comes to describing human characters and their motivations.

This latter accusation certainly has some evidence to support it.  Having read twice his neuro-thriller, Neuropath (2006 and 2008), during my second reading I found myself becoming disengaged from the text (perhaps because I knew of the manipulations to come) because the characters were so implausible.  Having a hypersexualized woman who had been "altered" at first seemed to be a critique of standard thriller use of sex (and sexual violence) to further the plot.  Yet that character's scene was so stilted and contrived upon a re-read that it felt devoid of any real impact because that character had become "other" in the sense of her not really being a human being.  The same held true when I read Bakker's The Disciple of the Dog:  the "voices" were being forced too much into a pre-designated role, to the detriment of any real characterization.  When these poor character constructs are placed in settings where they are meant to be ciphers for controversial explorations of human sexual domination and violence, it is little surprise that those who have experienced sexism, if not outright misogyny, in their lives will frequently turn against the text, viewing it as an endorsement of what they cannot stand, all due to its poor structure and implementation.

Spending time trying to force others into considering "second order" questions regarding truth and the underlying structures behind one's world-views is a strategy doomed to failure, especially when there is the belief that the issue at hand is the narrative and what appears to be its underlying belief foundation.  While I personally think the author has not intentionally set out to reinforce misogynistic world-views, his stated intent of targeting predominantly male readers while arguing with women of various feminist ideologies that he is fighting that battle better than they are is leading to a debacle.  Borrowing half-processed neuroscience and evolutionary psychological terms uncritically, when there appears to be evidence that mitigates or even challenges those assumptions regarding just how important biological imperatives are in human interactions, only leads to accusations of trying to remove the terms of the debate from the immediate realm of function and practical application to the semantic level, in which the disagreement over terminological interpretation seems to lead only to a derailing of the larger argument. 

Things are at an ideological impasse, or so it seems to me.  Bakker doesn't seem to be engaging with his critics as much as he is attempting to force them to argue their points through his own chosen schematics.  While there is obviously some value to considering things through another's perspective, when it is not readily being reciprocated (or being perceived as not being reciprocated), why bother?  All it seems to lead to is just dozens of posts on an issue that seems to be too easily reduced to the caricature of an actual substantive debate.

Thoughts on two recent R. Scott Bakker short stories

I recently was made aware that Scott Bakker has been writing short fictions, two of which are set in his Eärwa fantasy world, "The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" and "The False Sun."  If one has read only his fantasy works, one might be surprised to learn that he has written short fictions, considering the depth and breadth of semantic exploration that takes place in a milieu where a de Saussurian examination of the relationships between the Signifiers and the Signified seems to lie near the heart of the mechanics of his setting's metaphysics.  Yet what intrigues me more than just the length of the stories told are the forms that he utilizes to tell two very complex "slice of life" narratives.

The first, "The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin," is told from the perspective of a Non-man Erratic.  Those who have read all five of Bakker's fantasy novels should be familiarized with their tragic fates, but those who have not read those works will quickly be lost, as the quoted sample below should illustrate:

They raise him upon a pole, pile sheaves of bracken about his feet. He has wondered whether death would be beautiful. He has wondered how the end of memory would appear at memory’s end. He has wondered what it means to so outrun glory as to become blind to disgrace. It seems proper that these screeching animals show him.

He watches them tip the amphorae, sees the oil pulse white in the sun. They are all there, Tinnirin, Rama, Par’sigiccas, sheeted in the blood of obscenities, their warcries cracked into gasps of effort, grunts of desperation. As the Men stand milling in the sunlight, filthy, bestial for hair, their brows dark so their eyes seem fires in angry caves. Rama’s head tips back like a bust on an unbalanced pedestal, painting witless shoulders in blood, as a plummeting shadow blots him, an Inchoroi monstrosity, decked in the corpse of some luckier brother. And he sorts them with his gaze, his frail captors, glimpsing dog-teeth, gloating for all the faces he will remember, for shame if not for torment. 

Stream of consciousness writing is tricky enough when the reader is well-acquainted with the setting and s/he has at least a vague conceptualization of how this narrative technique is being employed.  Bakker uses this technique in a setting that is not intimately familiar to neophyte readers; they cannot "ground" the narrative in a pre-conceived locale.  Nor can they relate to what the titular character, Cinial'jin, is (re)living.  It is very risky trying to show what is "under the hood" in a character that is literally inhuman.  When Dan Simmons did something similar (albeit on a much lesser scale) with his UI in The Fall of Hyperion, that character had to be "remote" and yet paradoxically "close" to those enmeshed in its sphere, with communication that seemed strange and stilted due to the UI's alien thoughts.  Here in "The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin," Bakker tries to do something similar, albeit on a much larger scale.  Cinial'jin is reliving the traumas of his past while experiencing the torturous end of his own present (and future). 

While these sorts of flashbacks have been done before (see Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury), what makes this particular scene intriguing is that Bakker aims to conflate the past and present into a loop of trauma and bruised memory to illustrate the tragic nature of the Erratics loss of full identity.  Yet in doing so, he has "ungrounded" the narrative; only glimpses of the narrative "present" can be identified with certainty (and only by a careful reading by those who are very familiar with the novels).  Although Bakker should be commended for attempting to tell a snippet of an epic fantasy through the use of stream of consciousness, the nature of the character serves to weaken the efficacy of that particular narrative technique.  Because Cinial'jin is "ungrounded" from typical divisions of "past" and "present," the story paradoxically becomes more dependent upon reader awareness of the fictional milieu.  Without that awareness to serve as a proxy grounding point, this narrative feels much less like a full, complete narrative and more like an interesting fragment that, if placed within the context of a larger story, would be much more effective than by itself.

The second story, "The False Sun," is told in a more conventional  third-person point of view.  Set around 3000 years before the events in The Darkness That Comes Before, "The False Sun" details some of the origins of the dreaded Consult, namely through the Mangaecca sorceror Shaeönanra's discovery of the remaining Inchoroi and the Inverse Fire that they possess.  What strikes me most about this story is how Bakker manages to strike a balance between a fabulistic "and in the days of yore, great deeds were done..." and a fatalistic "...before their works were undone, leaving behind only empty husks that belied the promise of those mighty deeds."  Below the first paragraph is quoted.  Note the use of detail to underscore the character's cynical point of view:

Like many great and dangerous Men, Shaeönanra was despised for many things, his penchant for mongering spies not the least of them. The rules that bound the Norsirai were unforgiving in those days. Trysë, the Holy Mother of Cities, was little more than a village huddling behind ruined walls of stone. The God-Kings of Imperial Umerau stared blindly from overthrown stone, moss-covered and almost forgotten. The Cond ruled the cities of the River Aumris, an empire they called the Great All, and few people were so proud or so headstrong. They divided the Ground between the Feal and the Wirg–the weak and the glorious. They adhered to a simplicity that was at once a fanaticism. And they judged the way all Men were prone to judge in those Far Antique days, without patience or mercy.

Unlike the first story, "The False Sun" has much more immediate repercussions for the unfolding fantasy series.  This story contains a wealth of details that according to the author are very pertinent to the in-progress The Unholy Consult, the sixth Eärwa novel, and while it does not "spoil" anything related to the plot of that novel, there are certain details provided that foreshadow what apparently will happen in that novel.  Therefore, it was with keen interest that I read "The False Sun."  What I took away from it was that it is a very well-written narrative that combines the use of naturalist techniques (describing the setting as true as possible) with a lyrical approach that is intended to provide a faint echo of older heroic narratives.

