Presently, I'm reading  Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Great book

I'd highly recommend War and Peace.

Great book

If you haven't read Blood Meridian, I would do so ASAP.

and great book.

Cities of the Plain trilogy by Cormac McCarthy is also worth checking out.  Anything by Gene Wolfe is very good.  The Silmarillion, if you haven't read it already (if not what the fuck are you doing with your life).  James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Bloods a Rover) makes grimdark fantasy look like Disneyland.  Roberto Bolano is good. (2666 and Savage Detectives).  China Mieville is also worth reading, as is Michael Chabon.  Mary Gentle is very good - fantasy meets alternate history meets gender bending.  Also check out William Dalrymple for good travel writing (middle east/ India), Tom Holland for narrative history, Tony Judt for politics.  Diarmuid McCulloch (on Christianity) and Peter Heather (on the end of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of Europe) are also good reads.  The Conversion of Europe by Richard Fletcher is well worth looking up  - the process by which Europe became christian (not at all preachy) - on of the best books I've veer read.

You may infer I read a lot

Quote from: Duskweaver on September 22, 2017, 02:31:44 pm

I'm still not sure why everyone assumes the Mutilated were telling Kellhus the truth about Shauriatas, or indeed about anything else.

Like Kellhus' sword, Certainty is a weapon with two edges.

Indeed. We have a couple threads dissecting Bakker's comments and Shauriatas' status but - excess imagination aside - knowing Bakker, I imagine he thinks there is something textually evident that is not as clear as he imagined it was (whether that's Shauriatas-Uploaded or Shauriatas-the-Mutilated, I don't really care to guess).

In my handful of conversations with him about ambiguity/clarity moments in TUC (of which there were far less than TGO) nothing about Shauriatas came up except for the Tekne-Glamour Shauriatas seed which sets up the No-God's Kellhus illusion at the end.

And the Mutilated were clearly happy to let the OG Consult deceive Kellhus - If they could, they would have let the Tekne-Glamour Shauriatas talk Kellhus into the Carapace without ever exposing themselves, no doubt.

Quote from: Sausuna on September 22, 2017, 03:28:50 pm

I don't see a compelling reason for them to lie about that fact. Certainly, it is possible they lied. But nothing seems strong enough to me. And this brings up the topic (which someone made a thread on before) about why they were trying to kill Kellhus before or even why they sought to use the hologram to make an image of Shauriatas.

Either way, I wouldn't doubt their statement until there is enough reason to.

I don't think they were ever trying to kill Kellhus. Decimate as much of the Ordeal as possible, for sure. But Kellhus was never in harm's way.

Quote from: tleilaxu on September 22, 2017, 03:36:57 pm

That's the conundrum. There's no reason for them to lie, but then Bakker sows questions about the fate of Shaeönanra. It's hard to imagine Shaeönanra duping the Mutilated when (some of) his faculties are supposed to be burning in Hell, so it seems we're left with either a willing possession or none at all.

I suppose we just don't know enough about how Soul-Trapping works, do we  ?

Undone
1. past participle of undo.

Undo
1. unfasten, untie, or loosen (something).
2. cancel or reverse the effects or results of
3. cause the downfall or ruin of

Think that last definition is the objective one to use. He was slain or banished or his leadership came to an end.

There's a line in TUC about Shauriatas being 'the spaces in between' (or something the that effect).  'Undone' could be read as TauHorror's first definition - he's been detached from the larvae - and attached to 'something else'.  What we know about him (super sorceror - exists beyond his physical body - can offer something new and different to non-men/ Inchoroi) suggests that is capable of surviving a lot of serious shit.

Quote from: Madness on September 23, 2017, 02:14:51 am

Quote from: tleilaxu on September 22, 2017, 03:16:51 pm

The dreams of Seswatha are quite a strange thing to be honest. Part of his soul must be trapped in his mummified heart.

This thread might be difficult to parse... I'm almost thinking we make/revive one specifically to discuss Seswatha/Achamian's dreams.

But Bakker did tell the draft-reading Nascenti we could discuss director's cut notation with the greater fandom and there are sections chopped from TGO/TUC that all but confirm the "Seswatha's soul is preserved in his Heart" speculation.

That's the kind of stuff that sounds crucial to our understanding of the story. Please do?

