The Unholy Consult Post-Release SPOILER THREAD II

[Hersir of Hogs]

"Sometimes the dead bounce!  Sometimes old men awaken behind the eyes of babes!"

First impressions: on the whole, I felt it was great.  The early chapters on on Meat, the scalded etc. were perhaps a bit long, but it built Proyas's end up so well. 

The dragon -  a real disappointment after Wutteat.  I can only imagine that it was perhaps meant to show that, unlike Wutteat, the tekne-derived wracu are programmed with the same damnation-attracting urges as the incoroi and sranc.  Still no indication as to why they can't wear chorae, particularly as the Dunsult seemed to have plenty of the things.

The revelation that the Consult had been taken over by the Dunyain blindsided my, and left me wondering how I hadn't considered it - it seems an obvious possible outcome in hindsight.  Excellently done, and (almost?) makes up for Shaeonanra dying off-screen.  I hope we get more detail on what happened in the next series, though.

The description of the Ark really shouted 'evil Culture Mind' to me too.  The civilisation of the Progenitors does make me think of the Culture transplanted into the Earwan universe, as I should think they would be damned...

The ending could really have done with a lot more clarity.  Still, as a set-up for the final series it works well.  The No-God walks!

Wildly crackpot theory (which may have been suggested already, I haven't had a chance to read all of treat 1 yet): previously, it seemed that the voice in Kelmomas's head was probably Ajokli.  In TUC Kellhus (I think?) said it was Kelmomas and Sammy constantly switching places (which raises questions on the continuity of consciousness, and the soul, in Earwa).  Could it, however, be Kellhus (via some kind of Metagnostic version of the cant Akka uses to communicate in dreams), having somehow planned on getting Kelmomas into the Carapace all along, and having done something to ensure his soul jumps to Kelmomas when he is salted?  Kellhus doesn't seem to be in the Outside, provided Cnaiur at the end was possessed by Ajokli, not Gilgaol, as that would suggest Ajokli couldn't find him there.

To be fair, it seems more likely that Ajokli can't find Kellhus because he  can't see into Golgotterath, where Kellhus could be trapped as a decapiant.  This also seems a needlessly complicated way for Kellhus to become the No-God, unless for some reason he needed Kelmomas's soul in there as well (to create a circuit of watcher and watched, or separation of object and subject, within the No-God?)  On the other hand, though, if Kellhus was wearing the Ajokli-head when salted, and is still trapped in the decapiant, would Ajokli not know this?  Cnair!Ajokli seemed to think that Kellhus was in the No-God at the end.

[Darth Richard II]

3 hours ago, Hello World said:

I don't know, Bakker has called the series a metaphysical whodunit. I've read hundreds of whodunits and the one thing they all had in common is that some definitive answers are given at the end and the red herrings are separated from the actual clues. All Bakker did in this climax is reveal more aspects of the mystery that we weren't aware of. He gave us more clues and it made the whodunit even harder to solve than it was previously.

I honesty don't think Bakker knows what a whodunit is. Not trying to insult the man, just, I really think he used that word wrong.

[Darth Richard II]

Ent, what did you think abot MRA Dragon?

[unJon]

2 hours ago, Valandil said:

Interesting ajurbkli. Lovely catch on tapestry gaston. 

Some randoms from the appendix 

1. Nilgiccas seems to have been levelled up over the glossary, he's the Union of dark nonmen and house of tsonos, he appears like their high king, Gil-galad figure, popping up in multiple interesting and important ways.

2. Qirri is described with no real negative effects. "Burns great souls down to the raw kernel of there vitality" etc.  Mim has been consuming a ton of nilgicass on her slog. 

3. Imimorul is described in greater detail, as a god, with hints that he yet lives somewhere in the deeps of the earth, inviting nonmen to find him in his psalm" the world to him, who finds me in the deep, the world to him and woe"

4. Pa'bikru section says to me that what is glimpsed through the inverse fire may be incorrect, a dance of demons, "the face of the God of gods viewed through the aperture became a group of demonic monstrosities views from all other angles"

5. There is a lot about soul swapping, concealing etc.(decapitants, iswazi,  kellhus clearly not done, though his body appears to be. 

