There’s an excerpt on Tor.com site, “The Crippled God” is out in about 20 days.
I obviously won’t read further, but this line was awesome in its meta-narrative quality:
‘I have no intention of explaining a damned thing.’ He looked up, eyes locking. ‘Do you understand me?’
I guess it’s a better premise than the beginning of the end of LOST ;)
I’m watching these interesting lessons on Kabbalah and this one deals again with another aspect that is featured predominantly in Fantasy as well. Being normal since Fantasy also deals with the pillars of our culture and Kabbalah deals directly with that as well.
In this case the theme is the Theodicy and its possible explanations:
—
First Method: Nature
Hence, although He watches over the existence of reality with wondrous wisdom, yet He Himself is mindless, and does all that senselessly. If there had been any reason and feeling in Him, He would certainly not leave such malfunctions in the provision of reality without pity and compassion for the tormented. For this reason, they named Him “Nature,” meaning a mindless, heartless supervisor. And for that reason, they believe that there is no one to be angry at, to pray to, or to justify oneself to.
Second Method: Two Authorities
In consequence, they came to a second assumption that there are two supervisors here: one creates and sustains the good, and the other creates and sustains the bad. And they have greatly elaborated that method with evidence and proof along their way.
Third Method: Multiple Gods
This method was born out of the bosom of the method of two authorities. This is because they have divided and separated each of the general actions for itself, meaning strength, wealth, domination, beauty, famine, death, disorder, and so on. They appointed each its own supervisor, and expanded the system as they wished.
Fourth Method: Left His Operation
Recently, when knowledge increased and they saw the tight linkage among all the parts of Creation, they recognized the concept of multiple gods to be completely impossible. Thus, the question of the oppositeness sensed in Creation reawakened.
This led them to a new assumption: that the Supervisor of reality is indeed wise and caring. Yet, because of His exaltedness, which is beyond conception, our world is deemed a grain of sand, nothing in His eyes. It is not worthwhile for Him to bother with our petty businesses, and this is why our livelihood is so disordered and every man does that which is right in his own eyes.
Alongside these methods, there existed religious methods of Godly unity.
—
Then the lesson proceeds explaining Kabbalah’s solution of the problem through this simple graph:
Still following my own tangents.
Almost a year ago I gathered some info about the Kabbalah, but then curiosity was quenched and I didn’t go very far. Now curiosity rose again and I’m determined to get further into it.
It also means I’m starting to draw parallels, of the most disparate kind. Here I’ll collect a couple of posts where I link the Kabbalah, Scott Bakker, Steven Erikson, James Hillman, Niklas Luhmann, Evangelion, Lost and The Matrix. It’s a nice geeky party.
Early today I was reading a post of Scott Bakker about free will, perception of reality and whatnot. My comment was a reply to that.
—
Not trying to close the circle because I don’t feel I have enough elements.
Just a few suggestions.
“a way to successfully manipulate and interact with monstrously complicated systems”
Niklas Luhmann is a sociologist I studied that I still base my fundamental beliefs on. His theory has a place for pretty much everything and is usually dead on (explaining from the evolution of men till modern days).
One of the fundamental ideas is that beliefs systems, religion and modern systems were essentially created to go against uncertainty. Linguistic acts. If the answer to whatever question is always “yes” and “no”, then you need some kind of system that reduces the complexity and makes something just “yes”, or just “no”. Put linguistic order into chaos.
So religion is basically a way to set a “yes” (or “no”) and have no one who can go against it (it’s more elaborated and, well, convincing of this, but the essence is this). “Faith” being the premise for this system to work, so the prohibition of returning to ambivalence and complexity.
Today, he says, it’s pretty much the same but the reduction systems are much more elaborated and he calls them something that translated sounds like “media of communication symbolically generalized”. And so more complex relationships about values, truth (science), love, art, money, property, rights and so on.
I was thinking about this: anthropology basically tells us the same. Religion we know as being totally “wrong”. We know it doesn’t rain because a god is pissed, so the belief system is wrong. Yet today we also know that all these belief systems had a pragmatic purpose and helped societies to survive.
Which means that in the end the same structure you describe is repeated: “He doesn’t care so much whether intentionality is real, as he cares whether its useful”
Religion too. Doesn’t matter if religion says something true. The point is that it can say something useful that can lead us (somewhere?).
“Of course, the problem is that ‘we’ are just a small part of our brains.”
