[EDIT Madness: Moved from an intro thread where a reader asked about rumours of misogyny.]

I'm starting to hear rumors about R. Scott Bakker being anti-woman.

I wouldn't say Bakker is 'anti-woman', but he clearly has issues.  The Second Apocalypse is a series set in a world in which women are - literally - spiritually inferior to men, most of the female characters are whores or sex slaves, and most of them get repeatedly raped, which is described in pornographic detail. So if you're interested in issues around gender and the fantasy genre, or just feminism in general then Bakker's work could be very challenging.

Part of this is intentional. Bakker points out that there's a paradox in most conventional fantasy in which the antagonist is utterly evil but also completely non-sexual, whereas in our world evil is heavily sexualised. Thus Bakker's black semen gushing serial rapist bad guys. But part of Bakker's treatment of female characters seems unintentional. Feminist critics complain that bad male writers compartmentalise women as either whores or crones, and pretty much all of Bakker's female characters fall into those archetypes.

I always think its weird when people say they 'don't notice' the treatment of women in Bakker's work. It's a big part of the books and a very big deal for the author who insists that he's writing a feminist text. So if you don't see it then you're missing a lot.