Book Review -- THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR by R. Scott Bakker

"Death came swirling down."

This oft-repeated phrase that Bakker likes to flog during epic battle scenes describes a lot of what happens in The White-Luck Warrior. After more than a month away from keyboard, I return with this latest installment of R. Scott Bakker's The Second Apocalypse epic cycle. The previous trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, I've reviewed here and here, and the first novel of his ongoing The Aspect-Emperor trilogy is reviewed here.

Bakker's novel is an excellent second act, in a trilogy which is, itself, the second act of a larger cycle. True to the three-act structure, the main characters--Esmenet, Achamian, Mimara, and Sorweel--find themselves in ever worsening situations. All attempts to take action are met with disaster. Esmenet watches as control of the New Empire starts slipping from her grasp. Achamian's journey to Sauglish turns into a deathmarch through wilderness with decimated, untrustworthy, and companions that appear to be gradually losing their sanity. Sorweel finds himself a pawn caught between the goddess Yatwer and the Aspect-Emperor himself as he marches through sranc-infested plains towards the Great Ordeal's objective. And in the midst of all of this, Yatwer's chose, the White-Luck Warrior, strides--a man for whom necessity and circumstance are inexplicably merged.

Bakker's writing is quite cinematic. It's easy to imagine the great, dusty vistas of the Istyuli Plains stretching out in widescreen, with hundreds of thousands of armed and armored warriors, flapping banners of a thousand colors, marching across the camera's view, reminiscent of films like Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Ten Commandments. You can imagine it being directed by Stanley Kubrick or Cecil B. DeMille with a cast of thousands. The climax of the book is extremely exciting, and easily lives up to the dramatic and terrifying end of The Judging Eye. Achamian and Cleric are an impressive combination and sparks seem to leap from the pages in which they interact (pun not intended--wait until you reach the end and you'll see what I mean). The bitter and ambiguous ending awaiting Achamian invokes (at least in me) the ending of Planet of the Apes, where Achamian discovers something that we, the audience, have known (or at least suspected) all along.

I don't have a great deal new to say about Bakker's style, philosophy, or grasp of history. I've said much already about how this world appears to be a thought-experiment for philosophical, religious, and gender-related issues. Both Mimara and Esmenet show immense strength of character and will. The abuses they'd suffered at the hands of men has not made them hateful or bitter, but something much different. They're survivors and Bakker demonstrates their determination not to succumb through their flexibility and ingenuity. Granted, neither character is perfect, but they're no more flawed (and in some cases, they're less so) than any of the male characters, such as Achamian and Sorweel.

One of the biggest criticisms that many readers have with Bakker is that his characters are almost universally unlikeable. To this, I must disagree. Bakker's characters are far more realistic than many of their other fantasy companions. His grasp of psychology helps him create characters that actually breathe and exude humanness. Their flaws, sufferings, idiosyncrasies are all believable and make them far more real than the over-romanticized two-dimensional heroes and heroines of many a fantasy novel. Indeed, perhaps the most obvious proof of Bakker's literary achievement is the ambiguity of Kellhus' role in this entire series. Is he noble and altruistic in his mission to destroy the Consult and the remaining Inchoroi? Is he truly a power-maddened megalomaniac? Is he something else? Bakker leaves this open for interpretation and if you ask different readers, they'll all give you different answers for what ultimately drives Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He's a different character to each reader, so much so that I believe readers are finding pieces of themselves in Kellhus every time they consider him.

In terms of plot, I must say that this book surpasses The Judging Eye. There were several points where I thought I could see what was coming but had guessed slightly wrong just enough to be surprised. It's incredible watching Bakker develop his characters. They grow, adapt, and change throughout the book. The challenges and difficulties they face, many of which are beyond their control or exacerbated by their actions, force them to evolve. Here Bakker's grasp of psychology shines through brilliantly as it had in The Warrior-Prophet and The Thousandfold Thought. Indeed, Esmenet gradually learns some of the most rudimentary techniques of the Dûnyain simply through the lessons she's had from her husband. She gradually comes to perceive the things that move the souls of those around her. Kelmomas' meddling comes to bite him quite severely, and for the first time his brilliance and conniving is met with dire consequences.

As usual, Bakker's worldbuilding is superb and consistent with his ideas and philosophical musings. History is a leash that all the characters wear about their necks, and Bakker's world is steeped in history and ruin. Having studied ancient civilizations myself, I've seen videos and photographs of places like Mycenae, Tiryns, Ephesus, Rome, Athens, and more. As Kellhus' Great Ordeal marches through the ruined north and Achamian makes his way to Sauglish, I find Bakker describing the sorts of worn and half-buried cities and fortresses about which I'd read and studied in college and grad school. Bakker's descriptions of these places are excellent and evoke the sense of unfathomable age and lost splendor that must accompany such ancient ruins.

Ragged patches of sunshine waved across the forest floor. Birdsong chirped and chattered through the canopy, light and inexhaustible. Here and there sections of wall rose from mounds like teeth from earthen gums. Layers of stonework ribbed the ravines they crossed. Blocks and fragments of every description stumped the ground. They passed a free-standing triumphal, the first thing Achamian clearly recognized from his Dreams: the Murussar, the symbolic bastion that marked the entrance to Sauglish's outlander quarter. Stripped of its inscriptions and engravings, it towered into the canopy, stone blackened, chapped with white lichens, shelved with moss. He need only blink to see the crowds bustling about its marble base: their garb ancient, their arms and armour bronze--men culled from all nations, from wild Aörsi to distant Kyraneas.

At this point, there isn't much analysis I can do since the trilogy is unfinished. Most of the analysis I've done already for The Prince of Nothing is quite similar to what I'm seeing in this series, although Bakker is doing some new things with it. However, I don't want to give anything about the story away, except to say that the ending is just as much an homage to Tolkien's The Hobbit as the climax of The Judging Eye was to The Fellowship of the Ring's Moria segments.