And this reminds me a comment I wrote down on the Malazan reread. Where I go from the ideas of Kabbalah (I explain them wrong btw, but they serve the point) to the idea that “magic” is still well alive under the stream of consciousness (while we are only “aware” on the surface, the conscious, logic level).
—
(here’s the comment about Kabbalah, James Hillman, and how magic exits through a door, Science, only to reenter from another, the undercurrents, the Midnight Tides)
I wanted to go off for a bit on a tangent to see if maybe someone else got curious like I was. I find fascinating what Erikson says about the way he deals with symbolic subtext because that kind of subtext and complexity is one of those aspects I enjoy the most in this series, and overall in general.
Erikson (not really) demanded if his way of writing is an odd personal quirk. I haven’t read Robin Hobb yet, but Gene Wolfe surely writes in a way where everything is openly symbolic. For me even too much because I consider Wolfe too cryptic and so most of the subtext is lost without having a bottomless knowledge to draw from. Too often to truly understand his book you have to have with you knowledge that isn’t offered within the novel. It’s “esoteric” writing, meaning that one truly understands it only if one has the “code” to interpret it, and so belongs to the group of those “enlightened” (the Illuminati, the typical esoteric group).
From my point of view Erikson satisfies a vaguely similar demand, in the way symbolic meaning and subtext are often quite important, but doing it in a way so that everyone has access to it, as long one pays attention and has patience. It wants to be accessible, and it is a similar quality that I find in David Foster Wallace, whose “Infinite Jest” is, if I can say, even more complex and intricate than the Malazan series, and also exceeding in subtext and symbolic meaning. Yet it is completely accessible, as long one has the patience to go through a 1000+ pages book with that kind of complexity.
These days I was reading about the Kabbalah, just for pure curiosity. The Kabbalah is all based on the fact that its holy books can’t be read for what is literally written in them. You read about things and concepts that are normally part of the world, but all those things are actually “symbols” for something that belongs to the world of spirituality. These books are in truth only “codes”, and to understand them you need a Kabbalist that slowly teaches you how to attain this higher world of spirituality.
Now, through the anthropological mindset, this is quite easy to debunk. The moment an idea can’t be expressed in words, that idea acquires magic power. It can’t be scientifically known. It’s the old trick of the “magic healing bones”, that, if you aren’t one of the shamans in the tribe, can’t see or touch, because you’d then recognize that they are “just bones”.
Magic is meaning by absence. Magic is language. Or: magic is the absence of language. Magic defines the perimeter of something unknown and untouched. “Holy”. Forbidden. Removed.
The magic quality is in the premise of “faith”. Acceptance of blindness.
So it seems to me that the Kabbalah works on similar premises. The knowledge is somewhat elitist, because the world of spirituality is essentially esoteric, can’t be put directly into words.
Now I even accept that because I think writing corresponds to omnipotence (how’s that for a writer’s ego?). And it’s not an abstract idea. It is easily explained.
Writing is not one of the many human activities. Writing simply INCLUDES everything that a human being can experience. What we are is contained within the perimeter of language. People sometimes think that a “thought” precedes language. But if one makes some simple linguistic studies it’s easily learned that “thinking” is always a linguistic act. There’s no separation between thought and language.
So we are fictional beings. All of us. There’s absolutely no difference between a character in a book and us real beings. Or, the only difference is in the complexity (speed) of perception. Meaning that an instant of our life would require millions of pages to be expressed in its entirety. (this Total Awareness is a theme in Infinite Jest)
It’s then consequent that magic, the supernatural, spirituality (so the Kabbalah, in my example), need to stay outside language. Outside the human perception.
But then it seems that language is only a surface. Psychological studies done by Freud and similar demonstrates how much moves behind the scenes, and below conscious thought. People think of acting logically, but are instead moved by way stronger undercurrents that they rarely understand or are consciously aware of. We learn of how fucked we can be if a trauma may have devastating consequences on our daily life.
And then there’s more, which is the point where I wanted to arrive. After Freud there’s a deeper level that is usually represented by Jung. And then there’s another, even deeper, represented by James Hillman (and btw, all I know comes by just look up the wikipedia and having read some parts of his most known book “The Dream and the Underworld”, so if you’re curious you can just look up the wikipedia and there’s already enough to deal with). Whose ideas may sound as crazy as those of Freud to someone who never heard about these kinds of psychological studies.
