Fabulous summary Madness, I especially loved your insight regarding the way the §P.1 contains bookends with the first and last sentances.  Great catch.  I also think this primed me to see some other associations from one sentence to the next that I might have otherwised overlooked in my close reading.  I'll get to more of the chapter tomorrow, I'm particularly enticed by the water water everywhere imagery that dominates Kellhus' journey prior to encountering the ruins.

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Prince of Nothing Re-Read

Prologue
I sort of feel that this first section is more of a preface than a prologue; partly because this is the only chapter of any of the books that has chapter header aphorisms in the middle of the chapter.  So I think of §P.1 as sort of the preface and when the next two aphorisms come up and the timeline jumps forward 1970ish years, that’s sort of the start to the prologue.  This will be long; much longer than I’ll probably ever go into again for any chapter.  That is because I’ve reread this chapter more times than anything else in the series—and I tend to think that this may be the piece of writing that Bakker re-wrote more than anything else in the series, I think he does remarkable things with the text throughout these sections.

I never quite know what to make of this Ajencis quote—I think it is the single most important aphorism in the entire series—and I always seem to come up with a different way to interpret.  In terms of what this accomplishes on a first read, it sets up the reader to realize that souls are at stake in this universe, I sometimes feel like souls are rarely referenced in fantasy; this use of souls right at the very beginning--with a new definition of what a soul means in this mileau--is really unique.

§P.1 The first thing I noted was the second paragraph.  I wonder if Bakker had read Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy’, because this paragraph is a textbook example of how Card describes a Speculative world should be introduced to the reader.  It really is impressively masterful, reminiscent of the master herself, Octavia Butler (Card references her opening to Wild Seed in his text). 

Quote

The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse.  But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts.  No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates.  Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret.

What is so impressive about this paragraph? The first sentence entices you by telling you something major happened, but it’s teasing, a tactic to keep you reading to find out how a great castle was overthrown—already the second sentence and the book is exciting right?  And before we even get to the end of the second sentence of the book, suddenly the stakes are raised.  “The Apocalypse.” It sends shivers down your back.  Not only is there an epic war going on, but the very term invokes all sorts of biblical and science fiction imagery, it’s not just a war we’re thrown into the middle of, the use of the term Apocalypse implies it is a war for the very survival of the human race.  An end of the world.  This is going to be epic. 

Next we find out who (presumably) the opponent is, inhuman Sranc, and they can scale walls.  It conjures similarities to the word "Orc" and that is what the word immediately conjures for me, the image of Peter Jackson’s portrayal of Orcs.  These Sranc are clearly the enemy.  But wait, Dragons.  Even better.  This really is big.  Dragons and Sranc against the humans, magnificent.  Furnace-hearted, that’s got a nice, poetic ring to it, odd, almost, old-fashioned, it makes me thing of older epics like the Aeneid where elaborate metaphors described the inhuman enemies of man.

(spoilers for the series)

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Note that from the very beginning, Bakker is describing Dragons with non-organic metaphors.  He carries on this process throughout the series, he always goes to great lengths to describe them in metaphor that relates to machinery, never to organisms.  I maintain that he is fooling the readers with Dragons, manipulating the readers expectations because he knows the TERM Dragons will immediately prime the reader into thinking of the fantasy and mythic organisms we all know and love and hold so dear.  Bakker explicitly calls them DRAGONS in the fourth sentence of the book, he doesn’t say Wracu because he wants us to think Dragons, he tells us Sranc, but not Wracu, he very explicitly is engaging all the associations the word Dragon invokes.  But consider two things: one, the Dragons are advanced beings from another planet and are allied with the Inchoroi before arriving on Earwa and, two: the old saw, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic to the uninformed observer.’  Consider a corrolary any sufficiently advanced technology could seem to be a lifeform to an uninformed observer.  Orson Scott Card pulled off a similar stunt in his novel Enchantment when he has a 747 interpreted as a giant flying chicken by mideval Russia.  Additionally, Frank Herbert pulled off a similar stunt in Dune, he populates the novel with thopters, but only slyly reveals in asides that these are not just a funny word for helicopters, but an organism-mechanical hybrid that allows man to fly without relying on machinery (and violating the Butlerian prohibitions on machines).  Also, look at how readily, and quickly we anthropomorphize our own transportation machines.  The movie Cars for example, people name their cars, our machinery is often designed in a way where you can easily imagine a face on something, we attribute machines with personalities and quirks and all sorts of other animals.  If a man from 33 AD were to encounter a car he would not thing “oh a horseless carriage” because he would have no frame of reference for a machine that allows a carriage to be horseless.  No such a man would think a car was alive—and all of the rest of us wouldn’t help matters because we’d be referring to the car in very anthropomorphic terms that are often indistinguishable from the anthropomorphicization that we put our pets and domestic animals through.

So that’s a very long way to say that the Wracu are basically armored flying tanks with a really advanced A.I. and Bakker is hinting at that from the very beginning with his furnace hearted description.

Anyway, back to the second paragraph, Kuniuric High Kings, excellent, I’m immediately reminded of various fantasy High Kings, almost always the good guys, so that’s who I’m rooting for, and they're give the title of 'king' so they’re probably human.  Ah, and it matches the prologue title, Wastes of Kuniuri; so the Kuniuric High Kings rule the Kingdom of Kuniuri and they’re being attacked by inhuman legions.  But wait,  The “No-God,” aha, this must be the Big-Bad, the leader of the Sranc and Dragons.  The Sauron who has brought the Apocalypse and whom the humans are warring against.