For the majority of the time, this combination works well, as Bakker's attention to detail creates a foreboding atmosphere that is heightened by the juxtaposition of Shaeönanra's thoughts with descriptions of the world around him.  Although too much is made of "world building" when certain reviewers try to analyze the epic fantasy that they have read, it does bear noting that Bakker has done a better job here in describing the layout of his created setting, not just in contents of what exists (the cities that the reader knows will be desolate at some point, the sense of the lost arcane knowledge that occurred in the narrative "present," etc.) but in how these elements have an import beyond the story at hand.  There are numerous hints and possible foreshadowing events that several of Bakker's fans will probably want to dissect and analyze before the next novel comes out.  "The False Sun" certainly does lend itself well to being a speculation-generating piece.  However, I think what is best about this story is not what it portends for the series proper, but instead how it demonstrates Bakker's growth as a writer.

In the past, one of my main complaints about Bakker's writing was his tendency to use a narrative sledgehammer to embed certain elements within the story.  At times during my reading of his first series, The Prince of Nothing, a scene would be near-perfect, until a character would try to reinforce something that had already been previously established about the locale, the situation, or the greater stakes than the Holy War plot.  In his latest novel, The White-Luck Warrior, Bakker had toned this down somewhat, letting the action reveal the gravity of the situation rather than relying so heavily upon the characters to repeat almost redundantly what had previously been accepted.  Here in "The False Sun," by having the thoughts of the future Consult leader serve as the main portal through which the reader experiences the action, s/he gets a larger sense behind the motivations of the antagonists without the need for elaboration or repetition.  This adds new layers to not just "The False Sun," but also to the series as a whole.  By being able to see the antagonistic side and to discern the likely source of their motivations, a new perception is generated without Bakker ever needing to have those characters reveal everything behind their machinations.  Shaeönanra is an effective character not because his actions are particularly noteworthy, but because his motivations are plausible and this adds depth to characters that otherwise might have been relegated to two-dimensional cardboard likenesses of actual dynamic characters. 

"The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" and "The False Sun" both show Bakker expanding his narrative repertoire.  Although "The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" is weakened by its dependence upon the reader being fully aware of the context in which the stream of consciousness narrative moves, "The False Sun" is perhaps one of Bakker's most accomplished writings to date.  Subtlety in voice and in characterization can go a long way in creating a compelling atmosphere for the narrative to unfold and in "The False Sun," Bakker shows that the progress made in his earlier novels continues.  This bodes well for the upcoming The Unholy Consult and perhaps for future short fictions in the Eärwa setting.

So I participated in a group interview of Scott Bakker recently

It just went live at Pat's blog.  Five of the questions I asked.  Can you identify which ones those are from the ones that Adam and Pat wrote?

R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

The largest Sranc clans the Horselords battled rarely numbered more than several hundred.  Sometimes a particularly cruel and cunning Sranc chieftain would enslave his neighbours and open warfare would range across the Pale.  And the legends were littered with stories of Sranc rising in nations and overcoming the Outermost Holds.  Sakarpus itself had been besieged five times since the days of the Ruiner.

But this... slaughter.

Only some greater power could have accomplished this.

Meat sweated in open sunlight.  Flies steamed about the scrub and grasses.  Cartilage gleamed where not chapped with gore.  The stink was raw unto gagging.

"The war is real," he said with dull wonder. "The Aspect-Emperor...His war is real."

"Perhaps..." Zsoronga said after listening to Obotegwa's translation.  "But are his reasons?" (p. 112)

The White-Luck Warrior, R. Scott Bakker's fifth Earwä fantasy novel and the middle volume of his The Aspect-Emperor trilogy, perhaps can best be described as a continuation of what has come before and the harbinger of things to come.  This middle volume, both in the middle series and likely for the overarching series as well (plans are for the Earwä novels to be at least eight volumes, but nine would not be surprising), develops further the themes explored in earlier books and it deepens the struggle while simultaneously expanding the scope of matters established in the Prince of Nothing trilogy and its immediate prequel, The Judging Eye.  This results in a volume, that while not "self-contained," that masterfully develops its themes, with new iterations on prior themes that serve to connect almost seamlessly the events of before and the portents of things to come.

As in The Judging Eye, there are three main scenes of action:  The Great Ordeal, led by the Aspect-Emperor and whose main narrative PoV is that of the young Sarkapian king, Sorweel; the "slog" guided by the Wizard Achamian and his lost lover's daughter Mimara; and Momemn, where the Aspect-Emperor's wife fights to maintain control of the empire while her husband is away.  When The Judging Eye concluded, there were machinations that had only begun to crank up.  Whether it be the Hundred Gods of Earwä, led by the Earth-Mother Yatwer, stirring up divine forces against the New Empire and Kellhus' new religious formula, or it be the hidden mysteries contained within the Nonman companion in the slog, Cleric, the previous volume left much to be explored in The White-Luck Warrior, including the eponymous character who presumably will be stalking Anasûrimbors.  On the whole, this volume fulfills the promise of its predecessor, as not only are most of these mysteries revealed, but the implications of the actions in the previous four volumes are proved to be much more than what one might anticipate.

Bakker's prose typically has been tight, measured bursts of information told in a limited third-person point of view.  Here in The White-Luck Warrior, he exploits the possibilities contained within this narrative approach in an even more efficient fashion than before.  Take for instance the scene quoted above dealing with two reluctant members of Kellhus' Believer-Kings cadre, Sorweel and the Zeum heir, Zsoronga.  Bakker finds a good balance here (and in most of the important scenes in this volume) between narrating the events and the characters' interpretations of them.  Here we see the carnage of an earlier battle between the Ordeal and the Sranc forces opposing their march to the Consult center of Golgotterath in the far northwest of Earwä.  The toll was appalling and Bakker does not skimp on the details.  What is interesting is the emphasis on "real."  What is "real," the events or the motivations that cause the events?  This question lies at the crux of Bakker's novels and here in The White-Luck Warrior he explores possibilities throughout several scenes, some subtly and others as direct as the one quoted above.

The plot here is very tight.  The three main centers of action receive about five chapters each for their development, or roughly 190 pages per scene of conflict.  In this space, Bakker develops conflicts (Sorweel's self-conflicts regarding Kellhus overlaying the external conflict of the Ordeal's march through Sranc lands; Achamian and Mimara's questions on sorcerous damnation in the context of their march with the Skin Eaters and the enigmatic Cleric as they strive to reach the fabled Coffers of the Library of Sauglish in the north; Esmenet's rising paranoia regarding her tenuous hold of the New Empire while her Anasûrimbor children and brother-in-law seem to be concealing much, while the White-Luck Warrior emerges) begun in The Judging Eye before exploding them in the final chapters for each narrative arc.  Nothing feels rushed nor underdeveloped; the tension rises gradually but steadily until the pressure points give away, leading to three cliffhangers to be explored in the third volume, tentatively called The Unholy Consult.

Bakker manages to avoid what I feared might be a flaw in one of the subplots, that of enemy forces.  The Sranc forces, although presented in earlier volumes to be a sort of stand-in for the ubiquitous Orcs, prove to be a cunning, crafty foe.  Too often enemy masses are presented as being a false horror, with only the overwhelming numbers of them being their real threat to the heroes.  This is not the case here, as the Sranc are shown to be vicious and yet intelligent creatures, whose strategies serve to sap the Ordeal.  It is a testimony to how well-thought out Bakker's narrative is that there was a palpable sense throughout this volume that the shit was going to hit the ceiling.  There is a rising horror in the Ordeal subplot that is mirrored to an extent in the Achamian one, only with a different sort of psychological suspense arising, one that is more internal than the external threat represented by the Sranc.