What he thinks is that our dreams not only are dense in symbolic meaning, but that this symbolic meaning is rooted far below: in myths. So he analyzes dreams through things like Greek mythology. And even if this sounds completely absurd, it’s still as grounded and concrete as every other psychological study and has obtained attention from those who study this kind of stuff.
Erikson’s pantheon and magic system have more than one thing or two in common with Hillman’s archetypal psychology. I’m reading now Midnight Tides where dreams again have a significant role and divinities are dealt with in a “literal” way. But all I’ve written here wants to hint that there’s more than a fictional dress. More than entertainment. And even Hillman’s principle seems to adapt well to describe Erikson’s work: “dreams tell us where we are, not what to do.”
And so back to what Erikson said about his symbolic writing and especially: “I had a film teacher once tell me that I see the world like a Russian novel. I asked him what he meant and he said that I see subtext in all of reality, that for me environment was symbolic.”
In the end it goes back at finding something authentic to write about. I’m simply saying that this process of looking for symbols isn’t an authorial quirk and actually carries with it in potential a huge power. It is universal. And, in the hunt for meaning, if the building blocks are authentic then the outcome will be too. The truth that builds the foundation is inherited by the rest. Whether completely conscious or not.
—
I want to quote one of those poem of Erikson I just read:
“There are tides beneath every tide
And the surface of water
Holds no weight”
“The problem is the chasm that seems to be opening between the world we experience versus the world we know”
What about the chasm between the world we don’t see (deep symbolic level) and still has a determinant impact on us?
(thanks to the accumulating horror that is the subconscious)
“I think we are hardwired to believe in magic of various kinds”
But magic in the end is a linguistic structure. I’ve studied a bit of Chomsky and I know that we are hardwired for language before we are hardwired for anything else.
NOTE: I plan to add here a video that will look like the weirdest mix of The Matrix, the Kabbalah, Evangelion and Lost/DHARMA Orientation videos.
Curiously enough, my reaction to this book reflects the palindromic structure that defines a powerful form of poetry called “ketek” used in the book: I did not like at all the first and last 50 pages, but thankfully enjoyed enough everything in between (that for a book of 1000 pages is quite enough). I wrote already about some of my concerns about the writing in the Prelude/Prologue, while what I didn’t like about the last 50 pages was more structural. 150 pages from the end of the book I already know the ending was going to disappoint me, in fact it did, for the reasons I had envisioned, but that last chunk was worse because it makes me reconsider critically the whole thing.
Without spoilers, I can say the Epilogue questions the true value of art. It reads somewhat like a “meta” discussion on the genre, and implicitly Sanderson’s role as a writer of Fantasy:
“In this,” Wit said, “as in all things, our actions give us away. If an artist creates a work of powerful beauty – using new and innovative techniques – she will be lauded as a master, and will launch a new movement in aesthetics. Yet what if another, working independently with that exact level of skill, were to make the same accomplishments the very next month? Would she find similar acclaim? No. She’d be called derivative.
“So it’s not beauty itself we admire. It’s not the force of intellect. It’s not the invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent we think a man can have?” He plucked a final string. “Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty.”
So it’s “novelty” to be the heart of art, but that’s only the partial answer, because then the Epilogue goes further to suggest the ultimate one:
“What is it we value?” Wit whispered. “Innovation. Originality. Novelty. But most importantly… timeliness.”
Now… Am I too naughty if I just can’t avoid thinking this last line as a prank on Sanderson’s own doings? If “The Way of Kings” can’t be innovative, original or novel, then maybe it can still be used fruitfully if it’s at least “timely”. And what’s more “timely” than launching your own 10-books series right amidst the release of the very end of the Wheel of Time, when the interest in said writer is at the highest peak? The Way of Kings is indeed quite timely. Well, I don’t understand what Sanderson wanted to do with this Epilogue, but I doubt very much he wanted it to be interpreted like this.
A step back. This is the first book of a 10 book series and Sanderson’s most ambitious effort. And not only since he already hinted at an even much bigger structure (especially “Hoid”, a mysterious character that transcends what happens in this book) of which this whole series is only a part. This doesn’t discourage me at all since I enjoy insane ambition and I also, contrary to most readers, prefer to read books in a series spread out instead of in quick succession. So I start here and expect to follow along whenever Sanderson will finish the next book (it will be a while and the wait will likely renovate my interest). But it should be said that, as it is now the habit, the book does a nice job offering a storyline that is concluded in a satisfying way within the book, while hinting more about what is to come. It means that one shouldn’t be discouraged by the fact it’s only one book, with the following one not coming out for a couple of years.