All told, The White-Luck Warrior is a fantastic installment in an already amazing series of novels. The philosophy is broadened only a little but the psychological character exploration and evolution is solid and the plot is absorbing.

The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker
Style B+
Substance A
Overall A-

Book Review -- THE JUDGING EYE by R. Scott Bakker

Almost two years ago, I sat in a coffee shop in Fukuoka Japan with a latte and a copy of R. Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye. I finished it there, at that coffee shop close to my hotel. Since the second novel of The Aspect-Emperor series has just been published under the title The White-Luck Warrior, I thought it was time to dust off The Judging Eye and post my thoughts on it. For my reviews of The Prince of Nothing trilogy, which precedes this book, see my reviews of The Darkness that Comes Before and its two sequels.

The first thing I'll say is that this book, though comparable in size to the previous three volumes that made up The Prince of Nothing, felt much shorter than they. Indeed, it felt as if more happened in the preceding volumes. Not to say that much of the book is filler. It is rather well-paced, and Bakker does this by shifting perspectives from chapter-to-chapter (and even within chapters, on occasion). He has three major plot threads in this novel--the Empress and the court intrigues of the New Empire against an ancient cult of a mother-goddess, the Emperor and his Great Ordeal to destroy the Consult, and Drusas Achamian and his search for the origins of Anasûrimbor Kellhus and the location of the secret Dûnyain fortress.

As usual, Bakker's worldbuilding is woven into his narrative and dialogue. The cultures and traditions of the various societies are played out through the tale, rather than described, and the reader finally gets to see glimpses of the mysterious Empire of Zeüm and the Nonmen, beyond distant rumors and passing references. Especially well-rendered are the Sranc hunters that range the north and northeast for Sranc scalps that they sell for the Emperor's bounty.

Interestingly enough, Bakker chooses to employ a (by now) old fantasy trope--the journey through the darkness (cf. the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings or the Hall of Kings in The Sword of Shannara, for example). But it serves more than simply a point of tension--it serves as a journey into the psyche of the Nonmen, the pre-human inhabitants of Eärwa. The journey is into far more than darkness, and it breaks the sanity of most of the characters, who are all renowned Sranc-hunters and hard fighting men. The inclusion of the Judging Eye, the ability to see good, evil, or even damnation in the soul of another, as well as the fanatic mother-goddess cult and their White-Luck Warrior, are imaginative complications to the narrative.

The characters themselves are also superbly rendered. Each has deep psychological foundations that Bakker appears to have mapped out and developed, with each character revealing his own mind and heart through his actions and words. Although sex, sexuality, and sexual frankness of narrative are much more toned-down in The Judging Eye (which I actually appreciate), the gritty realism is still there--characters void their bowels when they die, and others urinate themselves when terrified, for example. But, tactfully, Bakker never lingers on these things. They happen, he moves on.

Unfortunately, the tale itself does not carry that psychological and philosophical experimentation that the previous novels provided. Although he repeats much of the questions that he raised (and perhaps answered) in previous volumes, this volume fails to tread new ground. It is really just more of the same. Unfortunately, when I was finished, though I had thoroughly enjoyed this work, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. One reviewer posited that Bakker had "possibly...gotten a lot of his musings out of his system with his recent SF stand-alone Neuropath." If that's the case, in my opinion, The Judging Eye is actually weaker for it.

It also didn't have much of a buildup and/or payoff. Achamian's storyline, which featured the aforementioned descent into darkness, experienced a great increase in dramatic and psychological tension, which finally snapped to bring us a satisfying climax and exciting cliffhanger. However, the other two main plot threads really didn't peak in the same way. The plot thickened, but didn't achieve any sort of critical mass or breaking point. Achamian's story is mostly what carries the reader through the ending.

This doesn't mean that the book is not excellent. Indeed, it is very good. As a stand-alone novel, it is fun, intriguing, and thought-provoking; as the afore-mentioned reviewer commented, The Judging Eye is still "by some margin still the most intellectually-stimulating epic fantasy book since, well, The Thousandfold Thought." But in light of the intellectual challenge and progression-of-thought by which the novels comprising The Prince of Nothing were characterized, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. I am taking into account the fact that this is the first novel in a series, and the threads left dangling at the end certainly made me anticipate The White-Luck Warrior, which seems to be selling much better than The Judging Eye had. There's a lot of potential here with this series, and perhaps Bakker is just getting warmed up.

The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker
Style B+
Substance B+
Overall B+

"Realism" and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy

Leo Grin over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood wrote an interesting piece about the decline of modern fantasy, entitled "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists." By-and-large, the piece is quite reactionary (as is fitting a piece for anything Breitbart-related). Pat's Fantasy Hotlist said, "To me, it all sounds like someone caught in the past, refusing to see the genre we love evolve and grow." Roland's Codex dismissed it as pathetic, saying, "I found it extremely amusing in its fanboyish indignation and intellectual constipation, and would urge you to proceed with all due haste and read it. Hilarity and merriment are to be had!" But he had some very interesting points to make.

First, Grin yearns for a return to the mythopoeic stylings of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. This is an odd coupling, because both authors are extreme opposites in a great many ways. Howard wrote for the pulps, and it shows. His protagonists are often scoundrels living on the wrong side of the law, mercenaries escaping from a lost battle, or ne'er-do-wells of any sort. His prose style is fast-paced, action-oriented, and particularly bloody and violent. Tolkien, on-the-other-hand, is erudite, educated, a loremaster weaving a grandiose mythic cycle about an apocalyptic struggle between Good and Evil writ large. Regardless, they do have things in common these days, since Grin seems to see their similarities more as a function of their distance from current fantasy offerings, and especially cites Joe Abercrombie's work.

Second, Grin decries the over-reliance on violence, scatology, sex, and overall shock in order to subvert the established literary tropes.

Endless scenes of torture, treachery and bloodshed drenched in scatology and profanity concluded with a resolution worthy of M. Night Shyamalan at his worst, one that did its best to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths. Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.

