Bakker: Pounded In The Brain By The Great Ordeal Spoilers III

[Rhom]

11 hours ago, karaddin said:

I think you are misreading the passage, the nameless thug damages the blade in a way that means when WLW attempts to strike AK, the blade breaks and his stroke continues past AK blade and kills him.  Its another way of getting around his ability to read the strike that is coming and dodge it, he can't foresee that the blade will break.

Yes, that is how I always read it as well.

[jurble]

13 hours ago, karaddin said:

I still haven't gone back to reread either, but I'm still not 100% convinced it was indeed a nuke.  As I said earlier, a nuclear explosion seems perfectly in line with expansion of gnostic battle cants via metagnosis and apart from the appearance of the device itself, everything else makes more sense if this is true.

For whose sake would Kellhus build a fake nuke and then use a metagnostic nuke-cant?  To fool Saubon minutes before he's vaporized?  We've considered the possibility Kellhus built the nuke, but the nuke itself being a fake seems pointless.

Moreover, consider Aurang's lines when confronted by Saccarees.

The days are new Chigra... and far shorter than the old.

He knows he's on a time limit due to the countdown.

[generic]

We know very little about the first Nonmen wars but supposedly the Inchies used nukes there. We know that they lost because they had no sorcery and their weapons of light ran out. It is reasonable to assume that some fragments of knowledge are left in the Mandate archive.

[sologdin]

do not despair, for they have some small savings carefully harvested from their weekly allowance, set aside against their frail old age. by lucky haps,it is just over a thousand kilotons, methinks, and has for years has been hidden beyond the wit of any thief, in an old sock, under the squeaky floorboard, in a ruined fortress.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, generic said:

We know very little about the first Nonmen wars but supposedly the Inchies used nukes there. We know that they lost because they had no sorcery and their weapons of light ran out. It is reasonable to assume that some fragments of knowledge are left in the Mandate .

There is no indication that I'm aware of that nukes had been used at any point prior to now.

[Maithanet]

3 hours ago, Damned with the Wind said:

For whose sake would Kellhus build a fake nuke and then use a metagnostic nuke-cant?  To fool Saubon minutes before he's vaporized?  We've considered the possibility Kellhus built the nuke, but the nuke itself being a fake seems pointless.

Moreover, consider Aurang's lines when confronted by Saccarees.

He knows he's on a time limit due to the countdown.

If we interpret the text to be that Kellhus is causing the huge explosion at the end of the battle, then there's no reason to assume that the artifact Kellhus finds is a nuke, it could be anything.  The sequence of events the goes: Kellhus knows/determines something important is buried deep underground, Kellhus retrieves it, Kellhus summons a huge explosion to kill all the Sranc and Bashrag nearby.  This explosion causes collateral damage amongst his troops, but Kellhus never cared much about them anyway, and most of the sorcerers are a safe distance away.

I need to reread the passage more carefully.  But at the time, I was really more interested in the "what kind of artifact did Kellhus just find?" question, not "what is up with this crazy explosion?"

[jurble]

11 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Kellhus retrieves it,

He doesn't.  He leaves it there and teleports away.

 

Thoughts on Zeumi fetish sorcery: If you had a tiny gnostic mage fetish in your hand, could summon a spectral gnostic mage that would attack with a spectral gnosis? Anagogic sorcerers in other instances do enjoy using burning sparrows, and of course the dragon's maw, to attack - so references to living things work.  And the fetish seems to reinforce meanings and allow for stronger Anagogic cants. 

[generic]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There is no indication that I'm aware of that nukes had been used at any point prior to now.

I just reread the part in the appendix and it doesn't read like nukes were used in the first battle with the forces of Viri, nor in the battle when scranc were first introduced. It is less clear after ward. It says the Inchoroi were winning until they exausted their "fell weapons" which could be anything.

The only other thing I have:

Wert had a post about Bakker's maps
 

Quote

Meanwhile, Bakker has published his original rough working map of Earwa (drawn c. 1984) on his website. Curiously this map includes the 'mountain rings' shown on the digital maps which some fans had dismissed as graphical artifacts. However, these are now confirmed as deliberate.

11 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Thoughts on Zeumi fetish sorcery: If you had a tiny gnostic mage fetish in your hand, could summon a spectral gnostic mage that would attack with a spectral gnosis? Anagogic sorcerers in other instances do enjoy using burning sparrows, and of course the dragon's maw, to attack - so references to living things work.  And the fetish seems to reinforce meanings and allow for stronger Anagogic cants. 

I don't think that is right. Surely you can't have a fetish if you deal in abstractions?