Outside of a few moments where it felt Bakker was repeating his themes too broadly and too explicitly (more a case of individual preference than an actual narrative flaw), The White-Luck Warrior contains a unity of theme and action that is rarely seen in epic/heroic fantasies.  The action unfolds nicely, while the import of these actions and the motivations behind them are revealed gradually and fully.  The characterizations are superb and the stage has been set for a massive conflagration in the final volume of this middle series.  What happens before certainly does cause what comes after and The Unholy Consult (or whatever name this volume ultimately receives) will almost certainly reveal more for those left hungering for more once the final cliffhanger is reached.  Early favorite for one of the best 2011 speculative fiction releases.

The Aspect-Emperor, vol. I: R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye

I first read the opening volume to The Aspect-Emperor trilogy, The Judging Eye, back in November 2008 and again in January 2009, shortly before the book's publication worldwide.  This sequel to Bakker's The Prince of Nothing trilogy, set twenty years after the events of The Thousandfold Thought, was for me Bakker's most compact and chilling epic fantasy yet.

When I originally read it in November 2008, I made a post about elements of the book that occurred to me at the time.  Instead of writing around these points, I'm going to copy/paste them and elaborate on a few of them, giving my take after completing my third read just now:

1) The writing is more compact than in the PoN trilogy.

The Judging Eye, clocking in around 420 pages of narrative, is the second-shortest of Bakker's epic fantasy volumes.  However, he manages to compress a fairly strong narrative arc into 1/2 of this book, doing more than just the initial setups that he established in the first PoN volume, The Darkness That Comes Before.  Furthermore, there is a greater emphasis on establishing the consequences of action rather than philosophizing about said actions.




2) The evolution of the characters' PoVs away from direct focus on Kellhus's own PoV to him being further and further outside the direct action is a logical progression from the latter half of PoN and something I expected.


This is a very important step in expanding the narrative, as there were times late in PoN, where it seemed virtually all of the action and narrative meaning had collapsed around the character of Kellhus.  While this was important for establishing the centrality of Kellhus in that particular trilogy, in this one, despite it bearing the name of Kellhus's adopted title, it appears much of the focus will be on those who resist Kellhus's manipulations and those who are fighting to find a newer sort of meaning, one that is not dominated by the Dûnyain.  Furthermore, by having no Kellhus PoV, those times in which he does appear allows for the reader to see him from the vantage point of the characters who are beholding him in action.


3) The reason behind this book's title (and the event surrounding this) is either setting up for some very serious metaphysical discussion in the coming novels, or it might be a decried as being an ill-explained departure from the mechanics established in the previous trilogy.

After re-reading this book, I believe it's more a case of the former rather than the latter.  The metaphysics behind the Chorae are explored in greater detail and how the titular bearer of the Judging Eye reaches through the contradictions embedded in the Chorae actually seemed to be better done on a re-read than I remember it being when I first read this book a year and a half ago.

4) Having three main plot threads for this novel didn't seem to work as well as it should have, as one of them came to dominate too much of the latter third of the novel. Hard to think of how Bakker could have done it any differently right now, however.

This still appears to be the book's weakest part, as the Esmenet and Sorweel chapters came across as feeling incomplete and rather sketchy compared to the Akka/Mimara chapters.  This was exacerbated by the Akka chapters dominating the final 170 pages of the novel, leaving the other two subplots undeveloped in comparison.  However, it is hard to say what should have been added to these two subplots, since the Akka chapters did require quite a bit of space to develop its scenes appropriately.

5) Speaking of those plot threads, the one that dominates actually would have made an excellent, dark, scary novel on its own, so it's not as though it could have been cut any further.


The journey of Akka, Mimara, and the mercenary Sranc hunters, the Skin Hunters, through the apparently-abandoned Nonmen mansion of Cil-Aujas, is perhaps one of the best homages to Tolkien's Moria scene that I have read.  The combination of stifling atmosphere, alternating slow and quick pacing to the narrative, and the slow unveiling of all of the horrors entombed in this "topos" were done to great effect.  With this most recent re-read, I found myself appreciating more what had been established within these chapters that explains not just a bit of the setting's "history," but also the consequences that now face the company as they march through it.

6) The proverbs for this volume are just as cutting and just as cynical about "human nature" as were the PoN ones.

Nothing more to add than my opinion stands.

7) The humor was a little affected at times; this was a dark novel, but a bit more humor could have made the dark scenes all the more effective by highlighting the contrasts more.

Although I did find a slight bit more levity when I re-read this, it is true that one of the knocks on Bakker's writing is that there is little that breaks the seriousness of the narrative. While there might not be the pontifications that occurred in the earlier trilogy on occasion, there also is not much in the way of imbuing the characters with a full range of human emotions either. This is perhaps the greatest weakness in his writings, even if there has been slow improvement with each succeeding volume to date.

8) For those who knock Bakker's portrayal of women: I thought he did a pretty good job portraying one main female character (new to the series) and how she developed her attitudes.

Mimara came off well in this re-read.  Her hurt and suspicion were shown well and she seemed to be a more "independent" (well, as far as Kellhus allows any other character to be viewed as "independent" in this series) character than her mother Esmenet has come across in four volumes now.

9) It's never simple with any of Kellhus's children. There is much more to be revealed about them. Even the mad have moments of clarity.


Kellhus' youngest surviving child, Kelmomas, is a real sociopath in this volume. He exudes this sense of danger that belies his young, eight year-old body. The other children felt more like autistic savants of varying degrees, but Kelmomas truly is a monster-in-development and I am curious to see what Bakker will do with him in future volumes.



10) Damnation is a very scary thing indeed.

I've already said my piece on Cil-Aujas above, so just read between the lines there.

11) Much is revealed of Eärwa's past, including some truly sick scenes.

The true horrors of Cil-Aujas involve a most brutal form of enslavement and Bakker presents this in an unflinching fashion, displaying sympathy toward the human victims but not outright condemning through his characters the horrors that took place over a 10,000 year span. This balancing let the reader construct just what horrors were taking place, rather than depending on the author to tell them everything. Nicely done.

12) If I were to go much further right now, Scott likely would have my head, even if he didn't make me promise to withhold information about this book (all my comments are based strictly on my reading of the ARC Overlook sent me this week).

Well, I went a bit further,but only to give a hint of what I enjoyed.  This novel took several days for me to complete (in part due to much of my reading time being taken up with BAF responsibilities and in part due to a mild sinus/lung infection), but yet it seemed as though I were reading tomes' worth of material in the span of barely 400 pages.  Bakker has matured as a writer, allowing inference to take the place of exposition in several places and the novel felt stronger as a result.  With nearly a year to wait until the next volume, The White-Luck Warrior, perhaps I can rest a bit before continuing this exhausting and yet enjoyable series.

PoN Review Series: R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought

Out of all the re-read/commentaries done to date, I have always felt that writing one on the third The Prince of Nothing volume, The Thousandfold Thought, would be the most difficult to put into words.  Thankfully, I do not have to give even a pretense of writing an "objective" or "unbiased" review (such things are fairly impossible even in the most distant of conditions), so I will begin with a little story dating nearly a year and a half before I first read this volume in ARC format in October 2005.