Can’t say anything how this book stands compared to those the author already published since this is the first thing I read of him. The writing style of the Prologue was for me so awful that I wondered if I could go on, but then those issues vanished from the first chapter onward. Partly because I was drawn more into the story and characters, easing to the writing style and so not using up all my attention nitpicking, but also because those aspects I dislike were more diluted and less prevalent. There’s something in the style of writing that works at the same time as a strength and weakness. I’d define it as overall “didactic”. Not a bad word, but it could be seen as problematic in this context. Sanderson is very good at explaining stuff, teaching somehow. For a first book in a series this is a strength because there’s a lot of attention in giving the setting a distinctive sense of place. The nature of the world demands that details like plants and atmospheric interaction with these plants are strictly involved with what is going on in the story, so the book carries the reader along in a learning experience about this world, letting all (important, not simply incidental) details being slowly absorbed. There’s some redundancy involved, that at times feels excessive and giving the idea that the writer doesn’t trust enough the receptiveness of the reader, but there’s more to it that can’t be dismissed. The book, on a higher level, is “curious”, and stimulates curiosity in the readers. This is why exposition or “infodumps” that take a significant part of the book aren’t detrimental or heavy. The recipe, I think, is the most successful part of the book. You have a very manageable number of characters, well defined, easily understood, and you borrow some of their positive traits, including the curiosity for the world. Constructive, well measured. An aspect I noticed that is linked to this overall “didactic” writing style is an excess of question marks. There are questions crowding every single page. Many questions. The question is the most significant foundation the characterization relies on here. The effect is that the main characters that drive the book are very transparent to the reader. Every thought is introduced by questions, explained, rehashed. Open books. Characters whose totality is easily grasped, so easing the identification and understanding of actions. Even in those few cases where characters have some secrets (Kaladin’s past and flashbacks through the book) you are only forbid the premises, but you still see clearly the consequences and left wondering what caused them. It tickles the curiosity without making characters act unpredictably. You know exactly who’s doing what and why, and this usually leads to a decent characterization.
Everything I said leads to another problem, though. The micro and macro levels, about which I’m more critical. What I mean is that the book works on two levels, as an overall structure. In general all long epics rely on a similar structure. The “micro” level is the single character PoV, his own plans and actions, his range of troubles and expectations. The “macro” level is the higher level of the plot, the overarching structure of greater import that links all characters and make them face much bigger scenarios. The fate of a world VS the fate of a character. It’s like a shifting level of detail: you can zoom in closely on a character, get carried on with his daily life, slice of life. Character’s stories on a personal level. A fantasy world is like a huge container of millions of lives and millions of stories, so you can ideally always zoom in and find something personal that is worth narrating and that will catch the attention. Kaladin and Shallan are the two main characters in this book that carry the most this “micro” level. The interest is focused on the immediate troubles and their potential solutions. The various chapters are neatly organized to drive the reader on, ending up teasing for more. Then there’s a macro level that defines where these and more characters stand in the greater scheme of things. The book does not hide one level from the other and makes the macro level very visible right from the start. You always have the idea there’s more at stake than what is immediately close, the larger horizon. But this is where for me the book didn’t quite reach. What I anticipated through the book didn’t happen within the book and I’m not even sure of how late it will come in the series. There’s a very long and large build-up, both macro and micro. The micro works (with reservations I’ll explain), but the macro is entirely undelivered.
In the end, having read the whole book, the structure feels too much like ASoIaF: imminent danger coming from a side of the world (east, this time), but the kingdom is divided and not prepared. And, as in ASoIaF, this is the situation at the beginning of the book, and it is the exact same situation by the time the book ends. Nothing moved on the “macro” in a sensible and significant way. Even worse, the end of the book gives a strong idea of sweeping changes that to me look like blatant illusions thrown at the reader. I fear that book 2 will show how nothing at all changed and we’ll be plunged for another 1000 pages in minor character squabbles, only to arrive to the last 50 pages and have again sudden hints of major plot twists that in the end consolidate to almost nothing. Too much set-up and too much economizing on this level. It feels very drawn out.