[jurble]

I meant whether an Anagogic mage could use a gnostic mage fetish doll to summon a spectral gnostic mage.

 

Also regarding Zeumi fetishes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuni_fetishes 

Coincidence?

 

It's interesting in the old map that Golgotterath doesn't seem to exist, though the various dead nations do.   Also Jek is a major nation rather than a tributary nation and the Kayarsus don't really exist. 

[lokisnow]

It is a nuke

 

Quote

“Where do we go?”the boy interrupted from above and behind them, his Sheyic inflected with Mimara’s Ainoni burr. “That way,”the startled sorcerer replied, nodding to the north. What did a Dûnyain child feel, he wondered, in the watches following his father’s death? “The world ends that way, boy …”He hung upon that final word, gawking …Mimara followed his scowl to the horizon—the cerulean haze. The three of them stood transfixed, gazed with numb incomprehension. The forests of Kûniüri swept out from the crumpled gum-line of the Demua mountains, green daubed across ancient and trackless black. Several heartbeats passed before Achamian, cursing his failing eyes, conjured a sorcerous Lens. And so they saw it, an impossibility painted across an impossibility, a vast plume, spewing its fell innards outward and upward, far above the reach of mountain or even cloud …Like the noxious shadow of a toadstool, bulging to the arch of Heaven, drawn across the curve of the very World.

 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

If we interpret the text to be that Kellhus is causing the huge explosion at the end of the battle, then there's no reason to assume that the artifact Kellhus finds is a nuke, it could be anything.  The sequence of events the goes: Kellhus knows/determines something important is buried deep underground, Kellhus retrieves it, Kellhus summons a huge explosion to kill all the Sranc and Bashrag nearby.  This explosion causes collateral damage amongst his troops, but Kellhus never cared much about them anyway, and most of the sorcerers are a safe distance away.

I interpreted like this. Kellhus realizes there is a horde of chorae wielding Bashrag and Sranc in the mountain. Kellhus starts making "new ground" to shield from the chorae and eventually bring it all down, thus trapping and nullifying them. As he's making this new ground, an artifact of unknown origin is regurgitated from the Well of Viri. Kellhus studies it, perplexed at first (we know he enters the probability trance because of the noted pause), then deduced the Ordeal's danger. FLEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

How I've read it twice now.

[Darth Richard II]

Any really powerful explosion can mushroom cloud, although I agree it was a nuke.

[Caligula_K3]

Welp, finished The Great Ordeal and it's got to be my least favourite Bakker book (with the exception of Neuropath, maybe). The only real positive for me me was the Achamian/Mimara storyline; it was relatively concise, did some interesting new things, especially with the character of the Survivor, and the characters' voices weren't lost amidst the narrators' intrusions. I'm not sure if Cnaiur's return is necessary, and I'm also at a bit of a loss as to what the point of traveling to Ishual was in terms of the narrative, but I'm willing to have faith in this part of the story and see where it goes.

The other three plotlines were nowhere near as successful for me. The Great Ordeal storyline started all right, and provided interesting glimpses of Kellhus, but took a real WTF turn with Proyas' rape. And after two books of buildup, we're still killing lots of Sranc and that's about it. I've found this whole plotline pretty tedious throughout all three books... and then a nuke goes off, which Khellus somehow anticipated because he's the God Emperor of Dune and I'm thinking that this is a really dumb plot twist. Until it's made to look better by...

Momemn. And its earthquakes. And Khellus coming back yet again to save everything, because god forbid that Esmi ever get the chance to do anything interesting. What a lazy way to resolve these plotlines after unnecessary amounts of buildup; did we really need The White Luck Warrior at all if this is all he's going to do? If Yatwer can cause earthquakes whenever she wants, then she could have done all this three books ago. Kelmomas is still an interesting if unconvincing character, but even his shtick is starting to get old.

As for the Nonmen plotline... I can see this working a lot better if you're a hardcore Bakker fan and you have an appendix in front of you and you can parse every reference Bakker throws out there (usually to the tune of eight per paragraph). I have to admit that I found most of this impossible to follow, and not in the good way of a Gene Wolfe novel where I can at least try to figure out the puzzles. Either you know Bakker's Nonmen history or you don't.

