Bakker - A Discussion of Rectal Miracles

[unJon]

[And how does Kellhus use sleight of hand to set the heart on fire?]

one of the Nascenti gave him fuel and spark when they cut him down and draped a linen over him.

[Sci-2]

Because I cannot bear the possibility that one of my favorite series of books, written by a guy who is already a bit too comfortable with bathroom humor, hinges on such a vulgar joke. :P

That's actually why I thought "Rectal Miracles" was perfect for a Bakker thread. :-)

That would be hilarious if Kellhuss' followers were so bent towards belief that they aided in the deception.

I considered this, but it just seems weird from a narrative standpoint. We don't get any real indication that his followers are up for being magician assistants though theoretically it's possible.

So we get his views on Meppa and that it's potentially very significant that there's still a Cishaurim

I think the point is that the Psukhe has no upward limit. Better recollection of the God as whole means you can bear more Water. And Meppa has an Ocean inside of him. Does his amnesia allow him to better recollect?

Blinding allows one to forgo the sight of the Few and better recall the Whole. Does willfully allowing your memories to be erased allow you to set aside the distraction of life and Become in the way Cleric's madness possibly makes his meanings more pure?

[lokisnow]

Ent's point is well taken, last night I was considering to just post the quotes from the book I find relevant to Umiaki sans commentary for a while. But assembling the quotes, such a mission it is, commentary even more so.

[Weeping Sore]

I'm just blundering in here for a second. I happened to be at my local B & N over the weekend. The only Bakker they had was The Judging Eye, so I picked it up and started reading. The pre-prologue was quite intriguing, the prologue pretty great, written from the Sranc perspective (black semen on the first page!). So I'd say I was hooked. Didn't want to get too far, as I noticed this was the second trilogy.

But then The Darkness that Came Before. Got an iBook sample to test it out. Uh, wait. This is just kind of bad. Have any of you Bakkerites noticed his writing getting better as time goes on? Would it kill me to just start from the second trilogy? Or does he just generally have his bad/embarassing moments amid the good stuff, and I should just push on and everything will redeem itself? Talk me down here.

[Madness]

He definitely found his stride in TAE but PON is the reason we're all here. Hell, we named the thread and are discussing a pivotal moment from the second book.

[Sci-2]

Darkness has its flaws in terms of prose, but I'd say it's at the SFF average?

The prose improves as time goes on, I'd say even in that first book there are some good. Also the first trilogy is worth reading for the plot and characters IMO.

[Papirolle]

You really must start with the first trilogy! The first book is a bit slow to get going but then it is just all kinds of awesome.

ALso, you won't understand half the stuff here if you skip the first trilogy. Do yourself a favor and just get to it!

It is the SLOG OF SLOGS!

(you'll get that reference in the fifth book...)

Ever do the weak-willed stray off the path.

[kuenjato]

I'm just blundering in here for a second. I happened to be at my local B & N over the weekend. The only Bakker they had was The Judging Eye, so I picked it up and started reading. The pre-prologue was quite intriguing, the prologue pretty great, written from the Sranc perspective (black semen on the first page!). So I'd say I was hooked. Didn't want to get too far, as I noticed this was the second trilogy.

But then The Darkness that Came Before. Got an iBook sample to test it out. Uh, wait. This is just kind of bad. Have any of you Bakkerites noticed his writing getting better as time goes on? Would it kill me to just start from the second trilogy? Or does he just generally have his bad/embarassing moments amid the good stuff, and I should just push on and everything will redeem itself? Talk me down here.

I don't find it all that different. The prologue has some awkward passages but the writing smooths out IMO. I def. prefer the first trilogy to the second, in that the second (at least books 1 & 2) are laid out so clearly at the beginning of TJE that they are sort of predictable in the big picture -- we know where everyone is going and why -- so it's the little details and writing itself that end up being the saving grace (and Bakker has been particularly grudging so far with clarifying details, saving them presumably for TUC).

[Ferrum Aeternum]

The challenge for me in The Darkness that Comes Before was keeping track of all the names of characters and places without the aid of a spreadsheet. I loved the prose; in fact I'd say that was the biggest factor that compelled me to keep reading.

The series definitely got more accessible as it went along, in no small part because I began to focus on the larger story elements rather that obsessing over small details. That said, I already feel like I need a re-read.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

And for those that do like Bakker, a reread is very strongly recommended. The plot of the first series is pretty intricate as evidenced by how we're still trying to sort it all out.

The second trilogy seems to have a few less moving parts and is a bit more linear.

Yeah, absolutely. I plan to reread leading up to the release of The Unholy Consult both as a refresher and for greater understanding.

[Happy Ent]

I'm just blundering in here for a second.