(Ironically, Abercrombie actually admitted that he found this scenario rather interesting, but also admitted that your mileage may vary.) If Mr. Abercrombie's aim was "to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths," than I applaud his success. I've not read any of Joe Abercrombie's novels, I admit, but in the course of one week, through this article, Leo Grin has managed to polarize the entire fantasy community through his reference to Abercrombie specifically.

Now, for a week, the rebuttals have come pouring in. Adam at The Wertzone said in "Missing the Point" that "the problem is that the author bemusingly names J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard as his preferred flavours of fantasy. Which makes very little sense, as few fantasy authors are more nihilistic than Tolkien and Howard." Adam's argument is iconic of the rebuttals overall, but I'd argue that it is Adam and other respondents to Grin that are "missing the point." This is a straw man argument, especially with regards to Tolkien.

Sure, Beleriand is destroyed at the end of The Silmarillion, and the ending of The Lord of the Rings sees the passing of the Elves from Middle-Earth, the dwindling of the enchantment, a shell-shocked Frodo suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and unable to live comfortably in the Shire he struggled to save. However, what Adam and so many other critics of Leo Grin are missing is that this is not nihilistic, but should instead tug at a sort of pathos in our hearts. The Latin term "lacrimae rervm" or the Japanese term 物の哀れ (mono no aware) describe a kind of pathos, or sadness, for things mortal and temporary. This is not nihilism, it is the bittersweet nostalgia for things gone, and the idea that "you can never go home again." It's about change and how one deals with change. Indeed, when Grin's description of the hypothetical Abercrombiean Middle-Earth is rebutted with descriptions of everything that was lost as a consequence of the War of the Ring, I am tempted to rip my hair out in frustration and scream, "You're missing the point!"

Grin's right when he describes Tolkien's work as heroic. His characters are ostensibly Good. They show selflessness and self-sacrifice for a greater ideal at every turn. Their victory comes at a terrible cost, but it is a victory and more to the point, their victory is not hollow. Yes, the Elves leave Middle-Earth because the rich magic that permeated the world died with the Dark Lord, but without that loss, the victory would have been cheapened. The Elves had their chance, and Feanor's obsession with vengeance put them on a collision course with tragedy. Now it is Men's turn. Yes, it's sad, but it's sadness that has a point.

Similarly, Robert E. Howard's works are not all blood, gore, and violence. Solomon Kane is one of the most compelling of all Howard's characters and one of my personal favorites. The Puritan demon-hunter is driven by his faith in God and his unquenchable desire to right wrongs. He constantly faces horrors that would warp his mind, but he fights off (of all things) a Lovecraftian nihilism by relying on his faith and adherence to Good. Conan may be selfish and ultimately out for "number one" but he has a code of honor and, by-and-large, has little patience for tyrants and those who would slaughter innocents. He is not a morally ambiguous character--his morality is right there, up front. Yeah, he's an unscrupulous character, but that does not make him morally ambiguous. Nor does it make Howard's world nihilistic. Howard saw the barbaric characters of his stories as men walking a thin gray line between darkness and light, order and chaos, civilization and savagery, decadence and nature, and it was their will and their wits that brought them triumph, even against darknesses that were dredged up from the blackest pits of Lovecraftian nightmare. Yes, civilization would eventually be washed in the blood of Turanian, then Pictish, then Cimmerian invasion, and then cataclysm, but Howard didn't like civilization much anyway, and saw strength, honor, and will in the barbarian kingdoms of European yore. That is not nihilism.

I think that this over-adherence to nihilism on the part of so many commentators and bloggers is a desperate attempt to divert the main thrust of Grin's argument. It isn't so much nihilism, per se, but a matter of taste. Some say de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm, but I'm not so sure.

The other side thinks that their stuff is, at long last, turning the genre into something more original, thoughtful, and ultimately palatable to intelligent, mature audiences. They and their fans are welcome to that opinion. For my part — and I think Tolkien and Howard would have heartily agreed — I think they’ve done little more than become cheap purveyors of civilizational graffiti.

Abercrombie himself responded to Grin's comment:

We’re on sides, now? No one told me about sides. What are the sides? Of what? And on which side am I? I love Tolkien, after all. I’d like to be on his side. Grew up with The Hobbit. Read Lord of the Rings every year. I’m a great admirer of his. Without Tolkien there’d be no fantasy as we know it, and certainly no First Law. When it comes to an epic tale with moral clarity set in a supremely realised fantasy world, he pretty much knocked it out of the park.

Abercrombie sets up another straw man here, and proceeds with it. Leo Grin is right--there are sides. Just because Abercrombie admires Tolkien doesn't mean he's not participating in a movement of literary degradation. If Leo Grin is to be believed, Joe Abercrombie's work utilizes "cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism" to put the tropes of the fantasy genre "back together into a Frankenstein's monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten." His book, The Heroes has been cited as an utterly ironic piece in which the main characters are most certainly not, and partake in the slaughter of innocent civilians (including women and children), rape, and murder. So, in order to avoid just another umpteenth retelling of The Lord of the Rings, modern fantasy requires foul language, scatology, immoral anti-heroes, graphic sex, sickening and upsetting violence, and rape. In other words, it needs to realistically depict the graphic realities of medieval life, warfare, and death because Tolkien didn't do that (although Howard approached it).

As I go through earlier 20th century works of fantasy fiction, I find them chock-full of sex and violence. It's just not graphic. I have to ask why George R.R. Martin finds it necessary to describe, in detail, one character's sexual experience in A Feast of Crows, where Poul Anderson simply ended a chapter of Three Hearts and Three Lions as Holger carries an elf princess off to bed. What was the rationale behind it? Sex is a part of life and shouldn't be avoided in literature, but I don't need a pornographic description of what happens. Similarly, Robert E. Howard's warriors would wade through buckets of blood, but it was always described with a certain panache that is most definitely lacking in a lot of contemporary fantasy. They seemed less like men and more like forces of nature in combat, and the violence of the scene was woven into the tale like thread. This is different from reading about some young maiden trying to hold her intestines inside herself after a mercenary decided to gut her. I'm trying read an adventure tale, not watching a Rob Zombie flick.

