The Warrior-Prophet
January 16th 2009 02:24
The Warrior-Prophet, the second book in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series, starts right where the first book, The Darkness That Comes Before, left off.
This book is war, war, and more war, with some character development and genuine emotion sprinkled throughout for good measure. I have to admit that I felt that war scenes eventually became somewhat tedious to read through. Extremely graphic descriptions of gratuitous fantasy violence and deaths in cosmic numbers loses its effect after the hundredth skirmish. But then again, perhaps this is a good thing, for the reader is slowly desensitized just as the soldiers are; they transform from idiosyncratic individuals in search of glory and honor to bloodthirsty drones hell-bent on simply surviving. This book--this series--is not for the faint-hearted or the weak-stomached.
The heart of the story revolves around Anasurimbor Kellhus slowly enthralling all who surround him into making him their god, their Warrior-Prophet, all so he can manipulate them into helping him complete the task that his monastic order sent him to achieve: arrival at the holy city of Shimeh to meet--and kill--his father. It's interesting to see just how easily Kellhus is able to dupe entire armies and nations into believing he is a prophet and a god, and it's chilling to see how cold and detached he is from everything. Other than his icy logic and flawless intellect, he seems to be the static, unchanging standard around which the rest of the characters change and progress.
The Warrior-Prophet steps up the narrative and steps down the philosophy that was seen in The Darkness That Comes Before. There's more traveling, fighting, and character development than world and philosophy explanations and expositions, which is a welcome change. However, this book did feel to me like a sort of interlude between the major bookends of the series--much like many people felt about The Two Towers in relation to the overall story of The Lord of the Rings.
Despite this, this book is full of entertaining--and disturbing--action, character and plot development, and more of the super-smart, sophisticated and elegant philosophical prose that characterized The Darkness That Comes Before. Definitely worth reading, not only for the sake of understanding the story, but for seeing how characters change and grow, and how the Holy War itself becomes an unstoppable monster in its own right, much like the Crusades of real-world history.
The lines between good and evil, friend and foe, hero and villain continue to be muddled even as the true evil--The Consult and its hideously amoral abominations bent on world destruction--wreaks its subtle havoc on the mortal world. This book will have you cringing, gasping, laughing, and musing all at the same time. A must read for anyone who enjoys pondering life's unanswerable questions and who wants to know how this exciting and unpredictable story of Bakker's will unfold.
Next Thursday: the tightly-paced, shocking finale to the first trilogy of R. Scott Bakker's series: The Thousandfold Thought.
This book is war, war, and more war, with some character development and genuine emotion sprinkled throughout for good measure. I have to admit that I felt that war scenes eventually became somewhat tedious to read through. Extremely graphic descriptions of gratuitous fantasy violence and deaths in cosmic numbers loses its effect after the hundredth skirmish. But then again, perhaps this is a good thing, for the reader is slowly desensitized just as the soldiers are; they transform from idiosyncratic individuals in search of glory and honor to bloodthirsty drones hell-bent on simply surviving. This book--this series--is not for the faint-hearted or the weak-stomached.
The heart of the story revolves around Anasurimbor Kellhus slowly enthralling all who surround him into making him their god, their Warrior-Prophet, all so he can manipulate them into helping him complete the task that his monastic order sent him to achieve: arrival at the holy city of Shimeh to meet--and kill--his father. It's interesting to see just how easily Kellhus is able to dupe entire armies and nations into believing he is a prophet and a god, and it's chilling to see how cold and detached he is from everything. Other than his icy logic and flawless intellect, he seems to be the static, unchanging standard around which the rest of the characters change and progress.
The Warrior-Prophet steps up the narrative and steps down the philosophy that was seen in The Darkness That Comes Before. There's more traveling, fighting, and character development than world and philosophy explanations and expositions, which is a welcome change. However, this book did feel to me like a sort of interlude between the major bookends of the series--much like many people felt about The Two Towers in relation to the overall story of The Lord of the Rings.
Despite this, this book is full of entertaining--and disturbing--action, character and plot development, and more of the super-smart, sophisticated and elegant philosophical prose that characterized The Darkness That Comes Before. Definitely worth reading, not only for the sake of understanding the story, but for seeing how characters change and grow, and how the Holy War itself becomes an unstoppable monster in its own right, much like the Crusades of real-world history.
The lines between good and evil, friend and foe, hero and villain continue to be muddled even as the true evil--The Consult and its hideously amoral abominations bent on world destruction--wreaks its subtle havoc on the mortal world. This book will have you cringing, gasping, laughing, and musing all at the same time. A must read for anyone who enjoys pondering life's unanswerable questions and who wants to know how this exciting and unpredictable story of Bakker's will unfold.
Next Thursday: the tightly-paced, shocking finale to the first trilogy of R. Scott Bakker's series: The Thousandfold Thought.
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