Even with all these problems, I would probably have considered this to be a three star book if not for the writing. Bakker's style has always been dense, he's always had his favourite phrases, and his prose has always come close to purple. At times this can be part of his charm. But I found the writing in The Great Ordeal to be obscure for the sake of obscurity, the vocabulary unnecessarily pretentious. Dagliash could have been a much more effective battle scene if Bakker could just cut the crap and give the reader any idea of what's going on. And the repeated phrases... Oh god. I will never complain about "words are wind" again. Every character and the narrator has to constantly be thinking about how "these are the wages of x!" and fractions of them are fairly screaming and it's all so overwrought. Considering that Bakker began The Aspect Emperor stating that he wanted to gear his writing towards characters, he's completely failed. Having just re-read The Darkness That Comes Before, the character voices in that book are much more distinct than here, where everybody is thinking the same thing in the same phrases.The "fraction" language is an example- if he restricted this to the POV of the Survivor, it would have been much more effective than it is for being used by nearly every character.

I think my point of comparison for this book is Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams; unnecessary amounts of build up after already unnecessary amount of buildup, pointlessly obscure and pretentious writing, and plot developments that are random and unsatisfying. I'll still be reading The Unholy Consult, because the Achamian plotline does leave me with some faith in Bakker as a writer and I want to finally see how all this is going to be resolved (whether I'll go on to the final duology is another story). But I really hope he can rein in the terrible impulses as a writer he indulged in this book. Given that The Great Ordeal and Unholy Consult were written at the same time, I'm skeptical. But I can hope, and hope that the resolution he comes up with at least somewhat makes up for what we got here.

Edit to say: Sorry, this post feels like a rant. There definitely are still some cool parts to this book, even in the non-Achamian chapters. I'm just pretty disappointed in this book, and in the entire Aspect-Emperor series as it stands. Maybe the direction Bakker wants to take this all in just isn't the direction for me.

[sologdin]

cali, i loved volume VI, but +1 rant!

[Kalbear]

Quote

I'm just pretty disappointed in this book, and in the entire Aspect-Emperor series as it stands. Maybe the direction Bakker wants to take this all in just isn't the direction for me.

I think this is an excellent way to put it. I've been far less enthused about the series since TGO came out, and I think one of the major reasons is that the direction that the series is pointing is just not as interesting as I thought it would be.

[WalterX]

So, this is my take on how the WLW assassination at the end was forseen to go.

 

Step 1: Blade is notched by ruffian's at an earlier time.

Step 2: Get hired by Esmenet

Step 3: Do stuff (kill Moe, kill Thelli, reveal miniKel's evil) that get Esmenet in the proper state of mind.

Step 4: Be in the chamber when the rocks fall.

Step 5: Throw sword

Step 6: Esmenet throws Chorae at Kellhus, misses but breaks his warding

Step 7: Kellhus hears sword incoming, blocks it, but because it is notched it breaks and a shard goes through his heart

Step 8: Die to falling rocks.

 

But then when the time comes to actually go through with it miniKel distracts Esmenet and Kellhus and the moment is lost.  WLW dies in rocks.

 

It seems like the main point that is dif between my look at things is and y'all's is that you think the chorae falls from the ceiling and I felt that it was Esmenet finally snapping and trying to kill her husband.  Did I miss a paragraph or something (could easily be, it was like a week ago I finished this) that had the Chorae falling off the roof or whatever?  I kind of thought the whole point of Yatwer's scheme revolved around turning Esmenet against him, like, men getting their comeuppance from women scorned is her whole deal, yeah?  Psatma was raving about it a few times?

I dunno, if there's some kind of thing I just didn't catch ("Then the chorae started falling from the ceiling...") I'll feel dumb, but is there any chance I might be right?  Like, Esmenet was just about to try and kill him when miniKel startled her?

[Caligula_K3]

22 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think this is an excellent way to put it. I've been far less enthused about the series since TGO came out, and I think one of the major reasons is that the direction that the series is pointing is just not as interesting as I thought it would be.

It might also help if the series didn't feel like it was being pulled in five different directions at once, with some of those directions being pretty obscure even after three books.

Reading the Great Ordeal spoiler threads, I ran across something I must have completely missed- the implication that the Inchoroi gave men the Tusk. Was this in the Boatman chapter? Also, thanks to everyone in these threads for giving me some idea of what was happening in those chapters .

[Latan]

Bakker stated that in a interview with Pat, he was answering questions and dropped that little nugget about the Tusk.

 

[jurble]

It was also in the boatman chapter.

 

Edit: Page 296 of US hardback bottom of the page.

[Gaston de Foix]

“Grab her! his brother suddenly erupted. Flee this place!
Or what?
A crazed growl. You remember fu—!
And I don’t care!”

Excerpt From: R. Scott Bakker. “The Great Ordeal.”

It's such a small question but fill in the missing word(s) above : "full well"? If so, what is he referring to?