Jump to content

Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD pt. II


kuenjato

Recommended Posts

2 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Skimming through WLW, I noticed that he saw Esmi die in the Earthquake.  So in regards to the discussion in the previous thread of whether Esmi is dead, she is definitely dead. RIP.

 

I wonder if she'll get a perspective of her damnation (or far less likely, her salvation) in TUC. It would be hilariously weird if Esmi dies in an offhand fashion like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Skimming through WLW, I noticed that he saw Esmi die in the Earthquake.  So in regards to the discussion in the previous thread of whether Esmi is dead, she is definitely dead. RIP.

Well, he also saw Kellhus die as the broken sword plunged into his heart, and he also saw Kellhus die as the sword went into his neck. I don't think he ever saw himself sitting there with his ears bleeding and randomly spasming. The WLW vision appears by evidence to not be authoritative.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

I theorized that Kelmommas would kill that WLW and that he was an agent of Ajokli. The clue were that Kel was an agent of Ajokli.

A lot of people made these sorts of guesses, but that's not what I was asking for. Kel being an agent of Ajokli is not a clue that Ajokli intended to stop the WLW -  or that he could. It could have been, and it could have been a clue that Ajokli is on the WLW's side. All the clues that we had regarding Kel, Ajokli, and the WLW could have gone either way - or could have been misdirection. Especially since the reasoning of why Ajokli would want to stop the WLW was entirely revealed in TGO. Not to mention the fact that he could stop him, or that someone who we had only seen as an idol so far is apparently a major player.

My point was it's just frustrating to spend five years speculating on how Kellhus might deal with the WLW when Bakker is hiding the only clues that matter on the matter. Clues that turn the entire question on its head were revealed in this book. This makes me hesitate to speculate about the No-God or Kellhus's intentions because you never know what Bakker is hiding.

It's also a bit random as far as I'm concerned. In the end Ajokli stops the WLW because Kelmomas accidentally made an offering to him and it turns out that if you make an offering to Ajokli he will take away from you the thing that you want the most when you most need it, right? If Bakker had revealed that stuff in PoN maybe, but now it just feels way too random. You could substitute this with any other accidental occurrence and it would still be as much foreshadowed as what actually happened. For example, we find out that Esmenet made a pact with the whore goddess when she took the tattoo, and the whore goddess's thing is that when the prostitute dies she will grant her husband the thing that he desires the most, Kellhus wants not to die at the hands of the WLW at that moment, the WLW dies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone have any speculation on what the li'l Dunyain boy is gonna do in the next book?  Does he try to rejoin Mimara and Achamian? 

 

Or will he, by happenstance, meet Sorweel and friends?

 

Or does he do the smart thing, and try to head south to, to safety?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, you might have blocked that poster, but one of the comments is here.

 

Sorry, I must not have been clear. You linked to the TGO thread. I know others, since reading TGO, have noticed the changin WLW POV. I thought you were saying that people were noticing this before TGO came out. I made a comparison between to WLW POVs in the WLW book. My point was that we all missed the changes that were in WLW until this latest book came out. You said I was wrong and MSJ and others have brought it up before [they read TGO?].

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, Hello World said:

 

It's also a bit random as far as I'm concerned. In the end Ajokli stops the WLW because Kelmomas accidentally made an offering to him and it turns out that if you make an offering to Ajokli he will take away from you the thing that you want the most when you most need it, right? If Bakker had revealed that stuff in PoN maybe, but now it just feels way too random. You could substitute this with any other accidental occurrence and it would still be as much foreshadowed as what actually happened. For example, we find out that Esmenet made a pact with the whore goddess when she took the tattoo, and the whore goddess's thing is that when the prostitute dies she will grant her husband the thing that he desires the most, Kellhus wants not to die at the hands of the WLW at that moment, the WLW dies.

I disagree with why Ajokli did it. Clues are there that Ajokli did it because Ajoki is the only hundred to see the NoGod (what the other gods cannot see, what the WLE cannot see). So Ajokli is on Kellhus' side.

I do agree the ending was unearned and frustrating and not my favorite. And I agree Bakker kept a lot of clues and would have been better if he had shown them in prior books. Isn't this inherent a bit in the Layers of Revelation technique? When it works well, Lokisnow, can re-read prior books and show how different the books are with the new information revealed. When it doesn't then Bakker didn't foreshadow the major plot point.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, unJon said:

Sorry, I must not have been clear. You linked to the TGO thread. I know others, since reading TGO, have noticed the changin WLW POV. I thought you were saying that people were noticing this before TGO came out. I made a comparison between to WLW POVs in the WLW book. My point was that we all missed the changes that were in WLW until this latest book came out. You said I was wrong and MSJ and others have brought it up before [they read TGO?].

You haven't blocked me @unJon, have you? Lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

You haven't blocked me @unJon, have you? Lol.