On the micro it works much better. There’s plenty of payoff, lots of plot twists and unexpected surprises, all cleverly handled and satisfying. It works on these details, but I have some reservations. The first is that with a slow moving, carefully detailed plot, you can see where things are heading sometimes HUNDREDS of pages before they happen. While this micro level is fun to read, this kind of predictable horizon can cast on it a negative shadow. You know where things are headed, even if you don’t know the specifics of how it will be done. These specifics are well built and receive a significant care from Sanderson, but if you know where they are going then you also have a jaded and tired reaction, and it detracts from building momentum and make for a fast, satisfying read (what other readers call “the book could lose another 200 pages”). The other reservation is the odd structure. With three or so major viewpoints one expect the chapters to alternate regularly, but not here. Kaladin is basically the only one constant through the book, alternating with whoever is on stage at that point. Shallan viewpoint is a significant presence for half the book, but then it vanishes in the middle only to reappear in the last 100 pages. Similarly, Dalinar arrives late, then vanishes for 300+ pages before resurfacing again, and it wasn’t something I enjoyed much since it was my favorite to read. Obviously there are good reasons why this uneven structure is used, but it adds to the negative feel of plot moving slowly (not exactly, I explained in this same paragraph what I mean) when you consider that these viewpoints depart for hundreds of pages before they can lead to something.
Another concern I have comes out in the latter part of the book and has to do with the plot being too clearly driven by hand. While Sanderson does a very good work explaining characters’ motivations and actions, so making a reader accept the number of fancy elements of the plot, giving it an idea of coherence and credibility (worldbuilding included), in the latter part things are drawn together in a very blatant and obvious way that makes everything fit in place for the intended effect. Said intended effect predictable in a number of cases. Too much straight heroic, a bit trite. Also by the end of the book Kaladin still is the recalcitrant hero he was at the beginning, and that side of him was getting particularly annoying. I had expected to see him changed in a more significant way beside the superpowers. And feels too much like another Rand, on this level.
Instead I liked what was going on the political level and liked particularly the conclusion on the micro level here. I felt like this book somewhat “healed” a wound open since “A Game of Thrones”. As if Sanderson wanted to tell that story in his own way. I think it worked well and I enjoyed it. Obviously I can’t tell anything more without spoilers, but, even if this book won’t challenge Martin’s, I still liked Sanderson’s take. The politics and internal struggles are far more simplified than in A Game of Thrones, not actually the focus, but the interplay is well done and well built. Well connected with the worldbuilding related to it.
Not surprising that Sanderson is not between my favorite writers, I didn’t come with that kind of expectations. But I enjoyed the book even if I expected something more significant to happen before it ended, something more bold in exposition (and a number of suspicions I had stay unconfirmed since the book didn’t provide answers for most those questions I thought intriguing). It’s an accessible book that can be easily recommended to readers who enjoy lingering with characters and feel immersed. It has many qualities on its own, but I think it misses something like a major draw for the public that the Wheel of Time has. Sanderson will have to work harder if he actually aims at excellence. For now he has a nice following and in the end I think he deserves it. He’s a good guy, clever enough to be interesting to read, and would make a very good teacher, actually. He’s one of the “caring” guys, or at least it’s the impression I get from reading the book.
P.S.
Couldn’t fit in the flow of the review, but my favorite parts of the book were the interludes, especially Axies who reminded me a bit of Malazan’s Heboric, and chapter 33 “Cymatic” with Shallan, for how it engaged with the macro level and was quite interesting to read.
Collecting some comments I wrote in the Malazan series re-read at Tor.
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Tyrion or Jaime or Sansa in GRRM’s series where there’s more transition that leads to personality changes and development.
Oh, I so disagree. Martin, in those cases and more, just expertly pulls at heart strings. Whatever he does with a character is VERY deliberate and very precise.
If even one reader develops antipathy for a character like Tyrion, then it means the book failed. There’s nothing truly open to interpretation if not the illusion of it. Martin always chases an effect as is typical of Hollywood/western writing. Nothing can be accidental or uncertain. Which is why he writes and rewrites incessantly till the experience isn’t absolutely perfect and works the way he wants for everyone. The book is built to be successful when EVERY reader has the exact same response to it.
Tyrion is one of those characters whose negative traits are cleverly exploited to ADD to his sympathy. It’s anti-hero done in a trivial way (written and executed well).