6. Humanity survives this new apocalypse. There is a description of scholarly disagreements on in the swayali section when discussing kellhus' manumission of the feminine. "Several Scholars have noted ...the latter possessed only a nominal effect on the lives of women in the new empire.." Therefore scholars exist post apocolypse to debate it at a remove 

must dive back in 

 

4. Love this as it ties in to Mimara saying damnation is a false foil in TJE when she inverts the chorae. I think this is right. 

I don't know what to make of the tapestry, @Gaston de Foix. Maybe Kell planned all. Or maybe it's part of some prophecy that we haven't heard yet. The pregnant woman angel. That would explain the Autang comment in WLW. 

[danylmc]

I finished this book last night. When I was at the half-way point I wasn't sure I was even going to bother finish it. It wasn't so much the cannibalism and rape - Bakker gonna Bakker - but the repetitive pointlessness of it all. After about the twentieth description of the Nail of Heaven I thought 'We better find out what that fucking thing is by the end of this book.' And of course we didn't.

So much of that first half is just pointless filler. People deciding that 'Life is hunger' or 'Life is loss' or 'Life is sodden', and then deciding that 'life' is something else a page later. A friend of mine who teaches creative writing complains about the tendency of students to submit 'polished first drafts', in which the style of the book is perfect but the author hasn't stopped to ask themselves why they have so many pointless characters, or scenes, or multiple storylines that go nowhere, or passages that repeat themselves. With Bakker we have layers of revelation so you're never quite sure of the meaning or significance of a passage, but the first half of TUC was the point where I stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt and started assuming that he's operating in polished first draft mode, and that almost all of the text is meaningless bullshit. 

But the Battle for Golgotterath? That WAS mostly pretty great! I have the same complaints as other readers - the dragon, the irrelevance of most of the main characters in the series, the failure to resolve almost every story-arc: all not-so-great, but probably enough to pull me back from the brink of walking away from the whole series. 

Here's what I wonder about. Bakker seems to have dedicated himself to ambiguous plots and incomprehensible endings, and that's tolerable for those of us who are happy to jump online and read the speculative threads about What it All Means. But what do people who aren't aware of those communities make of these books? Is Bakker now writing for a tiny handful of readers who debate his work here, TSA etc, and burning off the other 99(%)? 

[jurble]

7 minutes ago, danylmc said:

 Is Bakker now writing for a tiny handful of readers who debate his work here, TSA etc, and burning off the other 99(%)? 

I think that's always been his audience and hence the limited appeal of the books. 

[Darth Richard II]

I dunno, so many of the theories here and elsewhere turned out to be 100% bullshit, I wonder if he's even aware of them.

[Gaston de Foix]

I have a question for the forum: would crowd-funding the next duology be a realistic possibility if RSB does not find a publisher?

[jurble]

I figured out the title of the next series:

 

The Baby Prophet

[wayward_ishroi]

45 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I have a question for the forum: would crowd-funding the next duology be a realistic possibility if RSB does not find a publisher?

I would contribute. What does it cost to do a small run print?

 

Would an electronic only release be possible or more realistic?

[danylmc]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I dunno, so many of the theories here and elsewhere turned out to be 100% bullshit, I wonder if he's even aware of them.

True. What I mean is that when I finished The Thousand Fold Thought it was at the level of complexity in which I could trawl through the appendices and reread some key scenes and have a pretty good idea of what just happened and what the unresolved mysteries were. But sometime around the White Luck Warrior it feels like Bakker blew past that point to where the books are just plain incomprehensible to most readers unless you jump online and try and crowd-source explanations with a bunch of other people. 

[Happy Ent]

11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ent, what did you think abot MRA Dragon?

I laughed out loud at this:

Quote

 

“Alas, that World is dead!” she hollered, “I fear Dragons are the stuff of little girls now!”

