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The Judging Eye and The White Luck Warrior don't focus as much on Kellhus as the PoN trilogy did, though he's still an important presence obviously. You won't see as much hero worship of him in those two books, at least from what I remember.
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| # ? Jun 5, 2012 16:08 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 03:47 |
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I also just finished The Warrior-Prophet. Super cool. One question: where did the Inrithi get their giant bronze circumfying ring from? A Fanim city wouldn't have an Inrithi icon of punishment lying around, and it didn't seem like anyone around was up to much bronze-smithing, considering they were starved and poo poo. What gives?
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 04:40 |
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General Battuta posted:(though it is interesting that there are no female Inchoroi or Consult that we've seen; Bakker thinks surprise sex and sex are male through and through). 1. Female Inchoroi have been extinct for an extremely long time. This could be caused by their obviously hosed up societal issues or due to some species level genetic manipulation gone terribly wrong.(Echoing the Womb Plague of the Nonmen perhaps.) 2. Inchoroi didn't originally have gender as we understand it but are so perverse as to modify themselves to be capable of raping whatever the primary sentient life of their victim world happens to be. Personally guessing number one. Though their germ line may have been too hosed up to reproduce long before they lost females. We know that at least by the time they arrived in Earwa they were dependent on their ship to produce them somehow. I suppose there's also the remote possibility they lost their females for completely natural reasons. There are a few species on Earth facing imminent extinction due to the loss of one of their genders via selfish genetic elements in their population. It's a bizarre and interesting phenomena, and naturally very rare, but it happens.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 07:56 |
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So, any ideas on the Unholy Consult release date? I've heard everything from next month to this fall...
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| # ? Jun 17, 2012 20:34 |
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I think that it's supposed to come out next year, possibly in January.
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| # ? Jun 17, 2012 20:53 |
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I just finished Warrior Prophet and I'm firmly in the Bakker detractor camp. I literally skipped this book five pages at a time for about 80% of the book and feel like I haven't missed a thing. The Serwe, Kellhus, Esmenet love triangle couldn't be less interesting. Yeah I get it, Kellhus can manipulate people really good and Achamian is going to feel betrayed when he gets back. Can we move on? I found myself rooting for Sarcellus or Cnaiur to just end it all.
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 01:05 |
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Just finished The Thousandfold Thought here, and I feel the need to take a pit stop and dump my thoughts. I will stay away from plot-related spoilers, and if you respond please spoiler-tag anything past the first trilogy. Framing premise: whatever criticism I may write below, it remains a fact that I finished all three books in the wee hours of morning, oblivious to the world around me and my plans for the weekend. That the books have been for me both engaging and rewarding is a matter of cold hard data. With that said, the series has been a combination of incredibly high points and lots of small annoying quirks. I took up the novels due to my interest in rational analysis and behaviour optimisation, and on that front they mostly didn't disappoint. Every Kellhus POV page was a treat; Bakker stumbled on this a few times, but usually I could imagine and follow the hints in the environment and the protagonist's resulting train of thought. But far more enjoyable than what was written was what wasn't written: the way Kellhus doesn't spend a single thought on any of his crimes or on any sort of transcendental concern whatsoever is what really made him unique and memorable. As for the philosophies openly espoused and exposed, they weren't anything particularly world-shattering or new, but it was immensely enjoyable and unique to have them presented in the poetic and allegorical style that is normally the domain of mystical drivel. Yet I have two major quirks with Kellhus and the Dûnyain in general. The first is that their preternatural physical ability seems entirely unnecessary and indeed harmful for the narrative: the only combat scene that I couldn't see being rewritten with Kellhus as a man of normal (if well-trained) strength and reflexes was the fight with the Nonman, and that was just becaue I don't know enough about the entities involved to craft alternative scenarios. I guess Bakker was trying to leverage off the familiar 'martial arts monk' archetype, but unfortunately I found that it detracted from the impact of Kellhus's mental abilities, which are the real core of the books, by making them look like another 'random' superpower instead of the limit of human potential. The second is that for all his epistemic power, there is nothing about Kellhus using those same abilities towards his volition and motivation. The Ishuäl monks had an overarching metaphysical plan, and Moënghus's reason for leaving Ishuäl remains a mystery, why didn't Kellhus ask?, but Kellhus