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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD pt. II


kuenjato

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Is Koringhus' legion/splitting of selves mirror the metaphysics of Kellhus talking to Achamian in the earlier series, about every person being in the same "place," and thus, somewhat "all persons are the same persons?" I thought it a mind-seduction trick of Kellhus back in the day, but Koringhus "saw deep" and was more shards of persons and places.

I think I'm reaching; just a random thought that's been tooling around in my head that Koringhus was on the Kellhus path (the seeing campfire, being "the place" in the later trilogy), but Koringhus didn't have the sorcery to progress further.

If I am way off base, I haven't seen too much on Koringhus' splinters beyond being "broken" with the wars against the Sranc/Singers, but, he "fooled the Elder (Dunyain)," which has been bugging me.

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Nice review by longtime poster Larry about TGO.

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The prose was another challenging element.  While I understand Bakker's desire to create a narrative that would reflect (and at times, reveal internal contradictions) ancient historical and religious texts, there were times where the writing was perhaps too opaque in its descriptions of event and its import.  This was especially true in those scenes where characters were considering Love in context of the world about them.  It is one thing to express the importance (and possible deceptions) of Love, but another to weave it in seamlessly with the greater narrative.  Too frequently, I felt as though I were temporarily "tossed out" of reading the text through perceiving the maladroit integration of certain concepts within the narrative.  Yet there were times, especially with the "Boatman" scene, where Bakker's prose creates a heightened sense of horror that goes beyond the visceral into something less definable yet no less terrifying when considered at length.  On the whole, the prose did serve to create a more "alien" mindscape, especially in the Ishterebinth scenes, than what might have occurred if Bakker's prose had been more direct.

 

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1 hour ago, PapushiSun said:

If Koringhus has indeed reached the absolute, does that mean the Dunyain mission has succeeded? Or has it failed because Koringhus rejects the Dunyain before the end?

The Dunyain mission can't possibly succeed, because their mission is to become God - which cannot happen and does not happen. Koringhus says as much - that the Dunyain are a dead end, and it requires lateral thought that they did not possess. 

You simply cannot be the Absolute. You cannot be a self moving soul, because there is no self. You might as well ask a cell on your body to become a self-moving amoeba. 

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1 minute ago, Hello World said:

I wonder if Moënghus did the same thing as Kori with his death.

I don't think so. Moe did not appear to be able to have the level of emotion and compassion that Kellhus or Koringhus did. Moe killed all his defective children - Kellhus kept them alive (and Maith notes that as well, which now we realize is an important observation into Kellhus). And Koringhus kept his defective child alive too. 

Moe was incapable of making that lateral leap, because Moe cannot fathom a world where he is part of everyone else. Everything is fractured, divided, warring, and he is stunted in his emotion. To him, Kellhus is mad - because madness is simply an idea that you cannot understand the fundament of. Koringhus is similarly mad. 

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self-moving soul is freed from what comes before, i.e., is not caused by anything in history, which means that the self is to be sealed away from the world.  their mission is accordingly the corollary of the consult's mission to seal away the world from the outside, and it's about as plausible.

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2 minutes ago, sologdin said:

self-moving soul is freed from what comes before, i.e., is not caused by anything in history, which means that the self is to be sealed away from the world.  their mission is accordingly the corollary of the consult's mission to seal away the world from the outside, and it's about as plausible.

Yep.

I think more and more that we've already been told that the Consult mission is completely fucked, because how many times have they tried it and it has failed? Isn't that the sign of insanity? This is another indication to me that they aren't scientists or doing anything rationally - they're zealots and fundamentalists, who have  a way of making others infected with their fundamentalism. 

The central idea of shutting off the world's gaze by reducing the number of souls is one that I think is my #1 sought after answer in the next book. If that's handwaved, that'll be one of the biggest disappointments. 

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16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think more and more that we've already been told that the Consult mission is completely fucked, because how many times have they tried it and it has failed?

blackadder provides the answer:

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Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.

Melchett: Exactly! And that is what so brilliant about it! We will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we have done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is however one small problem.

Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered the first ten seconds.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Triskan said:

I'm assuming you mean The Four Revelations, The False Sun, and the Knife of Many Hands? 

If so, my opinion is that they can be read in any order.  They are in-world and not really intended to be stand-alones.

The False Sun is easily the best, and it probably also is the most informative about the main story. 

Yes, perfect, thank you. 

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I'd go so far as to say The False Sun is essential.   Four Revelations has some discrepancies with the history of the Nonmen as described in the Isuphiryas as described in the TTT Appendix which might be of some interest if they represent the 'true' history, but more likely they're attributable to either the narrator's severe case of Erraticism or Bakker messed up.