Nevertheless, de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm. There is no disputing taste. Your mileage may vary. However, I have to ask, is the reason so much graphic and cold-bloodedly disturbing sex and violence being included because the authors can't actually write well otherwise? Everybody's known since Shakespeare that sex and violence on gratuitous levels will sell, but that real art is something that isn't readily accessible, and difficult to produce. Shakespeare purposely made Titus Andronicus an over-the-top schlocky gore-fest, either to capitalize on the crude "sex and violence sell" reality or to subvert it and show how hollow and mind-numbingly unartistic buckets of blood truly are. It's just another kind of spectacle, and anyone who actively enjoys reading about innocents being slaughtered in a novel needs to read about the much more recent (and true) Rape of Nanking and see if they still enjoy that sort of stuff. As an historian, I've read my fair share of civilians getting massacred and really don't need to spend dozens of pages dwelling on it in a fantasy novel.

Brian Murphy compares the over-the-top tasteless (in my opinion) graphic horror of Richard Morgan's The Cold Commands with Tolkien's description of how Shelob captures, tortures, and finally drains her victims. Describing Tolkien's passage he had this to say:

That to me is a great piece of writing. It tells you plenty about the cruelty and maliciousness of Sauron and his relationship with the giant she-spider (which he half-hates and half-fears, but tolerates as a valuable guardian into Mordor).

As for the gory details, it allows my mind to fill in the rest. Tolkien goes on to explain that Shelob cares not for wealth or power, but spends all her time brooding on her next feast. "For all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness," he writes. That's about as nasty and explicit as Tolkien gets.

When compared to Richard Morgan's excerpt, Brian went on to say this:

As for that passage, man, it’s brutal. It’s effective, and horrifying, and well-done. But it’s not why I read fantasy. It jerked me back into reality with its clinical descriptions of flensing and tearing blood vessels. Perhaps Morgan intended this scene as a condemnation of torture. It vaguely reminded me of the real-life practice of waterboarding, albeit turned up to 11. I don’t know. I read it and it just felt — too much.

Brian Murphy pretty much sums it up. We're dragged out of a story and thrown into the real world where people are tortured in Gitmo and religious fanatics blow themselves up. Fantasy is many things, but it is most certainly a brand of escapist literature as much as anything else, and to rob the genre of its escapist facet ultimately cheapens it. In the excerpt of Morgan's book that Murphy quotes, we're presented with a torturous execution that is intensely described, with little omitted. We're drawn a picture of agony, blood, viscera, and being eaten alive. It has an impact, but lacks the elegance of the Tolkien passage that Murphy quoted before it. There was no real vibrancy or flair to the description. Just a cold, calculated explanation of how these characters were dying. What ever happened to Hemingway's Iceberg Principle, where what's not said carries more weight than what is said?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nihilism in my literature, and graphic sex and violence--to a degree, and so long as there is a point to it all. I adore the works of James Ellroy because he grabs the hardboiled noir that Chandler and Hammett birthed and runs with it to it's logical conclusion. Noir is inherently nihilistic, but it's supposed to be. Ellroy's stuff is grim, gritty, shocking, upsetting, but that's because it is supposed to be. He's epitomized the genre. Reading a tragic and pessimistic novel like The Big Nowhere is an incredibly cathartic experience. It can be depressing, but my overall experience was actually cleansing. Fantasy wasn't designed to be nihilistically cathartic but instead nostalgic, perhaps a postmodern re-enchantment of an otherwise mundane world.

It's hard to feel nostalgic about a bunch of raiders lining women and children up in front of a fortress and burying axes into their heads until the garrison capitulates. That's not cathartic, either. It's simply disturbing and upsetting.

R. Scott Bakker has this to say to Leo Grin:

you might say that Grin thinks this is fantasy’s vocation, to endlessly eulogize, and that writing that strays into the baroque or revisionary are not only morally and imaginatively bankrupt, they are symptomatic of some great disease of the soul that is presently claiming the world and humanity.

Sound familiar? It should if you read fantasy. This particular salad of attitudes and concepts – moral certainty writ on a cosmic scale – is precisely what you find in almost all premodern works of fantastic fiction, everything from Upanishads to the Holy Bible. Consider the hyperbole. Consider the way he structures his oppositions in the above quote: on the one side you have the sacred, the treasured and the cruciform, while on the other side you have, well, shit and piss.

I'm tempted to break out Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, a landmark study in how "religious man" establishes the sacred by delegating it as "special" and "not profane"--that is, not mundane, mortal, or carnal. Indeed, fantasy often tapped into that throughout its growth and development in the early 20th century. The problem with Grin, apparently, is he sees fantasy itself as a sacred touchstone of our culture, and sees it's deconstruction and infusion with the profane to be blasphemous, a mark of Western civilization's self-loathing and willful self-destruction, and inherently political.

Soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths is no different than other artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces. In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing. It’s a well-worn road: bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field.

Well, Grin, if it is a sacred touchstone, then in this postmodern world where religion has become evil, the sacred has literally become a profane force in the eyes of many, then one must expect this sort of reaction.

The deconstructing and subverting of genre tropes is not always a bad thing. One of my favorite fantasy series is Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, a trilogy which preserves the rich sense of re-enchantment that Michal at One Last Sketch talks about, while simultaneously subverting a number of fantasy's tropes. Loads of characters die, medieval warfare is bloody and horrific, the realities of medieval life are not ideal in the least. And yet that makes the actions of the protagonist all the more heroic. No, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn does not simply churn out the same old tropes, but subverts almost all of them subtly, delicately. Overall, author Tad Williams wrote a fantasy series aimed at adults that doesn't require the graphic sex, violence, or scatology of other authors in order to get its points across.