is... aimless, at least before he hears of the Second Apocalypse which is a reasonable motivation. Why does he put so much importance on chasing his father especially after the Dûnyain's metaphysics were proven wrong? There were many points where going ahead clearly meant a non-negligible chance of death, but Moënghus's summons did not imply for Kellhus an urgency sufficient to take the risk. An inference chain about this basic choice would have been very welcome at some point. Alright, enough about the Dûnyain. What about the other characters? Well I have mostly praise for them. They often veered towards the melodramatic, but not in a way that felt gratuitous, at least for Drusas and Cnaiür, both of which had been confronted with exceptional events and saw them through the lenses of equally exceptional educations. Waxing philosophical felt like a quite natural reaction for them, and Cnaiür in particular was by far my favourite character, since of all the people in the book (Dûnyain included) he was the one most free of anchors and compasses, and I truly had no sense of where he might float. Unfortunately I can't quite say the same for the meditations of other POVs: Esmenet never felt like a consistent character, Serwë only started to feel believable after she completed fell for Kellhus, and the various Lords and generals, although each of them was both consistent and believable, kind of suffered because their petty concerns and struggles were stretched too thin over too many chapters. Conphas and Xerius at least were funny, but Proyas became insufferable very, very quickly. Note though that the most pages went to the best characters, making all these issues less grave than they sound. That leaves me the world to write about, and on that note I would award Bakker about a B-. First, I'll get a gigantic pet peeve out of the way, the one that made me slam The Darkness that Comes Before shut more than once: the language, or lack thereof. Not all fantasy authors need to be professional linguists, but Bakker's names manage to be an insult to immersion in their own right. Try this exercise: pick all the proper nouns in the series, then rearrange them completely at random. The books will not be any worse for the wear, because the names are already random. There is no pattern whatsoever that marks e.g. Nansur names as belonging to the same culture and language, and even worse there is nothing that distinguishes Nansur names from Kianene or Scylvendi or Norsirai (or Inchoroi!) names. Just plain awful. Second annoyance, nowhere near as major, is that the calque of the First Crusade is waaaayyy too close. It can be a subjective matter, but for me it zoomed right past "light nod to history", trampled all over "recognisable political patterns", and finally dropped its fat rear end straight in "I can't come up with a decent idea so I'll just rip off reality because it cannot sue me" territory. Again, this was an issue that mostly plagued the introduction to the world, in the first book: by the time of The Warrior Prophet events had taken enough momentum of their own that the laziness kinda faded in the background (with a few exceptions - Shigekegypt, I'm looking at you). What Bakker did bother to devise, on the other side, was thoroughly enjoyable. I liked the balance of sorcery vs. Chorae, and their presence and the gambles involved pushed the battle scenes from merely serviceable to "whoo, this makes me want to go play some Total War" (Big exception, the battle that ends The Warrior Prophet - for that matter, the entire last half-dozen chapters of that book felt rushed and lazy). The individual Schools were also well characterised and differentiated, and I wish there had been a few POVs among the Cishaurim. And as they gradually acquired more and more screentime, the nonhuman threats were the highlight of the worldbuilding for me - the balance struck between pure bodily gore and emotional violation was sublime. Every little detail of the Inchoroi - their anatomy, their bearing, their attitude, their thoughts - hits a different note of visceral wrongness, and the resulting cacophony is so consistently disturbing it's impressive. I only wish he'd put the same talent in the Seswatha's Dream passages, which should have been the same thing run up to 11 and instead were a confused snoozefest, as if he couldn't decide if he was trying to describe Mordor or R'lyeh. Well, I think that's enough of a wall of text. I'm not sure when I'll pick up the second trilogy, but it's certainly going to be a matter of days or weeks more than months, meaning I'll probably be put in a waiting mood for book 6 (thank goodness he's so prolific, I guess). Thanks for reading. NihilCredo fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2012 around 05:29 |
| # ? Jun 24, 2012 00:25 |
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As I recall Moenghus got stuck out of Ishual after he volunteered to investigate how a Sranc raiding party had blundered into it. The Dunyain basically went "hey cool, thanks for checking on things, but now you're tainted by the outside world so gently caress off". It's covered in that very first chapter when they're deploying Kellhus.
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| # ? Jun 24, 2012 04:43 |
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I agree with pretty much everything you said NihilCredo, and I think you did a great job pinning down what's interesting and what stumbles a bit. I did like the Seswatha's Dream stuff set in Golgotterath, though. One thing that gets really annoying about Bakker's prose going forward - right about when he had kids he starts introducing this cooing, repetitive structure, try-try-try, which pops up enough to drive me nuts.