Back in the summer of 2004, I had started to post semi-regularly at one of the larger general genre forums, SFF World (I still appear there on occasion under the screen name of Aldarion, named after my favorite Tolkien character of the time, although I'm considering changing that name in the future to some form of my given names).  If memory serves, I became involved in a threads-spanning debate/argument/flame war/mass banning event that involved quite a few people.  It was over what at the time (and to some extent, I still hold the same opinion) was a rather silly discussion on the merits of epic fantasy.  In the middle of one of those discussions appeared an interesting character who had the SN of "No-Dog."  I blinked at this, having read, of course, Bakker's first two PoN novels, but I wasn't for sure for a while.  Then a few comments came up and my suspicions that "No-Dog" was indeed Bakker were confirmed.  Some interesting discussions between us, Gary Wassner, and a few other regulars at that site began to take place during the late summer and autumn of 2004.  One such discussion, that Bakker started about an aborted project of mine (and one of the reasons why I started this blog back in August 2004 was to host this project), can be found here. 

Several of Bakker's contributions to these discussions revolved around the semantics involved with the creation of expressions to convey thoughts and emotions.  Looking back at these discussions, it was clear in retrospect that Bakker was in part testing some ideas on Agency and Function to gauge reader response.  Several of these ideas are explored in The Thousandfold Thought and some of the ways they are presented and addressed remind me constantly, whenever I read certain passages, of those SFF World discussions.  It is no accident that I, along with several others active at that time, were listed in the Acknowledgements page of this book, because in a sense, we were a sort of "beta testers" for the arguments Bakker was embedding in this book.

The Thousandfold Thought, therefore, is more than a simple text for me to read and to react.  It is, in many levels, the culmination of a series of arguments that Bakker has engaged in for years, often with some interesting explorations occurring as a result.  It is not as powerful of a novel as its predecessor, The Warrior-Prophet, was for me, since there is not as much evidence of internal and external conflict among the soldiers of the Holy War in this third volume, but it is a sometimes-profound conclusion to an argument, that if accepted at face value, can be rather chilling.  Whenever I read this book, I think foremost on the arguments and secondarily on the plot and characterizations.

But there is much to talk about in how the characters have changed after their souls have been tempered at the forges of the desert, enemy, and disease.  Kellhus, now triumphant, has become ever more distant in the narrative as the Holy War concludes its march to Shimeh.  He is seen much more through the fervor and adulation of his quasi-worshipers than he is seen in internal monologues (until the key final scenes of the novel).  This increased character "distance" and the resulting sense of "coldness" is, I believe, essential to seeing how such a manipulator as Kellhus has risen in a year's span.  It is not, however, the type of story that's going to endear this character to those readers who prefer having protagonists with whom they can forge an empathic bond.

Cnaiür, Achamian, and Conphas really come into their own as characters in this novel, in large part due to how each is shown to have at least a partial immunity to Kellhus's charms.  Madness, skepticism, and megalomania - how sobering it is to realize that these weaknesses can form a bulwark against that insidious sense of self-assurance and certainty that one's core beliefs are "right" and ought to be immutable.  Bakker doesn't create any happy endings for any of these three, but the chilling meanings behind these characters gives much food for thought.

However, there are some problems with the narrative.  Much of the novel feels as though it was created to host the arguments I've mentioned above, rather than the arguments being interwoven into the seams of the narrative.  As the Zaudunyani elements of the Holy War come to prominence, the soldiers feel less "alive" and more like pawns in another game.  Although this trilogy was always meant to be but the opening segment of a three-part, decades-spanning look at the coming Second Apocalypse, there were times that this volume felt anti-climactic because so many of the plot tensions had been addressed in the prior volume, leaving mostly the "purposes" of the narrative to be considered for the majority of the novel.  I did enjoy this element greatly, mind you, but I could see, upon a re-read, where some of the trilogy's detractors may have a point about how inward-focused this novel (and the series) were compared to some of the promises hinted at with the setting and early character motives.

These shortcomings, however, did not lessen my appreciation for what Bakker accomplished here.  It is rare for a genre work, especially an epic fantasy, to leave me thinking about the meanings behind the narratives as this series has done so far.  Later this weekend, I hope to comment for the first time at length on Bakker's opener to his second trilogy, The Aspect-Emperor, a shorter book called The Judging Eye.  Should be some interesting revelations (or at least movings of my soul) with that.

PoN Review Series: R. Scott Bakker, The Warrior-Prophet

In my previous commentary on the first novel, The Darkness That Comes Before, I mentioned how Bakker's series was one of the more erudite epic fantasies that I have read.  It was in this sprawling 600 page (tradeback) middle volume where I believe that he best lays out the ideas he wants to explore.

When I first read this volume in June 2004 (I received a review copy from Penguin Canada at Bakker's request, just a day or two after chatting with him for the first time via email), it quickly became my favorite.  Even after two more volumes set in the Earwä setting, there still is something about The Warrior-Prophet that appeals to me more strongly than anything found in Bakker's other novels.  After re-reading this novel for the first time since 2006, I think I have a better grasp on what exactly that appeal might be.

The novel follows the Holy War from its first marches until it is near its goal of the Holy City of Shimeh.  Bakker here purposely borrows liberally from the histories of the First Crusade to set up the conflicts he wants to explore.  If I'm not mistaken, some readers on online forums in the past have taken Bakker to task for having such a strict correlation between the historical event and the epic fantasy story.  The more I think about it, the more I believe those detractors may be missing something key.  War, and most especially a religious or Holy War, is a sort of nexus for all sorts of beliefs and events.  People fighting in a war have to be convinced of that war's necessity.  Patterns of life have to be adjusted to fit the demands of the war.  Belief structures alter, often to binary black/white "forces" that have to clash.  How does one cope with these changes?  Are there many doubts as to the efficacy of war and the veracity behind it?  How are leaders created?

Bakker examines each of these issues in a very harsh, unforgiving desert environment.  Just as the historical Crusaders had to suffer privation in order to become a more cohesive unit, here in The Warrior-Prophet Bakker explores how the various national/regional armies became molded into a single fighting force by the end of the novel.  While certainly the mass starvation, the outbreaks of disease, and the attrition due to near-constant skirmishes are not pleasant matters to discuss at length, Bakker uses these events to explore just how quickly and radically people can change their minds and patterns of life.

Bakker does this through an interesting mix of the personal and the sweeping narrative.  He uses Kellhus, the now proclaimed Warrior-Prophet of the Holy War, to show how easily manipulated people can be.  But as Kellhus's influence waxes, Bakker wisely broadens the narrative scope, switching to a more distant narrative so the reader can see the effects of Kellhus' teachings and manipulations on a broader scale, while simultaneously cutting back on revealing the personal interactions between Kellhus and those closest to the Holy War's leadership.  While I suppose for many readers, this more distant narrative may be offputting, I found it to be a good solution to how to explore just what effects the war and the travails were having on the participants in the Holy War.  If a more "personal" narrative approach had been adopted, I suspect the novel would have been at least half again its size but with less of a focus on the overall impact.

The prose for the most part is excellent.  Although the dialogues at time become too direct with their philosophical bents (this is especially true for whenever Achamian and Kellhus are conversing with each other), Bakker's prose is at best when he is outlining just what the Holy War was suffering when he "zooms out" and takes a more panoramic approach toward dealing with the slow march to Shimeh.  Kellhus is simultaneously the most powerful and the least-developed of the major characters in this book.  This is largely on purpose, I suspect, since Kellhus as a manipulator would not be as effective if all his machinations were revealed directly to the reader.  Achamian, with Cnaiür a close second, is the most complex character, whose weaknesses, considerable as they are, make his eventual unveiling as a Mandate Sorcerer of Rank all the more intriguing to read.  If anything, Akka is perhaps the moral center of this novel, as his doubts, fears, and passions strengthen him and eventually allow him to begin to see what is truly unfolding within the Holy War.