Welcome. Immediately stop browsing Eye, because the spoilers will rot your soul.

For the same reason, stay out of this thread. We eagerly await your return.

Now, get that copy of Darkness and start reading. It’s Bakker’s first book, and has huge structural and pacing problems. It is a spectacular book nonetheless, with some of the most memorable scenes and characters in the genre I have ever read.

This is your daddy’s fantasy, it is hugely ambitious and very serious. It can be approached, at least to some extent, with the same expectations of literary fiction (symbolism, themes, prose). Yes, the prose is outstanding (if uneven) already in the first book.

Despite the literary ambition, it contains Really Cool Stuff that will get your inner fantasy nerd to geek out. Enjoy it, and then come back here!

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Yeah TDTCB is slow until Kiyuth. Then, holy shit.

[kuenjato]

Welcome. Immediately stop browsing Eye, because the spoilers will rot your soul.

.

Now, get that copy of Darkness and start reading. It’s Bakker’s first book, and has huge structural and pacing problems. It is a spectacular book nonetheless, with some of the most memorable scenes and characters in the genre I have ever read.

Agreed on this, Bakker himself has admitted to the pacing and structural issues. TDtCB is forbidding, with its initial explosion of Proper Nouns and concepts and vague sense of conflict. The prose is deliberately more literary, and given the industry standard--short declarative sentences / 5-6th grade vocabulary-- it's no surprising that the series appears so daunting.

[themerchant]

Lol unJon you have to be fucking with me when you say he must've have lamp oil up his butt too.

This is not related directly to this, but I am pretty sure that Cnaiur doesn't actually talk to Kellhus. He says that only his heart could hear the words, and almost right after that is Kellhus's crazy POV where he obsesses about Serwë's corpse and asks his father to resurrect her.

Here is Serwë's death:

The bolded parts imply that her throat is cut but I'll admit it isn't certain.

to add.

When Esmi and akka encounter Conphas at the end of TTT and Akka strides out to meet them, just before he says to esmi, "you're his wife, think what happened to serwe" Esmi thinks about Serwe trying to palm blood back into her slit throat. Sorry going by memory but it's the scene where they have just finished having sex and esmi hears a horse snort.

Also this thread has taken me about 2 hours to read, cause everytime i think about someone using a heart as a suppository i break down into uncontrollable laughter.

[themerchant]

Just also to add a bit more.

With respect to Meppa i think he is either a Cisharium that Moe worked on to understand the Psukhe better, maithanets brother, or perhaps he is the avatar of the solitary god in the same sort of sense of the white-luck-warrior, he recalls nothing of himself to recollect the god better type of thing.

I also think that Uncle holy has several brothers/sisters, after all Moe said himself "in this world there's nothing more precious than our blood-as you have no doubt surmised" . So with that being said i decided to have one child that is functional (juxtaposing that with Maithanets claim to 6 "drowining").

Seems unlilely to me. Additionally just before that statement Kellhus asks "and my half brother". Kellhus looks at him and thinks "the man seemed wizened, all but naked in the glaring light. Strangely bent... or broken"

"he uses every heartbeat to reasses. his son has returned to him insane"

Moenghus nodded and said "You mean Maithanet"

So a dunyain appearing bent and broken, nodding and saying you mean Maithanet. Maybe subtle conditioning of Kellhus.

Or it might all be hogwash i don't know.

[Rhom]

Ha! This morning I checked in on the site and was appalled that neither Bakker nor Abercrombie were on the first page of the Literature forum.

Low and behold... This afternoon I find a "What order should I read Bakker?" discussion! :rofl:

[Sci-2]

With respect to Meppa i think he is either a Cisharium that Moe worked on to understand the Psukhe better

Ah, I like this. Moe uses neuropuncture to make a Cish neuropath. Deleting identity leaves a void that the God can occupy where mortal memory would distract.

Meppa is a monk who is engineered to be detached from mortal attachments to the material world. His self is replaced/drowned by an ocean of Water.

[Francis Buck]

I'm just blundering in here for a second. I happened to be at my local B & N over the weekend. The only Bakker they had was The Judging Eye, so I picked it up and started reading. The pre-prologue was quite intriguing, the prologue pretty great, written from the Sranc perspective (black semen on the first page!). So I'd say I was hooked. Didn't want to get too far, as I noticed this was the second trilogy.

But then The Darkness that Came Before. Got an iBook sample to test it out. Uh, wait. This is just kind of bad. Have any of you Bakkerites noticed his writing getting better as time goes on? Would it kill me to just start from the second trilogy? Or does he just generally have his bad/embarassing moments amid the good stuff, and I should just push on and everything will redeem itself? Talk me down here.