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| # ? Jun 24, 2012 05:02 |
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Just finished the first trilogy too, and there is one question that keeps bothering me : what did the Ikureis hope to gain by betraying the Holy War ? Some portion of what was actually conquered ? Gold ? Fanim help to conquer some stuff from the other Inrithi nations ? With all involved dead, it seems like it should have been explained at that point, but somehow it never was or I missed it. It's nowhere on the google either.
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| # ? Jul 2, 2012 18:57 |
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As I understand it, the idea was that if they let the Holy War succeed, they would establish one or more independent Crusader kingdoms of their own (like Saubon in that city where they near-starved), and without the Indenture they'd have no grounds for trying to conquer them. By joining up with the Kianene to annihilate the crusader armies, a power vacuum would be left and Nansur and Kian would split the land between them.
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| # ? Jul 2, 2012 19:20 |
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But Xerius contacted the Fanim way before the Great Names refused to sign the Indenture (about at the same time as the Battle of Kiyuth). I guess you could say it was a fallback plan... An extremely risky and short-sighted one.
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| # ? Jul 2, 2012 19:35 |
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As I understand it, there were two separate Nansur-Kian pacts. The first was between Xerius and Skauras. Skauras gets rid of the Vulgar Holy War that Xerius sends his way, thus allowing Xerius to take control of the improved, rabble-less Holy War by putting Conphas in command in exchange for the Indenture. In return for Skauras's collaboration, Conphas would lead the Holy War to crash and burn right before Shimeh. The second was between Conphas and the new Padirajah, the one who told him of his uncle's death. This was more straightforward: Kellhus's crusader forces had become a threat to both, so they'd join forces to take him down and (presumably) split the proceeds.
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| # ? Jul 2, 2012 20:05 |
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Ah that makes a lot more sense than what I was coming up with on my own, thank you.
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| # ? Jul 2, 2012 22:51 |
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quote:NihilCredo said: Just so I am clear, you like him because he is a sociopath? Because I found that pretty irritating after awhile. Yes, I get that he's supposed to be the opposite of your typical fantasy hero, but the whole "can do anything, doesn't give a poo poo about anyone" I found just as grating in short order as the typical "we have to save everyone" stuff from stereotypical fantasy. Here's another quesiton from the first trilogy. Why did the Consult kill the Emperor at the end? I've chalked it up it being part of their adjustment to Kelhus (i.e. they want him to come to power even faster) but is there some other more obvious reason I'm missing?
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| # ? Jul 3, 2012 13:45 |
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Seldom Posts posted:Just so I am clear, you like him because he is a sociopath? Because I found that pretty irritating after awhile. Yes, I get that he's supposed to be the opposite of your typical fantasy hero, but the whole "can do anything, doesn't give a poo poo about anyone" I found just as grating in short order as the typical "we have to save everyone" stuff from stereotypical fantasy. quote:Here's another quesiton from the first trilogy. Why did the Consult kill the Emperor at the end? I've chalked it up it being part of their adjustment to Kelhus (i.e. they want him to come to power even faster) but is there some other more obvious reason I'm missing?
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| # ? Jul 3, 2012 16:42 |
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Can someone explain something to me that happened at the end of Thousandfold Thought please, I don't want to spoil myself just in case by searching for the answer. What was up with the Iyokus demon thing at the end of the book? I thought he was just a normal human addicted to that drug? Was he also a consult creation? It fought Achamian at the end and carried away but didn't kill him? I couldn't quite figure out what happened with that as well
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| # ? Aug 1, 2012 18:28 |
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thecallahan posted:Can someone explain something to me that happened at the end of Thousandfold Thought please, I don't want to spoil myself just in case by searching for the answer. That had nothing to do with the Consult. Iyokus is into a particular kind of magic that involves summoning demons called Ciphrang. He summoned one to kill Achamian and Achamian barely defeated it (in a very oddly written, confusing sequence).