Now, I have yet to read Joe Abercrombie's work. I'm not a big fan of historical fantasy, mostly because I am a historian and I can't help but nit-pick what's wrong half of the time, and from what I've gathered, that's primarily Abercrombie's oeuvre. Not to say that Abercrombie does a bad job or has inconsistencies--I just prefer not to read historical fantasy. I'm not bashing Abercrombie. But considering how his name has fueled a lot of this divide, I cannot help but ask why? What about his work, specifically, did Grin (and others) find so damn objectionable?

I am , however, insisting that Grin's argument not be dismissed out-of-hand, like Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, the Wertzone, et. al. have. Once you scrape away the political hyperbole from Grin's argument, you can't help but realize that everybody missed the point and ended up shooting the messenger.

Theo at the blog for Black Gate actually made one of the best defenses for Grin's argument I've seen. In his piece, "The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel," Theo argues that Grin is correct, the tragic heroism and mythic tenor of both Tolkien and Howard have given way to an ironic, barren landscape bereft of anything sacred or meaningful. There's nothing worth defending, and that's depressing and disheartening. For me, what I find depressing is the unnecessary gratuity of sex and violence making such literature more "adult" or more "literary." I find it quite depressing, and can't help but compare it to the gritty Dark Age of comic books during the early 1990s, when "adult" and "mature" wound up really being quite immature, adolescent at best, and unnecessarily graphic. Shock was not followed by awe, but by disinterest. (For more on this, see Michal's post on "Adult" Fantasy at One Last Sketch.)

I do not want to read a Tolkien knock-off. I've had enough of Terry Brooks' Shannara. I read fantasy to visit places that I wish were real and enjoy stories of heroism, adventure, and of individuals overcoming immense obstacles. I love books with strange monsters and magic. Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a magnificent subversion of fantasy that tragically flies under everyone's radar as "just another fairy tale," when it should actually be a model for postmodern deconstructive fantasy. Indeed, Williams' work inspired George R.R. Martin to start A Song of Ice and Fire in the first place!

There's plenty of heroism in Martin's books, too. Although he was, unfortunately, lumped into this, I see Martin's books as trying to bridge a gap between the real and the fantastic. Yeah, Martin's got a lot of gratuitous violence, but to his credit, he's not a fan of it himself. He's writing the story he wants, or perhaps needs, to tell. One of the reasons that A Storm of Swords took so long to come out was because he had such a difficult time writing the Red Wedding scene. Events such as that do not make his work nihilistic, and indeed the career of Daenerys Targaryen, if anything, is full of heroism--her character grows to develop a strong sense of justice and good. The use of perspectives makes the various characters much more real and human, and therefore understandable--their own inward struggles can make them heroes or villains in ways that a simple straightforward narrative could not. I honestly do not find Martin's work to be nihilistic in any way. Pessimistic, yes, but nihilistic, no.

There's a long list of great books to which I can point that subvert fantasy tropes and do so tastefully, without resorting to the sort of stuff that Leo Grin decries. I just finished reading Glen Cook's The Black Company, a novel about a mercenary company that works for the bad guys. The book is fraught with pessimism and darkness, but I'd not go so far as to say it was nihilistic. Similarly, I'm rereading Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, and it deals with nihilism while still maintaining a sense of fantastic wonder--the very nihilism itself of Vance's stories is part of the overall enchantment and sense of awe, which is achieved without gratuitously graphic sex, violence, or scatology. In Lord Foul's Bane, Thomas Covenant rapes a woman, but Stephen R. Donaldson doesn't give us a thick paragraph description of all her cries and his thrusts, nor are we ever treated to a phrase like "engorged member." Indeed, the guilt of this deed is something that torments Covenant's conscience for the rest of the series--something that seems to stand in direct opposition to the current "nihilistic" and "morally bereft" trends to which Grin objects.

This is where I respond to Matthew David Surridge's rebuttal to Theo's article (the one that defend's Leo Grin). When Surridge evokes a number of early-to-mid 20th century examples of rape, murder, moral ambiguity, etc., I have to shake my head and reiterate, "you're missing the point!" It's all about the presentation, otherwise, why would Grin have made such a fuss about language, scatology, and graphic description of sex and violence? Yeah, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were cut-throat thieves, ne'er-do-wells, and sex-crazed. However, there were levels to which even they wouldn't sink. The same is true for Conan. When Surridge cites Conan's pursuit of the ice-princess in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as having "rape" as his intent, Surridge is being hyperbolic--Conan's intent is revenge because she tried to have him killed for sport and amusement. Again, it's about the description and the presentation of events, and someone seems to be missing the point.

Grin's point, I think, in reality, goes back to what Michal at One Last Sketch said about fantasy being "adult."

However, my problem with these “new takes” on the genre is that they don’t, actually, do anything new. Strip away the swears and the sex and you’re left with works not much different from their predecessors. Yes, there may be moral ambiguity, but Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith also wrote amoral worlds. Sara Douglass has much less depth than Morgan; ignore the strange creature sex and the novels don’t much reflect the lofty themes she urges writers to pursue. We are told to strive for realism in our fantasy, yet I don’t see much inherently realistic in the word “fuck.”

The only thing that makes these books adult is that we, adults, try to bar children from reading them. We often fail. Writing sex doesn’t make your book mature unless you do something with it. I used to sneak my mother’s romance novels when I was ten to skip to the dirty bits: it’s not, in itself, a particularly adult thing to write about, or even talk about. Head into any schoolyard and you’ll hear language that would make even, I warrant, Ms. Douglass blush.

It does, however, give a false sense of legitimacy to a work. Because we don’t want children reading them, we can automatically label such books “adult.” No longer need we piddle around in a sanitized Middle Earth where no orc would dare say “shit” even if he really wants to; we can be depraved as we like.

