Quote from R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

[Judd]

I'm only 74 pages into this novel and I'm not sure if I dig it yet.

But this quote needed to be posted on this board, so here it is:

"If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?

 - Zarathinius, A Defence of the Arcane Arts"

[Nev the Deranged]

 I know he's on my reading list somewhere but I can't remember the name of the series... good stuff I take it?

[Judd]

 I know he's on my reading list somewhere but I can't remember the name of the series... good stuff I take it?

Its...okay so far.  I'm almost 200 pages in and I wouldn't quite give it a hearty thumbs up yet but there are some lovely quotes for Sorcerer in it.

Here's another:

"We are a sad couple,"  she said, as though making a casual observation.

"Why would you say that?"

"A sorcerer and a harlot.....There's something sad about that."

He grasped her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.

"There's something sad about all couples," he said.

Like Dictionary of Mu, it is a sword & sorcery fantasy world that is very influenced by the Bible, another reason it is resonating for me, now, as that project comes together.

[Nev the Deranged]

 That's that Prince of Nothing series, right? I've seen good reviews of that one.

 Lately I read some good Sorcerish stuff. Kage Baker's The Anvil of the World was pretty cool. K. J. Bishop's The Etched City was uber Sorcerish.

 And now, a test of glowy text, and shadowy text. Just because. ^_^

[Calithena]

I read the trilogy. It doesn't suck, which puts it in the top 2% of fantasy books you're likely to find at a non-used bookstore these days.

The most charitable reading I can give to the end of the trilogy is that it owes a debt to a certain conservative reading of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

I liked the second book best, but I'm a sucker for military fantasy. I did feel that it was very crisp though.

I don't think the magic in there is very Sorcerer-ish at all. The problems wizards have are external and magic is understood as a kind of complex mental discipline/technology.

However, the trilogy is good for Sorcerer-think in the sense that the characters who matter (Cnaiur and Achamian definitely, Kellhus and Esmenet maybe) have humanity struggles at the center of their ongoing stories. Paka, let me know if you finish or quit the trilogy and I'll discuss this further if you're interested...I hate spoilers.

[Judd]

Yeah, the magic in action isn't very Sorcerer-ish at all but those quotes just hit me in the gut with their Sorcerer vibe.

I am less then a hundred pages from the end, when I am done, I'll e-mail ya.

[Calithena]

Hi Judd,

The stuff I wanted to discuss really requires reading the trilogy as a whole to not spoil, since it's about which of those four end up at Humanity 0 and which end up at Humanity 1, and all of that doesn't get resolved until the end.

I do think that Bakker's story runs on the engine of something like Humanity = Personal Integrity (including loyalty to others such as you've committed it, 'duty' in the personal commitment sense I guess) and that the big 'Demon' isn't Mog-Pharau or any of that bullshit but Kellhus' monastic discipline. That is, the book posits that (a) most people are completely unaware of their motives for acting, and are thus easily manipulable and (b) Kellhus' monks know how to manipulate it and therefore have a power far, far greater than sorcery. I think Kellhus starts the story at Humanity 0, Cnaiur and Achamian inadvertently bring him to Humanity 1, and then...well, that's what I don't want to talk about. But anyway the thing that chews up all the Humanity in the trilogy is Kellhus' monastic training and the way he uses it to manipulate other people.

And so the trilogy's kind of interesting philosophically in that it poses this question, what the hell is 'personal integrity' when the real springs of our actions are essentially veiled from us? And why does it matter? And why shouldn't we put ourselves in the hands of a superman like Kellhus who understands it? (This last question it poses most severely, I think, because of the Consult, though there's a kind of twist even in that if you read the third book carefully.)