He's definitely been saying it for years and years in a variety of different ways. The fact that he doesn't put a damned foreword in the text as such is almost criminal, as generalguy is noting .

I'm still waiting for the reactions of my three high-school friends regarding TUC. It'll be interesting as they pay no attention whatsoever to what happens online.

Ehh if he's saying it and it's not in the text its secondary at best. Sure there are subversions of some basic tropes but the core story is pretty standard fantasy epic. That's what I mean by the gotcha--if he's gonna claim that the work is intended to be a deconstruction or subversion of the standard fantasy arc then imo it doesn't do it that well, just that the ending is a downer rather than a LOTR victory isn't enough. Entire plot threads are irrelevant or unresolved and some critical metaphysical mechanics are just completely unexplained and you just gotta roll with it. This is what I mean by he needed an editor: you need someone informed but able to think like a reader who certainly doesn't haven't authorial level context so that they can poke the author into explaining what is going on.



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Quote from: generalguy on August 28, 2017, 08:31:57 pm

Either he wanted to write an epic fantasy type story that fails (fine) or he wanted to fuck with your expectations and write a postmodern deconstruction of the epic fantasy (fine) but some middling combo of the two that doesn't work in the end (not deconstructed enough and yet not conformal).

The way I see it, it's none of the above. It's a work that explores certain themes and expectations in ways both direct and indirect. Whether you or me get that is irrelevant. It's in the narrative, structurally and in the voices of the characters. It's not there to make anyone happy (the nature of the series' themes should by no means make people happy). It's not there for fun or enjoyment. It's there because Bakker wanted to convey his views on it.

If it's uninteresting to you, that's fine. If it upsets you, that's also fine. None of those outcomes diminish the work itself, though.

Nor does the fact that the series hasn't brought me any kind of happiness (at least in the beginning). When I started to read, I was actually genuinely unhappy because of it. But I was interested in Bakker's ideas and perspective, and as of yet he hasn't failed to consistently provide those. I feel he is being true to himself and his design. And I never thought said design was to write something that comforts people, narratively or otherwise. My opinion is, it's quite the opposite.

This is probably why he said that people who feel betrayed get it. It's not like he wanted to betray them. It's one of his points that their expectations at some point will.

Quote from: generalguy on August 28, 2017, 08:31:57 pm

Basically I lost a lot of respect for him when he claimed he was pulling some kind of long con. If you're gonna con me, make me believe. He's no Kellhus, that Bakker.

My take on it is, he wasn't conning you. He was actually always completely upfront about his intentions and the nature of his work. And therein he demonstrates how we all con ourselves.

Because of that aspect of the series I prefer to consider the Second Apocalypse literary fiction. Unlike genre fiction, literary fiction isn't there to (necessarily) make readers enjoy themselves.

Sure, I get that. I read a lot of works that are intended to have a certain effect that isn't joy or happiness on my part

I'm just saying that by the end of tuc I felt betrayed in the sense that I thought bakker would have written his ending better than he did, and found the twists kind of lame and unforeshadowed by the earlier books even after rereading them. Of course hindsight is 20/20 but chekov had his guns for a reason, they help to suspend disbelief. The ajokli thing just felt lame in retrospect since there's minimal buildup and too deus ex machina - literally in the sense that dunyain are human computers.

Im more disappointed than angry but for something that was hyped the way it was TUC couldn't deliver. Too much setup and not enough resolution for me.

If he purely wanted his readers to feel betrayal I think he could have done it better than claiming a flawed book as some kind of masterstroke in reader manipulation.




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I'm on board with Ark still having some degree of capacity, but I think another factor could be the Inverse Fire.  It appears to have the ability to sooth Erratics and bring them back to some semblance of sanity and lucidity, at least temporarily.  Mek essentially says as much in his scene with Kellhus.  So perhaps the Consult simply exposes their Erratics to the Inverse Fire when they need some extra brainpower or flunkies who can function at a higher level than Sranc or Skinspies.

well yeah if the one thing that jogs memories is trauma then seeing your own damnation has to rank up there

Alternatively it *was* kelmomas in an inverted echo to crab boy pelting the skin spy with the hundredth stone of koringhus but that seems too indirect even for bakker


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Quote from: Cynical Cat on July 31, 2017, 11:06:51 am

Remember, artificiality doesn't affect whether or not you have a soul.  The Skin Spy who was able to work sorcery had a soul and so do a few apes and whales.  Yes, the Inchoroi had souls.  As for the number "a thousand thousand", that's simply a chronicler's way of saying "there's a fuckton of those bastards."  Numbers are really unreliable in pre modern history (and that's ignoring the arguments one can have over numbers and statistics.)