And there you have it. Strip away all of the sex and violence and I have to ask, do these works really mean anything? If Joe Abercrombie's books were bowdlerized, would their stories lose their impact? If so, why? I know R. Scott Bakker's work would suffer, not because his work is bereft of substance but because he is dealing with deeply psychological and philosophical subjects, attacking our assumptions through a gigantic thought-experiment of a fantasy series, and doing something that the genre honestly really hasn't done before. But can the same be said of Morgan, Douglass, and Abercrombie? Are they trying to be relevant by having their characters swear, smear feces on their swords before battle, and rape twelve-year-old girls while on chevauchée? Does this actually make them adult, sophisticated, literary? Do you need this stuff in order to be more realistic? What purpose does the inclusion of scatology, foul language, graphic violence, sex, and torture actually serve in the novel? Is this really going to prevent a writer from merely mimicking Tolkien?

Or perhaps somebody is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Book Reviews -- THE PRINCE OF NOTHING TRILOGY, Books Two and Three

A little over a year ago, I finished R. Scott Bakker's stupendous The Prince of Nothing trilogy of novels. For your convenience and interest, I'm reviewing them both below, and also, I'm linking a few other reviews to give you a bit more insight and another person's view of these novels.

Review of Warrior-Prophet
Another review of Warrior-Prophet

Review of The Thousandfold Thought
Another review of The Thousandfold Thought

WARRIOR-PROPHET by R. Scott Bakker

The book opens immediately after the tumultuous cliffhanger ending of The Darkness That Comes Before, and follows the Holy War on its deadly course toward the holy city of Shimeh. The tale focuses less on Anasûrimbor Kellhus from his own perspective than the first book of the series, and instead follows his exploits more through the eyes of his companions, the Mandate sorcerer Drusas Achamian, the prostitute Esmenet, and the nomadic Scylvendi exile-general Cnaiür urs Skiötha. The book is roughly divided into three segments, each an ordinal-numbered march, marking stages in the Holy War's progress through Fanim-held lands toward its lofty goal. As the crusaders fight battles and pass through many different and dangerous lands, their numbers dwindle and they are forged into a hardened, determined, and tested force.

Bakker's mastery of psychology blossoms throughout this book. Kellhus' machinations and manipulations of the psyches of others is far, far more pronounced than in The Darkness That Comes Before. More of the conditioning methods of the Dûnyain are described through the few chapters that are told from Kellhus' point-of-view. Though the narrator is of the omnipotent third-person sort, he rarely dips into the mind of Anasûrimbor Kellhus, so when he does it is a rare and insightful treat.

This mastery of character psychology creates personae that are real and lifelike. They are far more than just caricatures. Each character has deep, psychological traumas in their life, traumas that Kellhus exploits to achieve his goal of subverting the Holy War. As the novel develops, Bakker uses Kellhus to examine and expose the weaknesses and strengths of his characters and expose the depths of their hopes, fears, and coping mechanisms. Kellhus' conditioning, separating himself from history and "what comes before" in order to achieve a sort of psychological oneness and Nietzschean Wille zur Macht, enables him to exercise a sort of free will that runs contrary to the psychological determinism of all of the other characters around him.

Here, Bakker's thought-experiments with psychology and philosophy (specifically Nietzscheanism and related forms of Existentialism) achieve a more free exercise across the pages. Removed from the complex political machinations of the Nansur imperial court, the young Kellhus gradually transforms himself in the perception of his fellows from a simple peer into a religious figure. Through examination and analysis of the surrounding characters' psyches, he manipulates everyone about him. Ironically, only the barbarian, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, is aware of Kellhus' power and thus remains impervious to Kellhus' machinations.

Simultaneously, Bakker begins to weave religious and moral questions into the fabric of the tale. Although they are perceived as heathen by the Inrithi warriors, the Muslim-esque Fanim are arrogant but not truly evil. The savage brutality of medieval warfare is described in exquisite detail, and this book is truly an Anabasis of fantasy. The battles, the suffering, and the political infighting within the Inrithi host, especially once Kellhus begins to manifest himself as a religious figure, are absorbingly detailed. I flew through this hefty volume in a mere eight days, pulled forward by the excellent pacing of events and interweaving of plot threads.

And Bakker wields multiple plot threads quite well, indeed. No space is wasted. Even when the author spends time delving into the characters' thoughts, it is not tedious, but revealing. Though the book is quite descriptive, the description serves to deepen both the characters and the world. Bakker reveals the rich history and culture of Eärwa through the actions and words of the characters. He makes very little use of the sinister, evil Consult throughout the book, perhaps aware that familiarity breeds contempt. Instead of revealing their history in The Darkness That Comes Before, Bakker instead chooses to assemble their twisted story piecemeal throughout Warrior-Prophet, culminating in their attempt to manipulate certain factions within the Holy War to eliminate Kellhus, the one character they perceive as the greatest threat to their plans outside of the Mandate School of sorcery.

The book avoids becoming predictable by withholding aspects of the world and information of the environment from the reader, then springing them at a prime moment. This happens only rarely, though. As a whole, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. Knowing the psychologies of the characters, however, the reader is never in a position of disbelief. Every single character behaves exactly in accordance with their psychological make-up. This lends a very important depth of realism to the characters. Nevertheless, Bakker rarely ceases to surprise us. He takes his characters to far-away places, where they stand atop ruins of forgotten eras and are at times overwhelmed by the weight of history. The novel is laced with the interplay of a dozen ideas within Bakker's mind, and they explode into the pages with a forcefulness that is captivating.

The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker

The conclusion to The Prince of Nothing brings to mind a number of clichéd phrases often penned by penny-ante movie reviewers, such as "tour de force," "relentless," and "mindblowing." And I hate to resort to them, but in this case, I find myself hard-pressed to describe this novel in any other way.

The plot is a continuation of Anasûrimbor Kellhus' subversion and control of the Holy War, and by extension, the establishment of a new religious philosophy within Inrithism. The final march to Shimeh itself is detailed and the plots of Kellhus, his erstwhile and prodigal father, Moënghus, and the evil, nihilistic Consult all achieve realization on the pages. This build-up of tension and anticipation kept me reading the final 250 pages of the novel at a coffee shop for three-and-a-half solid hours. I finished this book in less than a week because every time I finished a chapter, I felt the inevitable tug to begin reading the next one.