As I've mentioned many a time here and elsewhere, the prose and general mechanics of the writing in TSA have always been my least favorite part of the series (a series which, at this point, is probably my favorite fantasy). I said pretty much the same things you did, that it was kind bad/embarrassing with moments of goodness. However, Bakker's a perfect example of an author who improves with every installment. While I still have some reservations and pet-peeves about his writing style, overall it has grown on me quite a bit. His short story, The False Sun, which to my knowledge is his most recently released piece of fiction, displayed virtually none of the issues I've had with his earlier stuff. If he retains that kind of quality in The Unholy Consult, then it will almost certainly be the best written entry of the series in my opinion (mechanically speaking, anyway).

[Sci-2]

If Meppa is Moe's experiment somehow (still perhaps the leader in the clubhouse cause I don't know what theory is better), I have a hard time envisioning how we the readers would ever be given this information. Any thoughts?

Meppa may give us hints if this is the case. And just because he's forgotten his old, pre-Neuropath life doesn't mean he's forgotten the life with Big Moe that came after. Think how Cleric is not Nil'giccas.

Whoever Meppa was may have been betrayed by Big Moe. However, whoever that person was has been erased and replaced by the Last Waterbearer.

I think the Fanim people would have known all Incandati or Primaries.

Knowing their names and knowing their faces are different things. For example, I don't know what Walt Whitman looks like though I do recall seeing pictures of him. I can vaguely recall Ginsberg.

In neither case did anyone tell me what they looked like, and if we didn't have the internet I'd probably never know.

I would actually love to hear you elaborate on some of your criticisms. I think the opening book has structural issues for sure, but I feel like his prose has been really good from day one, so to speak.

+1. I'm curious about places where people think the prose is embarrassingly bad. I mean, TDTCB isn't quite at lit-fic level but it seems to at least sit on the SFF average.

[Francis Buck]

Actually, I think the enter prologue of TDTCB is quite phenomenal. I was very impressed by it, and I feel like he must have rewritten and worked on that section many times.

By the time I got to the end of the first book though, I was much less impressed. I probably shouldn't have said that I thought it was "bad" per se in my last post, because that's being a little vague. Prose-wise, it just felt very...forced. It seemed incredibly self-important. It felt like an author trying really, really hard to make his story sound "important" (this is something Guy Gavriel Kay does too). Almost like a failed attempt to replicate the style of Cormac McCarthy, but that too is a little bit vague. I get exactly what he was going for, with the whole scriptural vibe and all. And there are definitely moments of true greatness in each book. There are some excellent metaphors, and I think it's undeniable that he's got incredibly striking imagery throughout the series. But even then (and almost everything I'm saying here applies largely to the first trilogy, by the way), it felt like he just needed to kind of tone it down with the...melodrama, maybe? The effort to imbue everything with this incredible, awe inspiring sense of insight and brilliance felt really heavy-handed to me. I think he would have benefited from just a little more minimalism, a little more, I don't know, almost sincerity? A lot of that also goes hand-in-hand with his graphic descriptions of sex and sexuality in general. I've got nothing against sex in books by any means, but a lot of it in the first series came across as just seeming cheesy and overdone. Much like GRRM, it kind made feel "embarrassed" for the author in a weird way.

The pacing, I think, was not very good at all in the first book, but in that case it was more due to the actual structuring, and that was rectified in later installments. The other issue of mine, one Bakker also fixed in latter installments but was quite noticeable in the first trilogy (especially TDTCB and TWP), was all of the navel-gazing. Now, I get that a lot of this important to style of story that's being told; the philosophical and psychoanalytical musings of the characters are part makes the series unique. But, again, it could have been toned down. This is especially true of Achamian, though it affected Esmi and Cnaiur as well. There was a felling of going around in circles, of redundancy, treading the same thoughts and emotions and introspections several times, with multiple pages that were basically just text-walls of inner-reflection. Again, these things have their place, but a lot of the time it made the pacing suffer in my opinion.

Finally, I couldn't stand the third-person omniscient sequences of the greater political movements and such. I found them almost entirely boring and they seemed like a very lazy way to get away across exposition. This is also something Guy Gavriel Kay sometimes does, and I can stand it there either. I just don't find it engaging. This was one area, however, where I feel like I saw the most improvement in the second trilogy, especially the war-scenes in WLW. They seemed like they much more elegantly interwoven into the narrative, rather than just having them kinded haphazardly plopped in whenever some exposition was required.

As I've said before, I know a lot of these are just my personal preferences (especially probably the prose, which I know some people love, but I just found it rather forced and heavy-handed in attempting to achieve the atmosphere it was going for in the first few books -- that's the best way I can describe it, anyway).