Bakker, R. Scott. The Unholy Consult: Book Four of the Aspect-Emperor series (Aspect Emperor 4) (Kindle Locations 7485-7486). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

(That being said, I think such passages cheapen the integrity of the work. They are too obviously trying to situate the novel within a literary/pop-culture debate that is going on right now in our mundane world, which pulls me out of the experience. I dislike that, for entirely aesthetic reasons, even though I understand the motivations behind postmodernism etc. I’d leverage similar arguments against, say, The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984, even though I am well aligned with the political motivations fuelling these works.) 

[Happy Ent]

7 hours ago, danylmc said:

But sometime around the White Luck Warrior it feels like Bakker blew past that point to where the books are just plain incomprehensible to most readers unless you jump online and try and crowd-source explanations with a bunch of other people. 

I agree with this, and think it’s a shame. 

It’s not a mistake, though. Bakker clearly thinks that even epic fantasy should shoulder the same literary ambition that memetic fiction is lauded for. Bakker wants to write fantasy for people who like Thomas Pynchon. I strongly disagree with this choice, but it’s his to make.

[Happy Ent]

11 hours ago, Hersir of Hogs said:

To be fair, it seems more likely that Ajokli can't find Kellhus because he  can't see into Golgotterath, where Kellhus could be trapped as a decapiant. 

Here’s how I see it.

Ajokli cannot enter Golgotterath for reasons of metaphysical topology. We get a good description from the POV of Kakaliol:

Quote

 

Hard doth it lean upon the threshold ... the Seducer-of-Thieves says, for it can feel the smouldering torsions, the remorseless yaw in directions orthogonal to the accursed lines of harsh reality, as though it were a coal upon a blanket, burning through, filament by despicable filament.

Bakker, R. Scott. The Unholy Consult: Book Four of the Aspect-Emperor series (Aspect Emperor 4) (Kindle Locations 6019-6022). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

The exact details are a mystery to me, but here is a working hypothesis: Flatten the 3rd dimension, so that we can picture reality as a blue sheet. Below the blue sheet, and parallell to it, is a red sheet: Hell. The z-axis is now the distance to Hell, with “down” being Hell. Reality is mostly flat, but a Topos is a depression in the sheet, and Really Bad Topoi are so as deep as to intersect with the red sheet.

Now view the Ark as a depression in the blue sheet, made not by a ball, but by a ring. It is extremely steep, so the ring bleeds into the red sheet (Hell). Demons can travel freely back to Hell at the circumference of the ring.

But the interesting thing is the interior of the ring. That part is not depressed. It does no intersect with Hell. Maybe it is on the same z-coordinate as the rest of the blue sheet, maybe it’s somewhere else entirely – clearly the Gods don’t see it, and certainly can’t travel to it. (Until I see a richer model, let’s just assume the topology is exactly that of putting a hoola-hoop ring on a lycra sheet, with the middle part at z=0.)

Kellhus puts Ajokli into a Decapitant, and walks with the God into the interior of the ring, a step that the God would not be able to take. Once inside, Kellhus goes dormant and lets himself be possessed by Ajokli, who can operate in the interior of the ring just fine. (Except he can’t see Li’l-Kel, so he briefly needs to reswap back to Kellhus, with disastrous consequences.)

[unJon]

3 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Here’s how I see it.

Ajokli cannot enter Golgotterath for reasons of metaphysical topology. We get a good description from the POV of Kakaliol:

The exact details are a mystery to me, but here is a working hypothesis: Flatten the 3rd dimension, so that we can picture reality as a blue sheet. Below the blue sheet, and parallell to it, is a red sheet: Hell. The z-axis is now the distance to Hell, with “down” being Hell. Reality is mostly flat, but a Topos is a depression in the sheet, and Really Bad Topoi are so as deep as to intersect with the red sheet.

Now view the Ark as a depression in the blue sheet, made not by a ball, but by a ring. It is extremely steep, so the ring bleeds into the red sheet (Hell). Demons can travel freely back to Hell at the circumference of the ring.