Much of what can be said regarding Bakker's interplay of history, philosophy, and psychology has already been stated ad nauseum, so I will refrain from jamming that down your throat once more. However, there is a power and a scale of epicness that comes to fruition in this book more than the other. The motivation behind the evil Consult is revealed, including their alien heritage, the history of betrayal, and their attempt to escape from an afterlife by denying the God/gods any worshipers at all and cleansing the world of sentient beings. All of the characters meet their greatest fears, and confront their most daunting challenges. Each one overcomes them in a different way (indeed, whether or not they overcome these challenges at all is up to the interpretation of the reader).

A great many strings are left untied, but Bakker has made it clear that, although this particular story has ended, there is more to be written. Nevertheless, the final pages of this novel are a triumph of tragedy, in a manner of speaking. The most sympathetic character of the novels, the sorcerer Drusas Achamian, achieves his own sort of Wille zur Macht. Kellhus inadvertently creates a number of miniature Übermensch throughout the series, among them Achamian and the Scylvendi warrior Cnaiür (who is driven mad by his awareness). The merging of psychology and philosophy throughout the novel creates an absorbing interplay in which Bakker explores the consequences that ideas have upon the lives of his characters.

The Prince of Nothing Series Overall
A definite accomplishment of astounding scale, R. Scott Bakker has done something that few have ever done within the realm of epic fantasy. He has created a lavish, detailed world, complete with religion, history, and literature, populated it with characters so rich and psychologically motivated that they seem real and vital, and used it as a sandbox to explore complex ideas. This is not simply epic high fantasy of the didactic Tolkien-esque vein, nor the largely escapist world of the early Howardian pulps. It is a bit of a fusion of the two. It is a post-apocalyptic world, much like mid-twentieth century speculative fiction (such as per Jack Vance and Margaret St. Clair) with a character that is a fusion of Elric of Melniboné, Paul and/or Leto Atreides, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The idea of history and the play of historical (and historiographical) concepts throughout the book demand the reader question their understanding of history itself. Many of the characters in the novel become acutely aware that they will become historical figures and icons of legend. As the tale progresses, they contemplate how they will be portrayed or understood within the inevitable songs and sagas that will be written about the Holy War. The sorcerer, Achamian, not surprisingly, is acutely aware of the sort of character archetype that will arise from his participation in what will eventually become a legend, and chafes at the idea.

Bakker, through Kellhus and the Dûnyain, challenges us with the age-old question of free will. The Dûnyain repudiate history, and claim that all men are slaves to "what comes before." Through mental conditioning and special breeding programs, they gradually seek to overcome all of the psychological impulses that determine their actions. The idea that all events are caused results in the idea that they are locked into a path from which they cannot deviate. Thus, individuals are slaves to their own personal history, whilst whole nations are slaves to the histories of their peoples. (Living in Korea and analyzing why the Koreans are the way they are is incredibly revealing in this regard.) Kellhus' conditioning separates his soul from all of the things that would seek to move it, enabling him to move is own soul. This is what makes Kellhus and his father, Moënghus, approach Übermensch status. Throughout the novels, Bakker plays out the struggle between determinism and free will on an epic scale, and places the fate of the world in the balance. Only the Nietzschean superman can save the world from an (ironically) ultra-nihilist enemy.

As said in my review of The Darkness That Comes Before, the proliferation of sex (and the aberrant sadism of the Inchoroi/Consult) make this a series for mature readers. Though Bakker's rendition of sex and sexual situations lacks juvenile eroticism or clinical sterility, they are still graphically described more than some conventions of taste would permit. Bakker's work is not for immature minds, and is most certainly an mature adult work. However, if you can grasp the complex relationship between free-will/deteriminism, Nietzschean existentialism, nihilism, and individual psychology (and that is only the beginning of the myriad influences that are brought to bear throughout The Prince of Nothing), then it would be a fair bet to assume that you are mature enough for the sexual situations that pepper the trilogy.

As a piece of literature, this series is astounding in its depth and complexity. Bakker has easily overcome many of his contemporaries. As one reviewer noted, he has, in three volumes, written a deeply philosophical and psychological work with a compelling, multifaceted, narrative rife with political and military intrigue, whereas many others, have started earlier than Bakker and still not yet finished (such as the late, infamous Robert Jordan and much more respected writers such as Steven Erickson and George R. R. Martin). His series is much darker and gritty than the unmuddied heroics of Tolkien, Terry Brooks, the late David Eddings, or even Robert Jordan. As a fantasy author, he brings a great many ideas to the plate that would make his series a compelling addition to any fantasy fan's own "Appendix N." The arrangement of sorcery into schools, the religious strictures against sorcery, and the political strife between the schools themselves make for a fantastic backdrop to explore ideas and themes in a fantasy setting.

The Prince of Nothing
by R. Scott Bakker

The Darkness That Comes Before
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Substance A
Overall A

Warrior-Prophet
Style A+
Substance A+
Overall A+

The Thousandfold Thought
Style A+
Substance A+
Overall A+

Overall A+

Book Review -- THE DARKNESS THAT COMES BEFORE

About a year ago, I finished R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness that Comes Before, the first book of his monumental Prince of Nothing trilogy, which itself is the first installment of his Second Apocalypse cycle.

Intense.

I came across this book at a Barnes & Noble near Christiana, DE, a few years back. I remember lifting the hefty trade paperback, which weighed in at several hundred pages, and was intrigued by the cover blurbs. Stephen Erikson had written, "Something remarkable has begun." Though I hadn't read Erikson, I'd heard about him, and this statement intrigued me somewhat. So, after reading a review of the book, I went to the Gloucester County Library and picked up a copy.
During grad school, I stopped reading fantasy, by-and-large, altogether for a long time. I was too busy working and reading classwork books and such to be able to devote time to anything else. With the exception of Robert E. Howard and some Raymond E. Feist, I had basically shelved fantasy, so it's no surprise that I fell out of touch, somewhat. New names emerged and I found myself becoming more and more intrigued to see where the sudden revolution in fantasy away from the typical "high fantasy" of good guys vs. dark lords Lord of the Rings clones was going. Enter R. Scott Bakker's novel, which I first read some years ago, alongside The Cryptonomicon, but then I have just recently returned to it with the desire to finish the series off.