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| # ? Aug 1, 2012 18:44 |
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After the (book 3 spoilers)final Golgotterath dream sequence in TTT, I'm wary about how many squicky details Bakker is planning on revealing in TUC. He's been doing a wonderful job of keeping villains as viscerally horrifying as the Consult/Inchoroi grounded in the story and its themes. So far. But the last Golgo dream sequence was probably the most horrifying scene in the series so far, and given what I've heard about Neuropath, I think the success of TUC will hinge on the revelations about the series' villains and what we see when the Ordeal inevitably reaches the Ark. Too much disturbing poo poo and I can definitely see Bakker's detractors gain the upper hand in blog scene. Here's hoping.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 11:21 |
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So, I'm about halfway through the Thousandfold Thought, and I have to know; does Bakker ever stop making pov chapters of people like serwe/achamian/esmi talking about how godlike Kellhus is? I get it. I really do. Kellhus is capable of manipulating people. People like him a lot. I don't think I'll read the next trilogy if it suffers the same problems the first does.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 02:30 |
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spootime posted:So, I'm about halfway through the Thousandfold Thought, and I have to know; does Bakker ever stop making pov chapters of people like serwe/achamian/esmi talking about how godlike Kellhus is? I get it. I really do. Kellhus is capable of manipulating people. People like him a lot. I don't think I'll read the next trilogy if it suffers the same problems the first does. Nah there's barely any of that in the next trilogy.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 02:52 |
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General Battuta posted:Nah there's barely any of that in the next trilogy. Ah sweet, I'll check it out then. I think Bakker is decent but his prose is hard for me to get into. One other question; are the Dunyain supposed to be physically superhuman? At the beginning of the series I thought he was just a badass fighter but after he takes out like 5 of the shapeshifters by himself while Cnaiur struggles with one I didn't really know if I missed something earlier in the books.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 06:25 |
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spootime posted:Ah sweet, I'll check it out then. I think Bakker is decent but his prose is hard for me to get into. One other question; are the Dunyain supposed to be physically superhuman? At the beginning of the series I thought he was just a badass fighter but after he takes out like 5 of the shapeshifters by himself while Cnaiur struggles with one I didn't really know if I missed something earlier in the books. edit: I think he may have then killed someone with it by tossing it like a dart.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 14:06 |
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Yes, they are more or less superhuman. The Dunyain have been breeding for two thousand years in pursuit of physical and mental perfection so their fighting skills are a combination of the two. They are faster and stronger than other humans (if I remember correctly Kellhus holds Cnauir over a cliff with one hand) but their extreme intelligence plays a major role in their fighting abilities too. To catch the arrow Kellhus needs to know exactly where it is in space, predict its velocity, time grabbing the arrow just right, etc. So the combination of extreme strength, speed, reflexes, and intelligence makes them almost unbeatable.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 15:02 |
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Yeah, I always assumed their preternatural combat abilities were a result of incredible split-second analysis and insight into kinetics and enemy intentions as much as physical prowess (though I'm sure a Dunyain would point out the two aren't as different as we'd intuit).
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 15:52 |
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Just finished The Judging Eye and I really enjoyed it, most likely because Kellhus was barely in it. This might be my second favorite book in the two trilogies so far but I did have a couple questions that I hope one of you might not mind answering for me. I wasn't sure what was going on with Psatma when she was going all succubus on the one guy. I mean, I know her body was rejuvenating but I thought the man was the White Luck Warrior, instead is she the WLW and she was just becoming young again to lead the Cult physically as well as mentally? Also, what happened to Cnauir? From what I gathered in The Thousandfold Thought was that he didn't die but am I just mistaken and he did or does he show up in the next book or mentioned at all?
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| # ? Aug 23, 2012 20:05 |
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thecallahan posted:Also, what happened to Cnauir? From what I gathered in The Thousandfold Thought was that he didn't die but am I just mistaken and he did or does he show up in the next book or mentioned at all? If you want to know, he has yet to appear in the second trilogy. The Thousandfold Thought ends with him laughing as he thinks about how he's going to cut one last swazond on his throat, but he loses that train of thought when (fake) Serwë puts a hand on his shoulder. So he ought to be alive from what we know. Maybe he'll pop up in the third book which is supposed to come out next year.
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| # ? Aug 23, 2012 20:43 |
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feraltennisprodigy posted:If you want to know, he has yet to appear in the second trilogy. The Thousandfold Thought ends with him laughing as he thinks about how he's going to cut one last swazond on his throat, but he loses that train of thought when (fake) Serwë puts a hand on his shoulder. So he ought to be alive from what we know. Maybe he'll pop up in the third book which is supposed to come out next year. Thanks for that, also after the glossary there's a section that is: What Has Come Before... It says: That Cnauir is actually dead. That might change in the next book, dunno though.