Bakker has been criticized by several readers for his treatment of women.  In re-reading this series, I decided to focus more on how women are portrayed here.  Yes, it is a harsh environment where Biblical-like condemnations seem to have a greater power (after all, damnation is real here) and women certainly are treated as though they have "weaker souls" than me.  But it behooves the reader to be careful to make the jump from setting to authorial intent.  I surmise that what Bakker is doing here is confronting modern readers with ugly, nasty scriptural views of gender (and other social/moral matters) in an attempt to make his women more sympathetic.  Esmenet in particular, whore that she is, embodies this clash between ancient strictures and modern sensibilities.  By any standard, she is an extremely intelligent and perceptive character, easily more clear-headed than any of the male characters, with the exception of Kellhus.  Yet she is held down and is illiterate until Kellhus begins to teach her how to read.  Why is this?  What portents does this have for future volumes?

The Warrior-Prophet concludes with two interesting events:  the ritual punishment of Kellhus by the Orthodox faction of the Holy War and the Battle of Caraskand.  Fear of the unknown is often the fear of the partially known and the twisting of that partial awareness.  Kellhus' binding in the Circumfex represents the mounting fears associated with the crumbling of certainty.  It is, in many respects, the other side of the faith/certainty coin.  Bakker does a good job in showing just how divided people can become in a mass movement such as the Holy War.  The parallels with Jesus, however, might be a bit too direct for some.  The subsequent Battle, led by a freed Kellhus, serves as a metaphor for conviction.  The Holy War, now purged by privation and by witnessing a presumed "miracle" at the Circumfex, triumphs against the Fanim forces, despite suffering from dehydration, starvation, and the ravages of disease.  It is their conviction that they are "right" which gives them the strength to fight on and to prevail.  While some readers may find this final scene to be a bit much, it is largely based on the historical Battle of Antioch and the Crusaders' "will to win" there.

Although The Warrior-Prophet is not a perfect novel (it is a bit too didactic at times), it was an even more enjoyable re-read this time than it was during any of the three previous re-reads I had between 2004 and 2006.  While Kellhus as an idea is a bit too disconcerting to read at times, on the whole, I found the characters to be more interesting and less "stiff" than I had previously remembered them.  Now onto the final volume in the PoN trilogy, The Thousandfold Thought.  Should be finished with that either tonight or tomorrow.

PoN Review Series: R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

Ever since I first read The Darkness That Comes Before in May 2004 (I first imported the paperback from Canada, then bought a hardcover when the US release occurred a month later), The Prince of Nothing trilogy and the sequel trilogy opener, The Judging Eye, have been some of the more erudite epic fantasies that I have read.  However, I never really have written much in the way of commentaries or reviews (outside of two very short and spoiler-free pieces on wotmania, since lost when that website shut down last year).  Part of the reason why is because I got to meet Bakker at a Nashville booksigning in June 2004 and we began a very long and enjoyable email exchange/friendship (which tends to put a damper on the critical front, which is why I hesitate before commenting on certain others' books, until I have worked things through in my head) and part is due to trying to figure out a way of discussing the book without revealing too many possible thematic spoilers.  I think I have an idea now about how to go about doing this without being too certain of my claims (a point that I suspect the author, if he were to read this, would chuckle over).

Unlike my other commentaries, where I had very little to no interaction with the authors prior to reading/commenting on their series, much of what I have to say will be informed by some of the discussions and email debates that Bakker and I had over a few years' span.  This is not to say that I will be claiming what I say is in any shape or form "definitive", but rather these are takes derived from about 4-5 re-reads and some of the interviews and Q&As I arranged with Bakker (as seen in the links to the right under Interviews).  But enough with the justifications, now on to analyzing certain aspects of this novel (and some will be held back for the other volumes) that occurred to me while re-reading this book yesterday.

Examine the book's title:  The Darkness That Comes Before.  What can this possibly mean?  Is it a reference to an external EVIL force, or to something much more insidious and amorphous?  Or is it a combination of both, perhaps with the result (if not "intent") to draw readers into the story and then to rip away some of their assumptions about what the book may "be about"?

Each time that I re-read this series, I find myself thinking more about this book's title and especially the key thematic point of "what comes before determines what comes after."  And once that occurs, I "know" that I am no longer in a "safe" setting, where I can be a passive reader content to read the adventures of Kellhus, Achamian, Esmenet, Proyas, Conphas, and others.  No, I am now actively engaged with the text, wondering what content buried within the narrative could apply to me.  While this engagement certainly is nothing unique to this series, I believe (a very dangerous word in this milieu) that Bakker, more so than any other current epic fantasy writer, depends upon the reader being willing to take an "active" role in "participating" with the narrative, questioning assumptions and challenging assertions, for the unfolding story to have a strong impact.

The basic structure of the novel is deceptively simple.  Kellhus, a descendant of a lost-lost royal dynasty, is the product of nearly two thousand years of breeding and training by a secluded monastic sect called the Dûnyain.  Imagine some of the opening scenes from Kung-Fu or Enter the Dragon and some of the aspects of Kellhus' training can be understood more quickly.  He receives word of a dream message sent by his father, Moënghus, calling him out to the southern city of Shimeh.  The Ruling Council, the Pragma, sends him forth and then, contaminated, as they see it, by the Outside, commit mass seppuku.

Kellhus has grown up in a "conditioned" environment, where virtually all aspects of life, from emotions to muscular twitches to judging how a leaf will fall, have been controlled and analyzed to the point where the Dûnyain have heightened responses and the ability to master their environments.  It is a wonder to Kellhus when he encounters the unconditioned world and he quickly grasps how easy it is to master it, and its people.

Against this is a setting of oncoming holy war.  Some have criticized Bakker for following the major aspects of the First Crusade closely, but I suspect this is a deliberate similarity done in order to make several points about that world and our own.  In the novel, several characters think or say that "war is intellect."  But beneath it, there is something stronger.  There is the sense that war is certainty made concrete.  This is especially true for religious faith, which depends upon certainty for its bedrock.  And what happens when an individual schooled in the ways of mastering environments encounters those who are "certain" of their causes?

In re-reading this novel, I was struck by just how different in tone and feel Kellhus's scenes were with those of the leaders of the Holy War.  He is, for good or for evil, or rather, beyond good and evil, a Nietzschian übermensch in a world populated by unquestioning, non-skeptical humans.  The manipulations that Kellhus begins to manifest in this novel seem at first to be a bit much, but is it really different from the Bene Gesserit "Voice" used in the Dune Chronicles?

Several readers have found Kellhus's character to be repulsive and question why anyone would want to read a series full of "unlikeable" characters.  I have always wondered if in part the unspoken question is "Why would anyone want to read a story that makes me - and perhaps you - uncomfortable?"  There is much, of course, that is unsettling about this novel and its setting.  Take for instance, the way women are portrayed in this series.  They are seen as objectively "inferior" to men, with lesser souls, and it is evident within the text.  This runs so counter to modern perceptions of gender roles as to make several legitimately question as to why Bakker would create such a misogynistic society.