I didn't really think that artificiality necessarily precluded having a soul, just that it's usually some crazy fluke when it happens. As for a thousand thousand of them, I probably was taking that a bit literally. As for the Dunyain explaining that Sil created the inverse fire to remind them of their damnnation, I must have missed reading that part. I suppose that's the final nail for my theory. Ah well, guess I'll just file this one under crackpot

Sil didn't create the IF he salvaged it from wreck of the ark and then kept it as desk toy

Quote from: tleilaxu on July 31, 2017, 02:30:26 am

Yes the Inchoroi have souls. Otherwise they wouldn't see anything in the Inverse Fire.

Well there's never really any evidence of the Inchoroi looking into the inverse fire, is there? It seems to be a tool they use to show other people their damnnation, but as far as I can tell, there isn't any mention of the inchoroi being motivated by the inverse fire

I think it's explicitly stated that the inchoroi were made to damn themselves and if they ever got to complacent the inverse fire device would "goad" them to continue their work in sealing off the world


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Quote from: themerchant on July 31, 2017, 12:39:12 am

There were 3 books in the series.The Prince of Nothing, The Aspect Emperor and The No-god. ( as was guessed years ago)

We have finished 2 out of 3. Now of course each book got arbitrarily split into smaller books, due to the way publishing is. (I don't know much about it)

When Bakker was a teenager 40 years ago he conceived the end of the series to be what we just read, Adult Bakker has different ideas.

A lot of the problems comes from an incomplete memory of the text.

I always go back to TGO when people were complaining how the Earthquake came from nowhere. Nothing in the text etc. Yet we had an earthquake in TWP, we had characters remembering earthquakes etc. It's just incomplete knowledge of the text.

The amount of pages devoted to the meat has been described as 40% or 200 pages. It's about 8% and 31 pages.

It is my recollection from reading passages from Bakker himself that the follow-on duology is jut something to build on the main thrust of the story, which is what we just finished. Which is fine. And that is kind of what you are saying in the teenage Bakker vs. adult Bakker. As a reader, I am disappointed with the conclusion with the main thrust of the story. Do not take this to mean that I am disappointed in the "who won" or even the final conclusion. I am disappointed in the manner in which we got there and the manner in which it was executed.

TUC felt cobbled together in ways the other books didn't. I think the writing mechanics were poorer than previous books (as in he spent much less time or had less editorial input from critical readers). I felt like storylines that I was led to believe were important were not in the least significant. I don't care about the meat or the cannibalism or the earthquakes. I loved all that stuff. So what I am getting at is that adult Bakker should have probably taken a more critical look at what his teenage self came up and thought, "do I have to slavishly stick to what I dreamed up as a teen, or can I tighten this stuff up into a more complete and satisfying tale."

Some readers like it the way it is. I do not. It felt cheap.

Some readers will accept any drivel that comes from their favorite author as the words of God. I would hope that we all recognize that TUC while nice it was even published leaves a lot to be desired. How much of that circumstance is under our control is debatable

But it's clear tuc desperately needed a critical editor, a judging eye if you will and not a once over by superfans -- someone who could reign in bakkers bad writing habits.

I don't mind elliptical prose it's just that you need more than just ellipses

I don't mind a downer ending if it follows from the story which it did--the cliffhanger nature and the unclear connection between the main threads of the first few books is what irks me most. Akka and Mimaras excellent adventure and the whole momemn plotline barely integrate and even the parts I can see working are tenuously connected at best. Hell kellhus literally teleports back shits on everyone and then teleports the two principals back to the action. I guess he wrote himself into a corner to get Esme and kelmomas to their places. Also a kind of lame way tojustify the camera character.

The daimos and kellhus learning it from iyokus is critical but there's literally nothing that indicates that beforehand. The mystical head powers are just sort of thrown in. Where are the flashbacks like of kellhus learning in ishual as establishing text? In fact the lack of kellhus pov is a pretty great weakness of tae in general -- his thoughts are crucial to understanding the rest and without them everything feels hollow. It's a major strategic mistake IMO and makes a lot of TUC and the reveals therein much more artificial than they could have been (editing!)


Also a glossary and lore dump isn't a substitute for an actual story as much as I like the world building.




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Just finished the book. Ive been in self imposed exile from the boards for weeks. I must say.. meh. For the record i am 100% fine with the world ending and Mog running rampant. However, ~40% of the book devoted to agongorea? Come the hell on. Yes, we get it. Men = sranc. that is obvious to any casual study of man and history. I dont think we needed hundreds of pages of that.

I feel shortchanged. The Ark, the golden Ark, the inchies, Shae, where were the massive dumps of info? Keep in mind i literally just finished the book and have not read the appendices yet. But yeah..40% to the obvious and well worn tracks of the inhumanity of man was way too much.

Also, the editing was bad. Bad enough to take me out of the story. There were a lot of verb tense mistakes, repetitive descriptors in back to back to back sentences, etc.

Im looking forward to reading the thoughts of those that see deeper than i..but overall color me underwhelmed.

Bingo

Less leper licking more of the good stuff

Of course a half competent editor would have said the same


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