 

Knife of Many Hands is just an action story.

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6 hours ago, Grizzly Mormont said:

Yes, perfect, thank you. 

4 Revelations is pretty opaque.  It may help you after reading it to look over the "color-coded" version I did here which is certainly not perfect, but I believe a fair attempt at trying to unweave the multiple streams of consciousness of the story.

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11 hours ago, .H. said:

4 Revelations is pretty opaque.  It may help you after reading it to look over the "color-coded" version I did here which is certainly not perfect, but I believe a fair attempt at trying to unweave the multiple streams of consciousness of the story.

H, the color codes version of False Sun, was really the first time I could read it and actually understand the change in POV's. Great job, everyone should check it out.

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We're told, I believe in either TJE or WLW that the prince of Jekhia is the first of his people to be called caste-noble.  Since the castes are from the Tusk, I believe this implies that in refusing to invade Eärwa , the Xiuhianni rejected Tusk.   I wonder what the religions of Eänna look like, and I wonder what they made of the Apocalypse.  12 years of stillbirths surely freaked them out.  Bakker has said he likes there to be blank places on the map to reflect the unknown places on ancient maps, but I wouldn't mind at least a li'l bit of Eänna, since it's less the Americas and more, you know, Asia to Eänna, which was depicted, however distorted in ancient maps.  It seems strange we get nothing, since the map we have of  Eärwa itself can't possibly be an in-universe depiction given the difficulties Kellhus has in apparently sending ships to Injor-Niyas.

 

The same, I suppose could be said of Kutnarmu, but for all we know, that place is uninhabited aside from Cingulat given it being described as a rainforest biome.   Maybe there's wild, hunter-gatherer Nonmen down there, living in rain forest.  We know there's monkeys in Kutnarmu, and assuming humans and Nonmen are native to the planet, I assume they evolved on Kutnarmu? 

In the out-of-Kutnarmu hypothesis, are Nonmen the Neanderthals or the Sapiens? 

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 the map we have of  Eärwa itself can't possibly be an in-universe depiction given the difficulties Kellhus has in apparently sending ships to Injor-Niyas.

I'm drawing a blank on this but how so?

I must admit that given the apparen naval competence of the Three Seas, it seems odd that no attempt has been made to send ships or a raiding force or something up the west coast of Earwa to the Neleost. Although a massive circuitous route, it does have the benefit of avoiding the sranc. You couldn't send the whole army that way but some kind of supporting force possibly. I wonder if it's down to Zeum likely controlling most of the west coast of the continent and perhaps having strong naval forces out there.

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Proyas says Kellhus lost a bunch of expeditions trying to sail to Injor-Niyas, so there's a failure rate per given distance.  The map we have of Eärwa includes the coast of Agongorea which would likely be even more difficult to reach.   Though, I suppose it could've been mapped by the Norsirai before their civilization's collapse.

 

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I must admit that given the apparen naval competence of the Three Seas, it seems odd that no attempt has been made to send ships or a raiding force or something up the west coast of Earwa to the Neleost.

Again, Proyas states the failure rate to Injoy-Niyas was high:

 

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But Kellhus had sent hundreds to their death, if not thousands, in his perpetual attempts to contact Nil'giccas: small fleets charged with leaving the Three Seas and running the coasts of Zeüm, thence into the mists of the Ocean and the legendary shores of Injor-Niyas.

I doubt equipping a fleet to support the Ordeal would've been worth it.

 

HOWEVER, Kellhus is a super-genius.  Why didn't he just design ocean-worthy sailing ships and sail the Ordeal to Agongorea?  Galleys are still the dominant form of ship, iirc, but Kellhus should've been able to look at a ship and immediately derive a carrack or caravel from first principles.

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Cironji Carracks are referred to throughout the series.  The Three Seas already has massive warships. The logistics of maintaining a naval force to transport soldiers to assault Golgotterath would be staggering—more so than the Ordeal itself.  Kellhus may have chosen the Napoleonic invasion of Russia route in lieu of the Sicilian Expedition in the Peloponnesian War due to requiring a larger volume of souls to make it to Golgotterath for feeding the No-God or something.  We just don't the "why" for sure at this point.

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We still haven't figured out, much less countered, the consult plan.

We still haven't figured out if Kellhus is evil or good.

We still haven't figured out what kelmomas is about.

We still haven't stopped the gods.

The plot moved and a couple of subplots moved along, but not a lot was revealed and even less was resolved. If this is what is meant by layers being peeled back then I suspect very few good answers await. 

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