No I haven't! Promise. Just failing to recall topic brought up before. Great catches for spotting discrepancies before they came up in TGO if you did. That insight never permeated to the deeper causality discussion in any meaningful way did it?

Sort of shows that Koringhus wrong that it all happened already?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, unJon said:

No I haven't! Promise. Just failing to recall topic brought up before. Great catches for spotting discrepancies before they came up in TGO if you did. That insight never permeated to the deeper causality discussion in any meaningful way did it?

Sort of shows that Koringhus wrong that it all happened already?

Huh, I honestly don't think we discussed it before TGO, could be wrong. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Huh, I honestly don't think we discussed it before TGO, could be wrong. 

See now I'm confused why @Kalbear said lots of people noticed this. So I stand by my original post that WLW pov had changes we could have picked up on pre-TGO but we collectively failed. And had we picked up on it we might have had some correct speculation about WLW demise. Doesn't change how unearned the ending feels but makes me think we should reread and five Layers of Revelation a chance before forming final judgment. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

That he'll grant unerring grace, but in the end he'll take what you hold dear.

I swear that's in not in my copy of the copy. I've just reread the librarian section. Could someone do me a favour and quote me the section?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/23/2016 at 5:42 PM, Hello World said:

Yeah, even Bakker himself agrees with that, http://forum.three-seas.com/topics/1004

 

Totally agree. People spent all this time theorizing about the WLW and how time works in Earwa to try to figure out how Kellhus could avoid being killed by him when it seemed so inevitable, or if he will manage to not get killed by him. Instead the resolution was that one of the gods decided to just stop the WLW. And why? Because some kid accidentally made an offering to an idol while playing, and we conveniently find out that this god likes to 'troll' people in this very book.

This is why I said earlier if Bakker had revealed this stuff about Ajokli earlier in the series (like in PoN) it would have been so much better. People would have actually had the chance to try and figure out how the WLW might be stopped while speculating between JE/WLW and TGO, but no.

When the White-Luck Warrior goes to take the place of the asssassin in WLW the assassin tries to warn him that Ajokli can disrupt the White-Luck, or at least function outside of it's seeming inevitability:

"The Four-Horned Brother..." the long-haired man was saying. "Do you know why he is shunned by the others? Why my Cult and my Cult alone is condemned in the Tusk?"

"Ajokli is the Fool," he heard himself reply.

The long-haired man smiled. "He only seems such because he sees what the others do not see... What you do not see."

"I have no need of seeing."

The Narindar lowered his face in resignation. "The blindness of the sighted," he murmured.

"Are you ready?" the Gift-of-Yatwer asked, not because he was curious, but because this was what he had heard himself say. "I told you... I gutted a dove in the old way." The White-Luck Warrior glanced back, saw himself standing upon a distant hill, looking forward. The blood was as sticky as he remembered. Like the oranges he would eat fifty-three days from now."

Start of Chapter 11. Not sure what page because using Kindle edition. 

It seems he's implying that (1) Ajokl is shunned by the other gods and (2) he can act in ways that countermand the White-Luck/cannot be seen by. If he's shunned it could only because he acts against the other gods, for whatever reason (whim?)

And plenty of people had guessed Kelmomas had some kind of connection to Ajokli. So it was certainly possible to predict it, though not completely. And to an extend it has to be somewhat amibiguos, even then. At what point does foreshadowing become blatant enough to make something too obvious? It's a bit on the subtle side but I don't think Bakker failed to telegraph the possibility.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

am impressed by the continuing engagement with classical sources.  we had initially taken references to gods in the first trilogy to be metaphorical, but it may be that they are in fact literal, as per the iliad, and accordingly references to gilgaol in battle scenes, say, read like homeric aristeia, wherein warriors are momentarily divinely upgraded.  

the new engagement with the ancients is the earthquake. we know from schliemann's excavation of troy VI that its walls were brought down by an earthquake (whereas troy VII was destroyed by fire and slaughter).  am very much approving the RSB has summoned a ghost more than 3000 years old with this mytheme.  we know from burkert's greek religion (136 ff.) that poseidon is not only the god of the sea, but also of earthquakes, both as poseidon gaieoches, the earth-shaker, but also as poseidon asphaleios, the god of steadfastness in the quake.

however, in what probably constitutes the greatest cross-mythological eitiology ever, poseidon is also simultaneously poseidon hippios, the god of horses.  burkert reports a great anecdote from the scholia pindari that poseidon fathered the first horse by blowing his load on a rock, out of which the horse was born (poseidon petraios, yo).  fairly obviously one mytheme substitutes in for the other (or is perhaps even a derridean supplement)--the quake is the horse in the ancient epic cycle--the trojan horse of troy VII is the earthquake of troy VI.

the question therefore becomes: what is the mythological substitution at work in the quake that brings down the walls in volume VI? what god? what 'horse'?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...