With Felisin instead Erikson creates a character that can trigger a different response depending on how you approach her, and there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to get the character. I’m not more “right” than you saying that I loved Felisin. Erikson doesn’t shove the reader in a specific direction that “feels” natural but that is instead carefully defined. It’s not on rails. Whatever you draw from that story is up to you, a subjective emotional response and all the “truth” about it, you keep it to yourself and no one can say you’re wrong. The character arc has nothing of the typical uplifting destination, and a lot of true ambiguity.
People always tell say they love gray characters when what they love is to read heroes who are “gray” only in a slight, but pleasing, nonconformity that feels very “hip” and “modern”.
Martin is a great executor and a very good writer. But it’s all pre-chewed material.
I also kind of chuckle when I see that “maturity” is taken as synonym of wisdom and moderation. But it very rarely is. Maturity only defines someone more broken than another. It’s just a collection of the number of pieces you’ve shattered into and how deluded you are about them.
Nope, you’ll rarely get to put the pieces back together. And that’s is valid both for Felisin and everyone else in the real world. Well, besides fantasy stories. In fantasy stories you can.
—
When I started to read the prologue of DG it was right after finishing the last page of GotM, I was well aware of who Felisin was and also of the fact she was going to be a major character in the next book.
The prologue starts with a very cinematic scene. You can see the camera panning while following the Hood Priest. The Priest is the initial focus of the scene and the PoV follows it as it walks toward its mysterious destination. Only after this initial set-up Felisin comes into play and we discover that it’s instead her PoV. We see the Priest approaching right toward Felisin, who’s merely an observer of something that seems to have gone “wrong”. Feelings of foreboding, the slaughter, the season of Rot, the mule, but still no mention of how this is going to be related to the plot (or to Felisin, she’s still out of the scene, out of perceived threat).
So up to this point Felisin is an external/passive observer. It came to me as a total shock that she was chained with the others. You have this Priest walking toward someone or something. Felisin wonders if it’s really her to be the target. But for the reader this becomes about discovering that it’s her the *victim* already. There’s no way out. We have been shown a Felisin chained right from the start, without any hope to get free. The fate is sealed.
Usually we see a character who faces danger and struggles to find a way though. We read anxiously how the story develops. It builds tension. Here we are thrown in a situation in which “possibility” is crushed. The chains locked before the first written line but the reader’s realization comes with delay, and in the text is completely understated, almost tangential. The scene is then followed by an escalation of brutality that shows clearly that there’s no way to turn back. It’s a path carved deeply into hell and the more you go down the worse it is. Even if you find a way through and up again the price you’ve paid would be already way too much to find any sort of absolution or justification in it. The threshold has been already passed and the reader somewhat forbidden to experience any sense of hopeful possibility.
What’s worth saving is already irremediably lost.
I’m still awed by the prologue and how it works spectacularly on its own. In two pages the reader goes through the feeling of having chains locked by having Felisin only entering the scene last. It’s her PoV right from the start but Erikson structures the scene so that the perceived PoV is completely overturned as one reads. From a side we have a cinematic scene, from the other we have an effect that is basically impossible with a camera, since the PoV would be already “bound” to the character.
Erikson uses cleverly everything that is unique to the writing medium. Even a small scene like this is brilliant not just because of what happens, but in how it is carefully structured and narrated word by word. Defiant of expectations, and ambitious.
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Whichever way you look at it, I don’t like the idea—it makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I guess it’s worth discussing. On your blog you posed the question whether “rape” can be “art”. The discussion is broad, but also quite straightforward from my point of view.
What’s the purpose of a book? Flatter its reader with edifying stories and encouragements?
Is “art” whatever we enjoy, and non-art whatever we despise and contemn? Is art exclusively self-congratulatory?
The point here is that the book will tell its story. The book has EVERY right and legitimation to tell its story without censorship. It’s the reader who decides how to personally weigh what he reads.
So should a book just tell a story that makes its readers comfortable and content? Nope, all stories are legitimate as long there’s someone who wants to hear them.
At the same time not feeling comfortable with a story and refuse to read it, is a personal and legitimate choice that should always be respected.
So I really won’t support the idea that criticizes Erikson for tackling certain themes that may hurt common sensibilities. Every reader can make there a personal choice whether or not to read it, but one can’t attack a writer for writing outside certain expectations.
Writing, as part of culture, MUST break through imposed or perceived barriers and limits.
And I write this not because someone has stated the opposite, but because that idea always lingers in these types of discussions.