But the interesting thing is the interior of the ring. That part is not depressed. It does no intersect with Hell. Maybe it is on the same z-coordinate as the rest of the blue sheet, maybe it’s somewhere else entirely – clearly the Gods don’t see it, and certainly can’t travel to it. (Until I see a richer model, let’s just assume the topology is exactly that of putting a hoola-hoop ring on a lycra sheet, with the middle part at z=0.)

Kellhus puts Ajokli into a Decapitant, and walks with the God into the interior of the ring, a step that the God would not be able to take. Once inside, Kellhus goes dormant and lets himself be possessed by Ajokli, who can operate in the interior of the ring just fine. (Except he can’t see Li’l-Kel, so he briefly needs to reswap back to Kellhus, with disastrous consequences.)

This is consistent with the evidence I think. Alternative explanation:

1) Possessed Cnauir couldn't see the No God. That was the "nothing" he saw. It isn't an issue of not seeing into Golgotterath in that scene. 

2) Kakaliol wanted desperately to escape back to Hell and getting close enough to the Ark let him. Had he not wanted to escape, I don't see anything in the text that indicates he couldn't have stuck around in Earwa and crossed the threshold. 

3) So the Golden Room could be as much a topoi as anywhere else in the Ark. Given the millennia of deaths in the Carapace and torment of men and nonmen viewing the IF in that very spot, I think it is likely to have become a deep topoi based on my understanding of the metaphysics. (See explanation for why Cil Aujis turned topoi.)

4) I think Ajokli was only able to manifest in Kel in the because it is such a deep topoi. There is a very nice progression of Kel performing unMarked miracles that increase as his proximity to the Ark decreases. He always has haloes, but he actually starts to levitate (unMarked!) inside the Occlusion. The Encyclopedia in back indicates that Ajokli may be less able to interfere in Earwa because of spending his power in earlier times, unlike Yatwer who seems to be able to create WLWs, appear in avatar to give Sorweel special chorae bags and create earthquakes, all far away from topoi.

5) Assuming that Ajokli takes over Cnauir at the end (and it's not Gilgoal), then there are a few different explanations for not being able to see Kel: 1) Kel is hiding Outside and strong and hungry in Hell. 2) Ajokli in avatar form is not omniscient and can only see what he can see. 3) Kel is alive as a head on a salted hip. Etc. think the speculation could run in many directions on this point. 

 

[Happy Ent]

5 hours ago, unJon said:

1) Kel is hiding Outside and strong and hungry in Hell. 2) Ajokli in avatar form is not omniscient and can only see what he can see. 3) Kel is alive as a head on a salted hip. Etc. think the speculation could run in many directions on this point. 

 

Good.

Just to make my position clear:

Ajokli is genuinely surprised. 

First, he’s trash-talking the Dunsult. Suddenly there is a voice where there should be none. Not good. He quickly relinquishes control of the joint avatar to Kellhus, who manages to immediately identify Li’l-Kel, but the non-magical control of the nearest skin-spy hand gets interrupted. The skin-spy rolls a natural 20 on his Willpower trait, manages to lift his hand and makes an unarmed Slap attack, inflicting (100 times magic level of the target) damage  on the Kellhus body, which salts (either because the body would salt anyway, or because Kellhus inhibits it right now. Take your pick.)

Kellhus just manages to slip into the available Decapitant. (Here the theory breaks down a bit. Why isn’t that head inhabited by Ajokli?) Ajokli gets ejected from the Golden Room, presumably respawning in Hell, and being utterly unaware of what just happened, and assumes he was just tricked by Kellhus. (This would make sense to Ajokli, who is himself the Trickster.) Kellhus isn’t in Hell. None of the souls inside the Ark can be entered (he can’t even see them). To inhabit a soul, the God rolls D100 under the target’s damnation, modified by distance to a Topos. Clearly, Cnaiür is the best target. Ajokli makes his roll, inhabits Cnaiür, and starts looking for Kellhus’s soul. The latter, of course can’t be found, since it dangles from the salt statue in the Golden Room.