A sorcerer bound by oaths and nightmares must search for an ancient evil that no one believes in any longer. A nomad warrior-chieftain watches his people disintegrate and strikes out on his own for vengeance. And a lone monk from a reclusive fraternity of philosophers, who can perceive the causes of all circumstances and therefore can be immune to them, is charged with the task of murdering his prodigal father. A religious crusade is brewing between the syncretists and the monotheists.

This book only details the very opening chapters of what will come to be called the Holy War, but it covers them in such a monumental and believable fashion that the reader is swept along. Three disparate threads are inexplicably drawn to the Inrithi crusade against the monotheistic Fanim.

Bakker is a genius at putting old wine into new bottles. There is a deep and abiding evil that threatens to destroy the world, much like in standard epic high fantasy. But what is new is that they've already destroyed the world. The great kingdoms of the Age of Bronze were brought crashing down, and humanity was driven to a corner of the habitable world before the tide was stemmed.

Much like Tad Williams', Bakker's world is full of real-world analogues, but unlike Williams, they are simply inspirations for Bakker's geography, not direct parallels. As such, the Nansur Empire is inspired by the Byzantine Empire, but not wholly analogous. Bakker's knowledge of history, however, gives his world breath and life. It is deeper and more storied, not simply because Bakker devised a history, but rather because Bakker understands history, and how history creates impressions on people. The peoples that populate the nations of the Three Seas are governed by their histories, driven by age-old prejudices, and bound by customs and traditions the causes of which they themselves have forgotten.

What is also quite different from many other fantasy writers is the prevalence of philosophy and psychology in his books. Concepts such as cause-and-effect run throughout the core of the book. One of the main characters, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, is a member of a hidden monastic sect that has repudiated history and the world of men in order to seek perfect control of all circumstance, based on an understanding of what comes before. Essentially, Kellhus' very life is a thought experiment on causality, and through this character, Bakker experiments with the idea of mixing psychology with philosophy. Kellhus can rule others simply by understanding what moves their souls, and because of his training, is quite nearly the Nietzschean superman--impervious to all causality. Whereas others souls are moved, Kellhus moves his own.

Much like the best fantasy series' I've read, Bakker's has a distinct tone and flavor that sets it apart. This is a dark, gritty reality that is much less like how fantasy is often written.
Bakker's work is sexual and psychological. He pulls no punches, and his narrative is frank, honest, and to some may actually be seen as somewhat offensive. Although literary works are not rated or censored, this book graphically illustrates sex and sexuality. However, Bakker does not deliver the descriptions with a cold, clinical explanation, an adolescent excitability, or an erotic narrative. He conveys the sex and sexuality from a perfectly neutral standpoint of a detached narrator. It pushes the boundaries of the tasteful. For plenty, he might very well cross over.

However, this frankness gives his narrative a sense of reality. When slain, bodies release their waste. Indeed, bowels loosen during torture or terror alike. Bakker doesn't mince words. Nor does he waste time. He devotes just enough to this sliver of graphic reality to get the message across, and then he moves on.
The narrative is well-paced and interesting. The events are primarily character-driven, which is quite fitting, since character and characterization are the lynchpins of Bakker's tale. As primary characters have a powerful emperor, his nephew-general, a whore, a nomad barbarian, a sorcerer, a concubine-slave, and a monk to cycle through. Each has a deep psychology and complex personality. Bakker's Dunyain monk, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, is the lens through which the reader can peer into the hidden recesses of each character's psyche. Their strengths, frailties, and ambitions are rendered through action much more than through description, causing them to fairly leap off of the page and into the reader's mind.

Bakker has a great many ideas that he weaves together throughout the book. One can feel the influence of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and a host of other thinkers and philosophers upon the world that he creates. The deep richness of its history is present and revealed, piece-by-piece, through the development of the story and the experiences of the characters. There are no scenes in which Gandalf, Belgarath, or Allanon describe the long histories of the world to young Hobbits, in order to explain the rise of the evil darkness. Indeed, these things are revealed only slowly. Who and what the Consult are remain a mystery to the reader, and the threat of a Second Apocalypse is still laughed by most characters as an unlikely bad dream.

Bakker, however, breathes life into more than simply philosophical and religious musings. His concept of sorcery is intrinsically linked to philosophical questions of the fabric of reality. Sorcerers are organized into schools, and they are often at war with one another over power and membership. They are also outlawed by the Tusk, the religious scripture that predates the advent of Men on the continent. They are Marked, as proof of their damnation. And they are divided into Anagogic and Gnostic philosophies (the latter being the most powerful by far). Other ideas that are extremely compelling are the Nonmen, a pre-human race, and the sranc, Bakker's answer to orcs and goblins, which are the horrific abominations of genetic manipulation by the Inchoroi, who remain a mystery.

This is not a book for the average teenager, I hate to say. I look back upon myself and feel as if I would have been unprepared for this work, both intellectually and philosophically. This is most certainly not your average fantasy. Bakker is giving voice to much more than a bunch of jumbled ideas about goblins, dragons, magic, and religion. He's tackling the deepest expressions of both philosophy and psychology. This work is an expression of his research and learning. Good science-fiction/fantasy, no, good speculative fiction, is about developing and executing great ideas. Just as Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles are about far more than interplanetary warfare, but also ecology, sociology, and religion, R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness that Comes Before is about psychology, philosophy, eschatology, and ethics.



The Darkness that Comes Before, by R. Scott Bakker
Style A
Substance A
Overall A