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I think it is too ingrained in some people to be judgmental about her trading sex for favors in the prison camp. Or the drinking and smoking scenes, just because we tend to frown on that as a modern society
You can as well stop that first line at “it is too ingrained in some people to be judgmental”. That’s enough.
I’m very, very uncomfortable even thinking of JUDGING Felisin personally. I feel it very wrong and perverse.
I think personal choices are always to be respected because the external point of view is so hypocritical and partial. It’s too easy to nitpick from the outside about the personal choices someone else makes. It’s haughty and arrogant.
Felisin makes choices that are solely about her. She hurts herself in some cases. She never deliberately takes action against someone else (at least up to this point).
So, whatever is her choice, I would always respect it because it’s not a restraint on someone else’s choice. Maybe not approve it, but respect it.
People shouldn’t tread carelessly and be judgmental over pain and trauma of others. It’s a delicate topic.
Even posing the question whether one of her choice is “right” or “wrong” is about taking a truth out of it and rationalize what can’t be rationalized.
On a tangent, this Scott Bakker discussion is awesome.
There’s literally no escaping the conviction that we, and we alone, have somehow found our way past all the tomfoolery that so obviously afflicts everyone else on the planet.
The self that continually murders fact and memory in the name of convenience and hypocrisy.
the flattering—and false—self-portrait our brains manufacture for us
the vast bulk of the stories we tell are bent on strategic distortion
They tell us whom to lionize and, of course, whom to condemn.
Few things are quite so slippery as the “moral of the story.”
“Freedom” is just another name for bad memory.
When confronted by competing claims, one flattering, the other ugly, all things being equal, the ugly claim is likely more true.
It makes it easier to sell toothpaste, to hold the poor responsible for their poverty, and to congratulate the powerful for their conviction.
Still reading pages of “The Tyranny of the Night” instead of reading pages of “The Way of Kings”. Still relatively non-spoiler and safe to read since this is still < 30 pages.
He had seen it happen. He was ancient enough to have known many of the people featured in the more familiar sagas. He had helped create several larger-than-life reputations. Exaggerate a little here, overlook something there. There was no absolute Truth or absolute Reality, anyway. Truth was whatever the majority on hand agreed that it was. Real Truth was egalitarian and democratic and not at all compelled to correspond to the world in any useful way. Truth had no respect whatsoever for Right, What’s Best, or Needs Must. Real Truth was a dangerous beast in need of caging in even the quietest of times.Ask any prince or priest.
Truth was the First Traitor.
Half a step short of discovering Final Truth, Briga tumbled into the realm of alcoholic dream.
What this Final Truth may be?
We got his words directly. The news was he finished the editing of The Crippled God and is at work on the 5th Bauchelain & Korbal Broach novella.
“finished edit on The Crippled God which means that’s the last time I will ever read the novel front to back. Feels like I can die tomorrow and be fine with that, and all the rest of the time allotted me is, like, free. Oh, and started the next B&KB novella yesterday. And ‘Excesses of Youth’ will star a new character inspired by someone most of you know… Did I ever mention my evil streak?”
Since I can’t seem to find again a reading momentum, I’m left with introductions to books instead of reviews. Today I received a copy of Tor mass market version Midnight Tides with the new cover and “The Tyranny of the Night” by Glen Cook, the first in the trilogy called “The Instrumentalities of the Night”, whose last book came out recently (wasn’t this series planned to be a tetralogy?).
I bought this book because from the information I’ve gathered it seems quite interesting. Glen Cook strongly influenced Steven Erikson’s Malazan series and it seems that in this case the influence went the other way. Some aspects of mythology are shared, like magic having a strong impact on the setting and gods meddling directly with human affairs and leading wars personally. The book also got a reputation of being quite complicate and wasting no space to explain the intricacies of what is going on, including many and fast POV switches. The setting is also interesting because it’s a very distorted (to the point of being unrecognizable) medieval Europe where religious crusades are going on and everyone is in a war with someone else.
In a way it reads like Erikson, hardcore version. Glen Cook has always been a writer with a very terse prose. Here it’s even more rooted in that principle. The prose is often a chain of brief assertions: “Night gathered.” “Torches came to life.” “The drums shifted their beat.” Leading to: “A dozen sea people surrounded the ship.” Like that, no previous exposition or context. Who are these sea people? What they look like? Why are they appearing like that? Obviously nothing is given, and those sea people exit the scene in the same way they entered, with no further exposition. The reader is a mere witness and understanding is a kind of personal journey that one will achieve along the way. The language and style comes right from the setting, is part of it. You are just given glimpses of scenes and are left to put the pieces together on your own. There’s no red carpet being unrolled at your feet. Perfectly Erikson-style.