—

I think this fits. What I don’t like at all is that the Consult won’t just leave Salt!Kellhus standing there. Would they not get rid of the Decapitants in order to control variables?

Ah, no. The Dunsult will experiment on them rather than getting rid of them. That would make sense. 

Prediction: next book contains a Malowebi POV whose demonic head is subject to neuropuncture. You heard it here first. 

[jurble]

Or Kellhus salts, having walked into the Golden Room knowing he was likely to die - and all of Golgotterath being a topos, he bounces into the pregnant Mimara's (having placed her there just for this contingency) fetus moments prior to its birth. 

This, then, resolves an issue many had with the Mimara storyline - "She never got to look at Kellhus with the Judging Eye!"  But, she in fact did! Just prior to the birth, she looks at her womb and is 'struck blind' - presumably by the holiness of what she sees.  Kellhus was a Prophet and Holy all along.  Moreover, the twist is that Kellhus is a Prophet who doesn't think he's a Prophet.  He assumes that the voices he hears are his own madness - he ceased to listen to them years ago.  

The outrage Kellhus felt way back in book 1 when Cnaiur rapes Serwe?  That wasn't Kellhus' vestigial emotions - it was the rage of God himself.   God has been the source of Kellhus' impenetrable darkness the entire time.  He realized this in TTT but in the intervening years backtracked, falling into disbelief and skepticism.  That's his big flaw, his big error in judgment.

[Happy Ent]

13 minutes ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Or Kellhus salts, having walked into the Golden Room knowing he was likely to die - and all of Golgotterath being a topos, he bounces into the pregnant Mimara's (having placed her there just for this contingency) fetus moments prior to its birth. 

Oh! But this doesn’t work, time-line wise, does it?

Also, ’jokli would be able to find Baby!Kellhus, would he not?

[jurble]

Eh, time doesn't move in a line when the Outside is involved.  It's more a wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff.  Also the Ark is pretty high up there, and time moves slower deeper in a gravity well, after all.  Everything in that room happened pretty fast from the perspective of the ground.  Sure, Ajokli could find Baby-Kellhus if he were looking for Baby-Kellhus, but the Gods can't Reason, only Intuit as the Dunyain say.  And Ajokli's intuition was to look at the big tornado.

The whole reason Ajokli even noticed the Consult's absence is because of his Aspect, I think.  He knew people were really, really hating something he could not see.  No one hates Baby-Kellhus, so he hasn't noticed him.

[Kalbear]

6 hours ago, unJon said:

4) I think Ajokli was only able to manifest in Kel in the because it is such a deep topoi. There is a very nice progression of Kel performing unMarked miracles that increase as his proximity to the Ark decreases. He always has haloes, but he actually starts to levitate (unMarked!) inside the Occlusion. The Encyclopedia in back indicates that Ajokli may be less able to interfere in Earwa because of spending his power in earlier times, unlike Yatwer who seems to be able to create WLWs, appear in avatar to give Sorweel special chorae bags and create earthquakes, all far away from topoi.

There's a simpler, textual-based answer to all of this: god-entanglement.

The gods can't see into certain places under normal conditions. The very deep quiet places of Ish is one of them. But via god entanglement, the gods still can. They can still cause issues, they can still inhabit or bless, etc. 

The depth of the topoi in Golgotterath made Ajokli's power significantly greater there when he manifests, but why Ajokli could manifest is because he was god-entangled with Kellhus. 

8 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Oh! But this doesn’t work, time-line wise, does it?

Also, ’jokli would be able to find Baby!Kellhus, would he not?

As far as I can tell this doesn't work timeline wise at all. It's hard to say. It certainly doesn't work if you assume everything in the book happens in linear time from every other thing or at the very least at the same time, but we don't know how much time was spent in the Golden Room. That said, I'm not even sure Kellhus had gone into Ark before Mimara had her first baby.