The answer I would posit is more unsettling than the possibility that Bakker himself sees women as being inferior (I don't believe so for a moment).  In a world (imagine the late movie trailer guy reading this aloud) where Faith is True and Evident, where Scriptures come to life, this happens.  But consider our own religious faiths and how women, slaves, people of "other" descent are portrayed.  Is what is shown to be "true" in an imagined setting more unsettling because it is grounded upon certain core beliefs of this world's major religious faiths?  I believe that it is.  What "darkness" comes before our belief of what will come after?

The prose is at worst serviceable and at times is well-written.  As hinted above, sometimes the dialogues feel a bit stilted due to the shifts back and forth from Kellhus's more "modern" perspective and those of the other characters.  The characterizations I found to be well-drawn, although Kellhus certainly can be hard to swallow at times due to how "alien" he is compared to the others.  Although there is little more than scene-setting and character introductions in this nearly-600 page novel, Bakker does a good job in establishing just how dangerous of a character Kellhus is and here, more so than in the latter novels, the direct impact of his manipulations can be seen.  There are also elements of mysteries, in particular about the nature(s) of the enemy, the Consult, and of the other sentient species living on the planet, the Non-men.

On the whole, The Darkness That Came Before was an enjoyable re-read, my first in over three years.  It still has the power to make me stop and question what I might believe to be "true" about the setting and its characters.  While there are times where the prose did not live up to the quality of its themes (as I said, it was serviceable at times and not spectacular), overall this was an enjoyable re-read.  Much more to say when I finish The Warrior-Prophet in the next couple of days.

Croatian cover art for two of Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing Books

When did Darrell Sweet start doing covert art consultation for the Croatian and Serbian fantasy markets?

Anyone remember this scene in The Thousandfold Thought?  I guess Kellhus likes to blast enemies as a post-coital exercise...

Edit:  Didn't read the email carefully enough.  These books were published in Croatia, not Serbia, although the two are as similar as American and British English.

The wotmania Files: Q&A with Scott Bakker Part II (Nov. 2004)

Due to all sorts of things happening the past few weeks, forgot about editing/posting more of the Q&A session Bakker did with wotmania back in November 2004. Here it is for those curious to know more about the author and his works.

You have given some hints that this world was at least discovered by off worlders. Are we going to see more of that? Are the No-men meerly a technologically advanced people from another world? I guess I am asking if they are a different species from the people we see.

Also, thanks tons for doing this.

Good questions... The problem is that I see the unveiling of the world (which is HUGE) as part of the reader's adventure. All these issues come to play decisive roles in the story. I wish I could give you a better answer...

Otherwise, I'd like to thank YOU ALL, and especially Larry, for giving me the opportunity to do this. This MB is very, very cool.

Robert Jordan is a lucky man!

I mean, you are popular because you're good, so much so, that we have a little fan club in El Salvador, Central America, where I am from. Larry adviced me to tell you here so I am doing it now. But the point is, your storytelling is great, why would a great writter not become successful,or if he does, why be surprised by that?

Thanks, dark gholam. Be sure to say hi to everyone!

Well, two things, I guess. First, I'm painfully aware of the many ways we humans like to delude ourselves, particularly when it comes to flattery. Do you remember the coverage of Ronald Reagan's passing a few months back? The one thing all the American news organizations kept saying more than anything else was that Reagan 'reminded us of how great they were.' Somehow they managed to turn this poor guy's death into an orgy of self-congratulation. They did this because they're selling a product in a competitive market, and they knew that people want to be flattered more than they want to be informed. Just think of how awkward those words "Tell me what you really think" can be!

When you receive attention the way I've been, it pays-pays-pays to be suspicious, especially since it's so HARD to gain perspective on one's own perspective. I can actually understand what happened to Goodkind, I think.

Secondly, I had a hard youth in some ways. I grew up poor, working all the time, and profoundly suspicious of good fortune. Those kind of emotional habits are hard to shake.

My mind is a bit random so I hope you can excuse that these questions are a bit random.

Do polar bears wear sunglasses were you live?

Nope. But they DO drink Coca-Cola.

Were would you recommend someone that is interested in philosophy to start?

Hard question. I'm not sure there's any one book that I would recommend: the best place, really, is a freshman philosophy course. There's also a philosophy discussion section on The Three Seas Forum, where you can debate and ask questions to your heart's delight. So far it seems remarkably flameproof, despite the charged subject matter.

Do you ever drink soft drinks? If you do what are your favourite?

I compulsively drink caffiene-free Coke Classic. Tastes the same as the regular, but doesn't keep you up all night pondering the imminent destruction of the world. I like to feel rested when I ponder such things...

Do you prefer to write in the day or during the night?

I'm a lark when it comes to writing, which is a pain because all the years I spent working midnights transformed me into an owl.

How many books do you think you will write in your lifetime?

That depends. How long do I got to live?

Is death the beginning or the end?

Death lies beyond beginnings and ends.

Do you think you will some day be as popular as J.R.R. Tolkien?

Good lord, no! First off, I think the first 200 pages of TDTCB will ward off many readers, as will the general complexity of the world and the names. Kind of like St. Peter... Then there's the dark and violent themes I tackle, which I'm sure will convince many, like poor Dorothy from Curved Lake, Ontario, that my books should be burned. Then there's the fact that Tolkien is the God of epic fantasy, and as such, tends to be a jealous God, and will tolerate no others, and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Do you see any parts of yourself in every character you create?

Only the well-endowed ones...

Couldn't resist! What can I say? I grew up on a tobacco farm. The first time someone mentioned "Touched by an Angel" I thought they were talking about a porno. I like to think of my humour as 'earthy' rather than 'dirty.'

Insofar as I put myself in their headspace, you could say that all of my characters are expressions of the possible headspaces I can occupy. I know this unnerves my wife, who now and again asks me to sleep on the couch after proofing a chapter.

Thank you for the great books and for taking time to answer questions from us lowly readers.

/Håkan

Thank you, Dark Matter!

I live in Australia and that leads me to my first question, I had a hard time getting your book down here, and it took so long to get here I have only read the first quarter. I think I have a British published copy, getting to the questions:

1. Are there going to be Australian editions or am I going to have to pay for international postage on ‘The Warrior Prophet’.

Simon & Schuster UK handle worldwide distribution in English (outside of the US and UK). I'll ask my editor there about it. Thanks for the tip, I Am.

2. The cover art (on the edition I have) is very evocative and I know most authors have no control over cover art. Do you like the images on the covers and what they suggest about the book/story?

I'm happy with the S&S cover, but I haven't the foggiest as to WHO that is staring out at you. I had thought that the Canadian cover was just so obviously superior, more 'eye catching,' so to prove myself right I took the book to one of my pop culture classes and put both covers up on the VDP, and without letting anyone know which I preferred, I asked my student which one they liked best.

They voted for the S&S cover by a 2 to 1 margin.

Which explains why publishers always reserve the right to put whatever they want on the covers. Though we authors fancy ourselves creative geniuses, the bottomline is that we haven't a clue as what sells books. In this case, I'm told that it's the face. Our brains have powerful face-recognition circuits, which often makes covers with faces more engaging.

I STILL prefer the Canadian covers though (as does my US publisher, thank Gawd).

3. Where does you interest in religion come from?

I've had a strange personal odyssey when it comes to religion. When I was young, I was 'born again,' but then around 14 or so I started asking questions, lots of them, and troubling enough to convince my mother to have the pastor over for dinner a couple nights. It had dawned on me that if everything had a cause, and those causes themselves had causes, then my thoughts, which were part of 'everything,' were themselves caused, and that there could be no such thing as free will...