The first paragraph is a wonder on its own:
It is an age lurching along the lip of a dark precipice, peeking fearfully into chaos’s empty eyes, enrapt, like a giddy rat trying to stare down a hungry cobra. The gods are restless, tossing and turning and wakening in snippets to conspire at mischief. Their bastard offspring, the hundred million spirits of rock and brook and tree, of place and time and emotion, find old constraints are rotting. The Postern of Fate stands ajar. The world faces an age of fear, of conflict, of grand sorcery, of great change, and of greater despair amongst mortal men. And the cliffs of ice creep forward.
Great kings walk the earth. They cannot help but collide. Great ideas sweep back and forth across the face of a habitable world that is shrinking. Those cannot help but fire hatred and fear amongst adherents of dogmas and doctrines under increasing pressure.
As always, those who do the world’s work most dearly pay the price of the world’s pain.
There. Game Over. The book could as well end there, he wrapped up everything. Most of that may as well sound like a cliche in the genre today, but Glen Cook has the talent of making it very real and actual. It’s the prose itself being gritty and pragmatic, evoking scenes without flowery descriptions or digressions. It’s brutally effective.
This type of introductory manifesto goes on, including lots of obscure namedropping:
Chaos scribbles with no regard to linear or narrative thought. Events in Andoray, in the twilight of the sturlanger era, when the ice walls are still a distant curiosity, precede those in Firaldia, Calzir, Dreanger, the Holy Lands, and the End of Connec by two centuries.
Events among the Wells of Dirian seldom seem connected to anything else, early on. That region is in permanent ferment. There are as many sides to a question as there are city-states capable of raising militias.
And also more of the dreary mood:
The divine conspiracy is no great engine with goose-greased parts turning over smoothly. It is a drunken tarantella in a cosmic town square where the dancers frequently forget what they are doing and wander off drunkenly, bumping into things, before purpose is recollected.
That was basically just the first page and presentation of the book, the actual first chapter resembles closely to the way The Black Company starts (“There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.”), with a bunch of omens and the feeling of how superstitions are in this setting immediately concrete. And the prose is always at the ground level with the people it describes. It never elevates to omniscience and is merely asserting what the characters themselves believe:
Something screamed on the mountainside. Nearer, some thing laughed in the dark.
The hidden folk were never far away.
In the following section a strange creature appears near a camp in a forest.
“What have we got? I don’t see anything.”
“Right there. The darkness that hides the trees behind it.”
He saw it now. “What is it?” He saw more as his eyes adapted.
“It’s a bogon. The master spirit of the countryside. In a more settled land it would be a local deity, probably confined inside an idol in a town temple. To limit the amount of evil it could do. Out here, where no one lives, it would remain diffused. Normally.”
“Normally.” The darkness now had a vaguely manlike shape, but doublewide and fourteen feet tall.
It turns out they have some sort of experimental cannon and they try to use it.
The falcon gouted flame, thunder, and a vast cloud of sulfurous smoke. Else understood instantly that he had been right to overcharge. The firepowder had been damp. It had burned slow. It created so much smoke that, for half a minute, it was impossible to discover the effect of the shot.
Ah! That part had gone perfectly. The bogon was down, full of holes, with darkness evaporating off it like litde streamers of black steam. Shredded wolf lay scattered around the monster. Beyond, brush had been leveled and trees stripped of their bark. Several small fires burned out there, already dying. And then there was the quiet, a silence as profound as that in the Void before God created Heaven and Earth.
Quite tickling and revealing that last sentence…
P.S.
No, the picture isn’t a mistake. I thought it was fitting since the book also features “crusades and corrupt popes”. It’s taken from a cult game series, Shin Megami Tensei. I’m playing “Nocturne” a more recent installment that also has a reputation of being truly hardcore and where the end of the world happens fifteen minutes into the game. You’re left wandering a bleak post-apocalyptic world filled with demons and lost souls, and you get to rebuild the world (The Conception) the way you like. It messes quite a bit with religion and is filled with very bizarre and psychedelic scenes.