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| # ? Aug 27, 2012 17:39 |
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Glad to see this thread is still going. Bakker deserves kudos for bringing some fresh air into Fantasy settings, tapping into interesting themes and legitimately keeping the reader in the dark about who is the greater evil. That said, yes, he does lean on some of those themes with suspicious glee. His use of sexual violence and gender roles didn't bother me at first, but as the series went on I started feeling like the MST3K guys watching a repetitive movie: "Alright, that's established, you can move on now. Established. Estaaaaablished!!!" And yes, one of the good aspects of the second Trilogy is the absence of Kellhus; by the end of the first one he was fast on his way to out-Richard Rahl Dick Rahl himself, so much so that I was hoping against hope jerkface-supreme Ikurei Conphas could somehow pull out a win; his brainy depravity at least felt risky and entertaingly human. Just getting started on the White-Luck Warrior now. I bought it months ago, but made the mistake of reading Neuropath first, which stalled my interest for a bit. Sephyr fucked around with this message at Sep 1, 2012 around 14:18 |
| # ? Aug 31, 2012 22:05 |
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Seldom Posts posted:Yes, I get that he's supposed to be the opposite of your typical fantasy hero, but the whole "can do anything, doesn't give a poo poo about anyone" I found just as grating in short order as the typical "we have to save everyone" stuff from stereotypical fantasy. Kellhus is not the protagonist. He is not the hero. A lot of his physical prowess comes from Dunyain training. And a lot of his god-like powers come from an assumable thoroughly deeper understanding of magic, beyond what a normal practitioner can attain- evinced by his Gnosis harmonies. It's still questionable if something more is going on with him though. Did he see or attain something on the Circumfix? I really hope this next book fully delves into the horror that's been building through the last five. I want to be uncomfortable and slightly nauseated the whole read.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 14:32 |
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Maytag posted:Kellhus is not the protagonist. He is not the hero. That's an over simplification. We're obviously meant to see him as such at first. The first chapter of the first book of the first trilogy has him setting off on a heroic quest to find his father. It hits a lot of tropes just for that reason. He's clearly a protagonist of the first trilogy. It's only as we read that we learn he's not the hero.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 16:16 |
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Seldom Posts posted:That's an over simplification. We're obviously meant to see him as such at first. The first chapter of the first book of the first trilogy has him setting off on a heroic quest to find his father. It hits a lot of tropes just for that reason. He's clearly a protagonist of the first trilogy. It's only as we read that we learn he's not the hero. Not really, even the prologue of the very first book has Kellhus abandoning a man to be butchered by Sranc after that man saved his life. Only inattentive readers or sociopaths can see Kellhus as a protagonist.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:12 |
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Mr.48 posted:Not really, even the prologue of the very first book has Kellhus abandoning a man to be butchered by Sranc after that man saved his life. Only inattentive readers or sociopaths can see Kellhus as a protagonist. 'Protagonist' is a narrative role, not a moral one. Protagonists can be villains.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:20 |
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General Battuta posted:'Protagonist' is a narrative role, not a moral one. Protagonists can be villains. Its still not Kellhus though, since the protagonist is the main character and Kellhus is almost entirely absent from the 4th and 5th books. Achmian is the protagonist if the series can be said to have a protagonist at all.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:25 |
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Mr.48 posted:Its still not Kellhus though, since the protagonist is the main character and Kellhus is almost entirely absent from the 4th and 5th books. That's the point Seldom Posts just made that you were disagreeing with: that we're supposed to think he's a protagonist at first and that he arguably plays this role (not exclusively, though!) in the first 3 books.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:33 |
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General Battuta posted:That's the point Seldom Posts just made that you were disagreeing with: that we're supposed to think he's a protagonist at first and that he arguably plays this role (not exclusively, though!) in the first 3 books. I just dont see how one character out of a fairly large cast, and a fairly unsavory one at that can be thought by anyone as the protagonist. Edit: I just pulled TDTCB off the shelf and after the prologue we dont even see Kellhus again for like 6 chapters. How anybody could think that he would be the protagonist is beyond me. Mr.48 fucked around with this message at Sep 25, 2012 around 21:50 |
| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:42 |
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The unsavory factor is irrelevant since 'protagonism' isn't particularly a moral dimension, and we spend a lot of time with his thoughts and decisions. He is one of the protagonists in the first two books, less so in the third, not at all in the fourth or fifth. Literature doesn't play by algorithmic rules; there's not always a single protagonist, nor are there firm definitions for the role.
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:53 |
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General Battuta posted:Literature doesn't play by algorithmic rules; there's not always a single protagonist, nor are there firm definitions for the role. Then why argue about it at all?
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| # ? Sep 25, 2012 21:57 |
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The protagonist is the one the audience is supposed to chiefly identify with. You should realize by the second book of the entire series that this is not Kellhus.
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| # ? Sep 26, 2012 01:48 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 03:47 |
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I don't think that's a particularly valid definition either (as a workshop instructor I have lots of super pedantic opinions about this  )
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| # ? Sep 26, 2012 02:29 |
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