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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD


Werthead

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Bookshops across the US have apparently received copies of The Great Ordeal and are whacking them out on shelves with no regard for the street date (which is annoying if you've ordered on Amazon, as they are still waiting another four days), and already a few people have picked copies up, so it's now time to launch the Great Ordeal Spoiler Thread.

How this works: this thread will have spoilers for the book in its entirety, from start to finish. Do not read the thread if you do not want to be spoiled on the book in its entirety. Simples.

For the sake of our spoilerphobic brethren who click on the thread by accident, I suggest that the first five posts should have spoiler formatting on them so people can't catch spoilers without meaning to, but then have at it.

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Reminder that tapatalk previews the first few lines of the most recent post when showing the thread, irregardless of spoiler boxes, so try not to post major spoilers in your first sentence or two even in spoiler boxes.

 

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Akka storyline:(feel free to correct any details I've messed up)
 

Spoiler

The two Dunyain are the only survivors. The Dunyain were basically just like we were told they were, and a lot of the PoV is dedicated to koringhus telling us about how everything we have seen was the reality. Mimara wants to kill them, Akka is on the fence. Koringhus is trying to master Mimara.

Mimara uses judging eye on him and sees his entire past, which should be impossible. Koringhus figures out that this means that everything has already happened and that's why she can see it. Furthermore, he realizes that everyone is part of the God - the zero-God he calls it, and he feels a leaf tickle the hand of the other Dunyain kid through his own hand. He decides that the Absolute is not a person or a state of mind - it is a place. (Kellhus says this too) He ends up getting forgiven by Mimara after she looks at him via TJE again, taking some Qirri, telling Mimara she has twins, and then killing himself in order to join the Absolute.

 Later, Akka run into the scylvendi who are by the sea of neleost, and end up running into Cnaiur, who is the chieftain. Along with the skin spy who is still masquerading as Serwe at least some of the time. Mimara sees cnaiur through TJE and sees the souls through his swazond, and has never seen anyone so damned. 

Cnaiur ends up wanting to kill the Dunyain youth, who runs away and is chased and narrowly escapes Serwe-spy. Akka and Mimara also end up running away. Akka has a couple of weird ass dreams during this time - he dreams that he is Cemomas who sees Kellhus as he dies, and he sees Nau-Cayuti along with thousands of other people being fed to create the No-God. 

 

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Bookshops across the US have apparently received copies of The Great Ordeal and are whacking them out on shelves with no regard for the street date (which is annoying if you've ordered on Amazon, as they are still waiting another four days), and already a few people have picked copies up, so it's now time to launch the Great Ordeal Spoiler Thread.

How this works: this thread will have spoilers for the book in its entirety, from start to finish. Do not read the thread if you do not want to be spoiled on the book in its entirety. Simples.

For the sake of our spoilerphobic brethren who click on the thread by accident, I suggest that the first five posts should have spoiler formatting on them so people can't catch spoilers without meaning to, but then have at it.

My amazon account still tells me it won't come out until the 12th. Sigh. time to duck out.......

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Great Ordeal storyline: (again, feel free to correct details if you see errors). 

 

Spoiler

We get more of Kellhus with the head on a pole. More of him convincing Proyas that Akka is the true prophet. Kellhus also appears to believe himself to be the most strong of anyone, ever - he is quite sure of himself at one point. 

Then Kellhus rapes Proyas and sends him off to join Saubon, who reacts poorly to the news and swears Proyas to not talk to anyone about it, while telling Proyas how much more suited he is to the job that is upcoming.

The sranc meat gets everyone super aggressive and horny. One group of the Ordeal ends up facing off against massive sranc in an unholy place, and each one appears to come back possessed by the Outside - and the sranc all fear them from then on. They act a lot like Kosoter.


In Dagliash there's a lot of setup around the mountain. Kellhus takes the fortress, and underneath there are tons of Bashrag with chorae - so he brings the mountain down on them kinda. While this is happening the rest of the Ordeal is basically massacring the sranc who are gathered there, and are overcome with lust and desire that they start eating sranc as they drop while stopping occasionally to fuck the bodies. Saubon ends up protecting Kellhus from Bashrag as he's doing his thing. Kellhus ends up excavating an Inchoroi nuclear bomb, which is ticking down, and barely escapes while much of the Great Ordeal is wiped out (at least 20k people, maybe more) along with basically the entire horde of Sranc and bashrag. Proyas is left to lead the Ordeal to Golgotterath, as what he has left are irradiated and dying, a horde of sranc-addled dead men. Kellhus leaves them. For some odd reason Kellhus knows almost exactly what the effects of nuclear radiation are. 

We also kind of randomly find out that the Ark didn't 'crash' exactly, it shot a giant explosive laser weapon as it landed, which was what caused it to be buried as well as what caused the massive wall of fire and destruction and potentially caused the mountain range to form. It's unclear if the Ark was hurt during this descent, but it's clear that the blast was pretty deliberate.