And Kellhus 'spoke' to Seswatha

Quote from: NronFisher on September 09, 2017, 06:26:43 am

*points to himself*

I loved TUC, and I have enjoyed all of his books (not all are great, aka TWLW).

I know you hate it but you know what's great? You FELT something. How many books have you read that you just thought, "Meh" and forgot it after you put it down. How many pop songs have you heard that reverberate in your brain and never make you feel anything or inspire you? So much of the artistic medium is devoted to appealing to the most common denominator in order to hit all those same pleasure-receptors in your brain long enough for you to buy that stupid shit. Meanwhile originality gets suppressed and you live in a bubble never having to feel or think anything new. So it turns out you hated this work, but you know what? A work of art that can make you hate it is better than something that doesn't make you feel at all.

Well said, nFisher - you articulated the point much better than I could. Though I'm hampered by the fact I loved all of the books ( including TWLW - not sure how that was called out as not great ), so I don't identify with those who "hate" the story/books. So much of it was exciting and Bakker's descriptions of horror resonate richly for me ... some of this stuff really scared me, which is awesome.

I agree with both your points.  Bakker is on record as saying that the task of the fantasy author is to give meaning to something meaningless (or something similar).  The ending of TUC left me feeling numb on the inside.  No book has done that before.  It took me about an hour and a half to shake it off.  It fuckin meant something

I was quite upset and depressed the evening I finished the book, but I felt better about it later on, like so many here...

Wasn't it wonderful to watch Kellhus manipulate and control everything through the first trilogy? Anticipate and conquer every single turn of events as PoN progressed? And so I came to identify and cheer Kellhus on (like many others, I suspect). He was the one with all the answers, with deepest understanding and all the technically correct (the best kind of correct) solutions...

And yet I believed - believed! - that Kellhus had all the answers and would be in control of events. If his son, The Survivor, had seemingly "solved the problem" with such limited time and access to the outside world, then surely Kellhus with his decades of experience would be able to do even better. I did not expect a "good ending" ... I had faith Kellhus would find a way between damnation at the hands of gods and shutting the world against them with No-God - a third way if you will.

In other words, I had come to have all the same expectations and identification of a traditional fantasy hero with a character meant specifically to undermine and subvert the very same genre and expectations! What a terrible disappointment it had been to find my hero fail at the end of the book. But I suspect this was the trap Mr. Bakker set for us all along...

This is a good post, Mandos, and pretty much mirrors my thoughts.

As Cnaiur says, "they make us love" and "it all a ruse, he's Dunyain (or something very similar)"   

Who do the Zeumi fight in their Satakhanic warships?

What is in Atrithau to justify merchants travelling so far through Sranc infested wastes to get there?

Are all the Norsirai actually blond, or is this just a literary device?

What is the fourth original Gnostic School (after Mangaecca, Mihtrulic & Sohonc)?

Has the Celmomian Prophecy been fulfilled as of the end of The Unholy Consult?

What was the significance of the scene at the end of TTT between the child and the Synthese?

What is the Meta-God?

If he complains, tell him it's his own fault for appealing to nerds

The thing I kept wondering when seeing the Mutilated was, why are they, all but one, mutilated?

All of these possibilities seem reasonable, but they don't answer the question of why just one of them isn't scarred. Here's one answer that works for all three possibilities: the unscarred one is Shauriatis, or was Shauriatis once.

This could be right.  Note, of all the Dunyain that we see outside Ishual. they all are, or end up physically damaged in some way (Moenghus blind, Koringhus a 'grotesquerie', the kid with the crab hand, the four 'mutilated' Mutilated), with two exceptions - Kellhus and the unscarred one.  Which may imply some plot significance.

Quote from: jurble on July 28, 2017, 10:33:13 pm

In TTT, Kellhus says the Mangaecca squat, chanting about Aurang's real body to relay him to the Synthese.  But, the Consult's Brain Trust seems to be restricted to just Mek, Shauriatus, Aurang and Aurax (and then the Mutilated).  Were there any other Minds among the Consult for the past 2 millenia or has it just been those four?  If so, given their .. dilapidated status how did Consult programs like breeding the Inversi actually function?  How did they manage it with so little sane manpower? 

Your second question leads me to believe that pretty much everyone has missed a certain boat, in which case, I can only say, RAFO!

Ark?