The point of this lengthy breakdown is to really highlight just how efficient this opening paragraph is at conveying really essential information, in broad strokes Bakker lays out some of the key terms of what is ultimately the conflict for all three series, The Apocalypse, mankind versus the hordes of the No-God.  It’s a really impressive and compact form of writing that does the heavy lifting of providing a bunch of background information while also enticing the reader to continue onward without overwhelming the reader.   A paragraph like this creates a partnership with the reader because the reader isn't aware of doing any work, but neither does it feel chintzy, everything is smooth sailing from the beginning, other than the foreign fantasy names (and for a genre reader, foreign fantasy names can be comforting in their own right). It’s an incredibly enticing piece of writing and fully within the classic forms of how this genre handles introducing an entirely alien mileau.

Next paragraph, note that the sentries are not watching, their ‘thoughts are stricken,’ so they don’t see… something.

Then the plague strikes, suspiciously it takes out the King first. And his entourage sees “wolves” eyes in the light of his bier.  There is some interesting wolf imagery later that this will connect to.

In the next paragraph, Bakker reiterates the sentries are not watching, ‘they saw little,’ so once again, Bakker emphasize that they don’t see… something. 

Also in this paragraph is a beautiful phrase “bloodline to its thinnest tincture.”  But this phrase is also the first glimpse we get of the rather loaded spiritual world that Bakker has establish for us.  Because thinnest tincture refers to the blood of Ganrelka’s concubine and the concubine’s daughter; from the very beginning Bakker is telling us that in this world, women’s blood is not equal to men’s blood.  Also, we should start to get really suspicious here.  The sentries are not seeing something and simultaneously the royalty of the household are mysteriously dying, as though they were targeted first because they are most important.

And the next paragraph we get a catalog of the gruesome deaths that await the elite of the household, All the descriptions are incredibly enticing, for a reread, these names should leap with significance, but I remember zeroing on the ‘sorcerous texts’ part of this paragraph my first time through.  Note that the text does not say that Ganrelka’s uncle suicided, only that he was found hanging from a rope.  And all the elite crème de la crème knights of the household were found dead in their beds.   Note also that the text explicitly avoids saying that this paragraph’s victims died of the plague—the reader just assumes that because we’ve been primed by the earlier paragraph, which suggested it hit the entire household (but household is paired with bloodline so…), but only the first three were explicitly claimed to be victims of the plague. 

Conveniently, only a boy—now the heir, although apparently the plague didn’t target him, despite being part of the bloodline (unless he’s not of Anasurimbor blood…), and a bard survive. 

Is the Bard behind it all?  Perhaps, the text is vague on this point.  Note the transition from “when no one is left alive.” To “But the boy lived.”  Coupled with the ending of this paragraph, “Was it murder when no one was left alive?” Interesting how the boy takes on the exact same rationalization in committing his crime that the bard used in committing his crime.  In a single paragraph Bakker has the victim become the perp and shows how radically changed a person can be, while also tweaking his readers, who will probably justify the boys actions because culture demands that such justifications be used.  These two paragraphs are a really stunning piece of writing, and in a small form—and completely under-the-table, manage to convey one of Bakker’s favorite themes.  Ever are men deceived (which may help explain what the Dunyain is about to tell the boy, the dunyain says, only so long as men are deceived, and the boy realizes that he justified crimes for the same reason the Bard did, that the justification both of them used is unacceptable, and only so long as they are deceiving themselves will they be unable to overcome their circumstances in which they both committed and justified crimes to themselves). 

The boy survives an entire winter on his own, and there are indeed wolves in the woods. And in the next chapter he will describe the Dunyain first as a ‘wolf people’ (this would be the payoff I mentioned earlier to the notations of wolves.’

The Dunyain scale the walls.  What else scales the walls in this chapter?  Sranc.  That’s a deliberate comparison, same words, we don’t yet know that these wolf people are not Sranc—they are a threat.  And in case you didn’t catch the point of comparing them to how Sranc have been described, here’s another hint that is more obvious, “Like the Bardic Priest,” again, this imagry is of threat and danger, predation and so on.  Very interesting. 

The boy seems to pass the test of the Dunyain, and understand his own self-deception, and the Dunyain celebrate… but are they celebrating Ishual, or celebrating the inclusion of the boy in their ranks—the text seems to celebrate the boy, not the place, “The stranger brought him to the others, and together they celebrated their strange fortune.”   But note how the Dunyain deceive themselves,  They repudiate gods but elevate ‘awareness’ to a godlike status, “awareness most holy.”  From the very beginning are we seeing that the cause of the Dunyain is a vain one?  I’m not sure.

I remember well how the second to last paragraph of this section shocked me on the first reread.  They chiseled away the runes and sorcery, they burnt the books of magic, they discarded all that supernatural about them.  I was not ready for that sort of repudiation, it’s very different from anything else I can think of in fantasy.

And I have to say that Madness really hit a major homerun noting the beautiful literary way that Bakker bookends §P.1 with “One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten,” and “And the world forgot them for two thousand years.” And to emphasize this point for the reader, Bakker follows this up with a quote that tells us that “Man Forgets”

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