I was the guy who you DID NOT want to talk to on acid or mushrooms.

So I spent my teens as an athiest and a nihilist, filled with moral outrage at the fact that morality did not exist, and yet everyone pretended it did.

Then I went to university, and somehow ended up reading Heidegger, the German father of what Sartre would later turn into existentialism. The intellectual ins and outs of my transformation are too complicated to relate here, but I ended up being an agnostic, firmly convinced of the reality of things like meaning and morality.

Then while doing my Philosophy PhD at Vanderbilt, I started playing poker on a regular basis with some classmates, one of whom was an avowed nihilist. I argued and argued and argued, and got my ass kicked. And I realized that if you were honest and only committed yourself to warranted claims, then nihilism was inescapable.

But nihilism, of course, simply HAS to be wrong. There's gotta be more than function, process, and mechanism...

And this is the central thematic question of The Prince of Nothing: What is this 'more'? What are the shapes we give it, and how do these shapes affect the way we see the world and each other? Is it real, or is it all a gigantic racket?

Could it be both?

I have no answers to any of these questions. All I know is that if you set aside your hope, your childhood upbringing, and stick only to what we know, the picture looks pretty grim.

Why epic fantasy? What is it about this form of communication that appeals not just to you as your chosen medium of writing, but to those of us here who love to read it?

*ducks the probable withering stare for turning the tables here*

No ducking necessary, you ducker. I think it's an excellent question!

I should start with a caveat, though. Everyone knows that there's a variety of 'worldviews' out there, and despite the fact that everyone is convinced that their's happens to be the true one, everyone remains convinced that their's happens to be the true - primarily because it just 'feels' right.

First: If it 'feels' right, then odds are it's wrong. Despite what the movie hero or the commercial says, our 'gut instincts' are miserable when it comes to getting things right. Since collective beliefs underwrite collective actions, and since the repetition of collective actions is what makes societies possible, only those societies that successfully manage the beliefs of their constituent members survive. Ronald Reagan didn't cause the collapse of the Soviet system: a collective crisis of faith did.

This is just a fact. If you were socialized in the traditional manner, your possess the belief system that your social system needs you to have in order to function as it functions. Our society is no different than any other in this regard, though most of us are convinced that we've monopolized the truth, just as most everyone in most every society has been convinced. In our society we call this requisite belief system 'Individualism.'

One of the things I find so fascinating about epic fantasy is the way fetishizes a certain type of world-view - specifically, the pre-scientific one.

More than anything else, science is a kind of discipline, a set of methods and techniques that prevent us from duping ourselves in the quest to answer questions of fact. This is the reason so much science is so alienating for so many people: we're hard-wired to prefer flattering, simplistic, and purposive answers. Evolution is the classic example here.

The world-views one finds in epic fantasy are examples of the world-views our ancestors developed in the absence of scientific discipline. This makes epic fantasy horribly important in at least two respects, First, those ancient worlds were the worlds enshrined in scripture. It's no accident that Banker's novelization of the Ramayana is shelved in the fantasy section. Fantasy worlds are versions of scriptural worlds. This is why poor Harry Potter has enjoyed all the controversy he has. For fundamentalists who still believe in the scriptural world of the Bible, being a 'young wizard' is as odious as being a 'young gunslinger' would be to secular readers. Second, since those ancient worlds arose without the 'benefit' of scientific discipline, they are bound to reflect a whole host of human foibles and human needs. They are pictures of the world as we want it to be.

The wotmania Files: First part of a Q&A with R. Scott Bakker (Nov. 2004)

This is the first of at least two and maybe three parts of the Q&A Bakker did with wotmania back in November 2004. For the most part, I've tried to preserve questions, silly and serious alike, with the exception of a couple of my own time-specific silly questions on hockey. Since this will be rather lengthy, I'm going to break it up into 2000-2500 word chunks and will try to post the entire thing over the course of the next few days. There ought to be a few matters of discussion for people reading this over four years later, including a comment on Esmenet being a "moral" argument for gender equality.

Since I just dropped my opinion about this in the book discussion below, I am curious. What are your views about gender roles in the world you created, how they are portrayed in the two books (not necessarily the same) and how they relate to our world?

With the recent elections, do you think a woman will ever be elected president of the US? Who would be your choice?

Great questions. Without a doubt I think this is the topic I take the most heat on, something which I see as ironic given that my initial concern was that I was being too overtly feminist!

Epic fantasy worlds are almost exclusively pre-scientific worlds, which is to say they're worlds where traditional authority, rather than public debate or scientific method, tells us what's true or false, right or wrong. What I wanted was an unsanitized epic fantasy world, one that was true to the brutalities and beauties of our own world before the Enlightenment. I thought the most honest way to explore our fascination with these worlds would be to look at them as they would really be. The culture of the Three Seas, as a result, is as misogynistic as western culture once was. Women are often treated as a sexual and reproductive resource. As Kellhus points out in TWP, when men cannot control their desires, they try to control the objects of their desires.

The reason I think I take so much heat on this issue is that some confuse representing such a world with endorsing it - which believe me certainly isn't the case! The idea, rather, is to explore the psychological consequences of such a culture on my female characters. We keep returning to these worlds (as fantasy readers), I think, because they represent something we're missing, but it's a mixed bag - very mixed.

A female US President? It'll take some time, I think, but with the way women are out-performing men in school, we're about to witness an immense gender role reversal. Things are going to look a lot different in 20 years time. And it'll all be blamed on video games.

I think I can see your point. Did you try to move away from the type of women portrayed in early fantasy works? Let's face it, Tolkien portrays women as almost holy in a way. He has a very Victorian attitude. This is not surprising given his time period. However, many people have shown women in the role of objects of desire, but not very bright. Were you concerned that readers would not buy that Esmenet was smarter than the men who used her? Or that we would be offended? Since we started down this path, it seems she does a total reversal by the end of The Warrior Prophet. Is this just another example of how well Kellhus manipulates those around him?

For me, the Kellhus/Esmenet dyad is one of the thematic cornerstones of the book. My big concern, and I think it's been borne out, has been that I'm simply being overly subtle.

One of the questions I'm interested in is, What happens to truths when they become instruments of manipulation? Kellhus enslaves Esmenet by emancipating her, by showing the 'truth' of the misogynistic culture she lives and breathes. In effect, he makes her modern. I have no idea how to answer this question, but it seems to me to be an important one.

If you believe that all values are simply social artifacts (which I don't, because I think this is tantamount to nihilism), then what we call 'women's rights' is simply an expression of changing technological and economic conditions. Given the way that technology increases productivity, the 'base economic units' of society become smaller and smaller. Just a few centuries back it was the village, then it became the extended family, then it became the nuclear family, and now it's becoming the individual. Every society in history rationalizes its economic organization in its belief-system, and our society is no different. So as the possibilities of female economic independence expanded, the more and more 'oppressive' the standing beliefs in the auxilary, familial role of females came to seem, and so the 'women's rights' movement was born. It's not that women are in FACT equal to men and always have been, it's just that their labour has recently become equally useful. There's no moral fact of the matter: just a social system spontaneously adapting its belief-system to better exploit its resources.

I see Esmenet, who is through and through the product of a society that subordinates women to men, as embodying this question. Is there a moral fact of her station, or is it simply the result of an arbitrary, socially grounded belief-system? How do here own decisions feed into this question? And how does the manipulation of Kellhus bear on the whole?

Her native intelligence, I think, is itself a powerful moral argument. It demonstrates her equality in fact.