 

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Momemn storyline. This is probably the one most full of errors, as there are a number of places that I (and others that I've talked with) are simply unclear about. It also has the most unreliable narrators from both Kelmomas and the WLW.

Spoiler

 

Fayanal doesn't move on the city and lets them fortify. Esmi takes charge pretty effectively, gets everyone going, gets troops brought in from other places. Momemn can survive a siege thanks to its port, and Fayanal cannot stop resupply. 

Fayanal offers to parley, and Esmi accepts. She goes to talk with Fayanal knowing it is likely a trap - and it's Meppa in disguise, who kills most of her guard and captain. She has a chorae tied to her body underneath all her clothes and manages to take it off and throw it at Meppa. It misses but brings down his shields and he is almost killed by arrows.

Fayanal's only hope to bring the city down was by Meppa - there is no way to siege momemn and no way to breach the walls without him. So he begs Psatma to save him - which she does via vagina magic. Seriously, it's magic that comes from her vagina. 

Kelmomas is gleeful for a while until he talks to Theli, who knows his secret. Kelmomas figures out that Inrilatus raped her and makes her cry. Kelmomas also watches the White Luck warrior be improbable and decides that he must watch him at all times. It is pretty clear that Kelmomas is an agent of Ajokli, and he thinks on him often - and we find out that what Ajokli does is he gives you what you want most, and then takes it away at the moment of greatest need. 

The siege lasts for a while and not a lot happens, though Esmi is pretty effective at governing them. She has feasts on the wall to mock the troops, the people cherish her name and her great victory over the last waterbearer, and Fayanal's troops are slowly starting to wilt away. 

Then, an earthquake hits and Theli is killed, kind of because she was going to confront the White Luck (though Kelmomas somewhat aids this too) The earthquake is said to have  been caused by Yatwer per Psatma, and it brings down some of the Momemn walls. Panic hits. 

Kelmomas gleefully follows the White Luck to Esmi. With the earthquake, Kellhus comes back to Momemn just as the Fanim are going to attack, kills Fayanal, kills Psatma in a fairly awesome way, and has a quick fight with Meppa that leaves Meppa unconscious (or dead; it's not quite clear). Malowebi almost dies in the fight but oddly helps Kellhus for a bit. Kellhus then goes to Esmi, and WLW thinks he's going to kill Kellhus (this is what it's been building up to) - but Kelmomas reveals himself, which somehow breaks the entire spell of causality and makes the WLW just...stop entirely. The WLW dies in the earthquake via a stone column. It's unclear whether Esmi dies at this point too. Kellhus came back to apparently salvage what he could of the empire, because he loves.

The last we see of Kellhus has him replacing Malowebi with one of his severed ciphrang heads, telling the Ciphrang to basically go kick everyone's ass in Zeum. Kellhus' eyes glow red and he uses daimotics for this. 

 

 

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I'm going to hold off summing up Ish/Sorweel because a) most of it is not really summable and b ) most of it should just be, ya know, read. It's really incredible stuff. It's also the least relevant to informing what's going to happen in the future, IMO. If anyone would like my summary I'll send it via PM. My previous summation was the shortest of all of the other sequences.

As to my main spoilery questions for those who have read it:

Spoiler
  • How is it that Cnaiur has lived for 20 years and Kellhus has allowed him to live?
  • Is Meppa still alive? If so, why?
  • Is Esmi still alive?
  • Koringhus has effectively given us an explanation of HitB - but Bakker has hinted that Kellhus used chicanery, not the zero-God stuff. Which is correct?
  • How does Kellhus know about the effects of a nuclear bomb?
  • If the Inchies have had nukes, why didn't they blow up Kellhus earlier?  And why sacrifice most of their sranc? Why not nuke the nonmen? Is the nuke a consult development too?
  • How did Kelmomas stop the WLW? Was that Ajokli's influence? And if the WLW is 'stopped', what does that imply with respect to causality?
  • What made Kellhus change his mind and head to Momemn?
  • What is the significance of Mimara having twins?
  • The final question seems to be whether Mimara saw Dunyain with TJE or saw Kellhus as well. She thinks Kellhus is going to be evil; Akka has to know. My bet is that Kellhus is shown to be holy. 

 

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I started reading the first spoiler box... When I reached the third paragraph I couldn't tell whether you're joking or not, but at least that convinced me not to read any more spoilers. For now... 

Spoiler

So much for the "nayu's arc is over" from three seas... 

 

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4 hours ago, Hello World said:

I started reading the first spoiler box... When I reached the third paragraph I couldn't tell whether you're joking or not, but at least that convinced me not to read any more spoilers. For now... 

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So much for the "nayu's arc is over" from three seas... 

 

None of what I wrote is a joke. There might be errors but that is assuredly not one.

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