Enjoy sci-fi?

Or are you solely a fantasy kind of guy?

I'll read anything, so long as it's good. Fantasy just happens to be my fave. My big problem is finding time to read what I want to read. I find that if I like reading something, it always makes me write, which is good for the writing, but bad for the reading.

What was Nietzsche's beef with Wagner?

I'm not sure. Holstein? Texas Longhorn?

Explain the meaning of life.

To stumble about without a bloody clue, convinced that you pretty much know everything you need to know. At least that had BETTER be the meaning of life, otherwise I'm screwed.

Over the course of TDTCB and TWP, we learn that the magic employed by the Schoolmen are based on semantical understandings and that the Chorae unravel these. Will we be learning more about the underpinnings of this conflict in TTT?

Quite a bit actually. I'm overweeningly proud of my world as it is, but I see sorcery as the jewel of Earwa.

I'm still waiting to learn more about the bathing habits of the Scylvendi. Anything to reveal in regards to that?

The memorialists tell harrowing tales of the legendary 'Loincloth of War,' but not much more than that...

Silk or cotton, boxers or briefs, this loincloth?

Rancid wolfskin... As if you didn't already know, Larry!

Ah, so the old and comfortable choice, huh? None of that effeminate silkworm refuse for them, yeah?

By the way, doesn't Rancid Wolfskin sound like a great name for a band?

LOL!

Hi Scott. I loved TDTCB and I'm looking forward to TWP and future books. I imagine with the success of your books comes change. What has been the biggest change in your life (for better or worse) since you were published? How have you indulged yourself? Fantasy is your favorite genre, do you have any favorite authors? Favorite books? Are you reading any books now? If I think of anything else, I'll ask later. Thanks for taking time to do this and the other things you do like book contests, etc. It's very cool of you, and much appreciated!

Well, I'm still driving my 1991 Golf diesel... The big thing, though, is that I no longer have to work for a living - and after working midnights at a grocery store for 14 years while going to school, that makes me a happy duck indeed! I'm not sure my books are accessible enough to have any hope of making real money.

My favourite fantasy author at the moment has got to be Martin, followed closely by Erikson. My favourite author in general is Cormac McCarthy. Right now I'm reading Mieville's The Scar and Vassanj's The In Between World of Vikram Lall.

What is your name? What is your quest? WHAT...is your favorite brand beer? Any favorite movies? Do you play video games (#1 reason for decreased male average intellect)? Do you play chess? Favorite music/musicians? Any bad habits? Whats the one thing you'd like to change about yourself?

Holy moly, Moncul! Let me see...

My full given name is Richard Scott Bakker, and my 'quest,' if I get your meaning, is to always be a better man than I was yesterday, and to convince the world that they shouldn't be convinced by ANYTHING. Beerwise, I enjoy IPA's, but I'm not fussy - I think warm Bud is just fine. My favourite flick is A LION IN WINTER. Presently, I don't play video games, but only because I'm too broke to buy a computer capable of playing anything interesting. Bad habits? I fart in the morning and scratch my nuts in the afternoon. Those few times I've had a good computer, I've turned into a video game addict. I tend to drink and toke too much, though as it happens, toking is the one thing I'm trying to quit.

Makes me stupid. Drinking likely makes me stupid too, but I feel smarter...

Why does paper beat rock?

Because Rock is a bad boy who just won't listen!

Hey there. Cool of you to do this; we loves our authors, we does.

I'm partway through your first book in the series, and I quite enjoy it, but I won't ask any questions about it because any I would have at this point will surely be answered if only I read on, brave soldier, read on. However, I do have some other questions, which I believe are of some importance in the scheme of things.

1. Which of the four Ninja Turtles do you most identify with?

The one with the shell.

2. What sort of writing schedule are you used to, if indeed there is a schedule?

I try to plunk my ass in front of the computer every morning at 5AM. I try to write as consistently as possible until 5 PM, but...

Let's just say I have a very clean nose.

3. Do you write longhand first drafts, or do you type from the get-go?

I rarely, if ever, write anything in longhand, despite the enormous length of my index fingers.

4. You have twenty-four hours to save the last six living penguins from the attack of a giant killer giraffe who has waded through the ocean to Antarctica. How do you do it?

Hire Karl Rove.

5. Is it just me, or does Larry taste funny?

OBJECTION! The prosecution is leading the witness, your honour. No matter how he answers the question, Larry will be tasted, and the jury will be duly disgusted.

*tries to think of something witty*

*gives up*

What are you reading nowdays?

At the moment I'm reading THE SCAR and THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LALL - loving both of them.

Do you ever find yourself reading something or watching a movie and thinking, "That plot twist should have been handled differently." or "Sloppy exposition."

Sometimes that's ALL I do. It drives my wife bonkers. When you're writing, you always encounter the 'How do I get there from here?' problem. The one thing I've learned is that you can get between any two points in a plausible fashion, so long as your prepared to take the time to think things through. That's what makes me gnash my teeth more than anything else when I encountering a huge plot hole while reading or watching: I know it's more a matter of laziness than anything else.

How's Thousandfold Thought coming along?

Awesome, at the moment, anyway. I'm pretty neurotic when it comes to my writing, which is just another way of saying that I'm not sure it's ME who's writing at all. Half the time it feels like I'm just watching my fingers dance.

What is yourPhD work about? When can I read it? After reading TDTCB, I became vastly interested in whatever you're cooking up. Is Prince of Nothing in any way related to or reflective of your academic work? What's the best IPA and who brews it?

Quit tokin'....still drinking...

Crackpot stuff. I think the various metaphors used to illustrate basic fundamental positions, such as the 'picture' for representationalism, or the 'game' for contextualism, actually play a powerful 'inferential' and explanatory role, and that by simply playing with these metaphors it's possible to develop novel approaches to a large number of philosophical problems.

I have nothing approaching a readable manuscript, I'm afraid, though I'm hellbent on completing the thing as soon as I can scrounge together a few fiction-free months. Are you studying philosophy, Anasurimbor?

Actually, a few things surface here and there. In TTT, one of these 'metaphors' actually finds a prominent place vis a vis sorcery...

Currently, my favourite IPA is 'Keiths,' though as I think I mentioned, I'm not really all that fussy. So long as I have a headache in the morning...

Revision. How much do you tend to revise? How long does it take you? Do you find yourself taking only a bit of what you wrote, and essentially rewriting it, or do you lean more towards doing the work the first time, and just tidying it up later? Finally, being an author. Fun, or not worth the effort? Thanks for dropping by!

Good question. Revision is the heart and soul of writing for me, but I know people who would say the exact opposite. It's different all the time, though I still think one of the most important skills I learned was what we used to call 'killing our babies' on the Online Writers Workshop. You need to be absolutely merciless when it comes to killing words (especially modifiers), phrases, passages, and even entire chapters - anything that isn't pulling it's weight.

To give you an example of just how much I revise, I would bet my next advance that there isn't a single sentence that survived from my initial draft of TDTCB. But then not only did I cut my teeth writing that book, I had tremendous difficulty reworking it to make those infamous first 200 pages more accessible. I think several sentences survived from the TWP, but even then, they know I'm looking, and that sooner or later...

Is writing fun? I love it. I still can't believe it. I still find myself expecting a bus or a dumptruck to take me out at some intersection. I always wanted to be a writer, but I never really pursued it because I thought it was a pipe-dream. Now I find myself feeling guilty for some reason - probably because I started working in the fields when I was ten.

People are supposed to work for a living.