Ah, so this is the dreaded Pre-FAQ. Finally, we meet.
I'm thinking we should have a part of the FAQ dedicated to new/potential readers who aren't familiar with the books.
I have started a couple of suggestions for questions and answers below, feel free to give your opinions, suggest stuff to add or remove, and improve my writing as needed.
Who is this Bakker guy anyway?R. Scott Bakker ("RSB") is a Canadian author, yada yada, copy/paste from Wikipedia or link there?
He is best known for his fantasy series called
The Second Apocalypse.
What is The Second Apocalypse?The Second Apocalypse is a series encompassing at least two trilogies,
Prince of Nothing and
Aspect-Emperor, and one possible duology or trilogy of which nothing yet is known. The two first trilogies can be read independently, but it is generally considered to be best to start with the first trilogy,
Prince of Nothing.
Will I like The Second Apocalypse?Possibly, but not certainly. Many readers consider these books too dark, pompous, or difficult, while many others love them as complex, ambiguous, poetic and challenging. Generally speaking, if you liked
Lord of the Rings, George R.R. Martin's
A Song of Ice and Fire, and/or Frank Herbert's
Dune books you stand a good chance of appreciating
The Second Apocalypse and should try it out. You need to have a high tolerance for internal ruminations of characters, occasional philosophy, a few outright disgusting scenes involving sex and/or violence, and characters being solidly grey.
It helps if you have read at least a couple of other epic fantasy series, as Bakker works a lot with subverting well known tropes of the genre.
It's almost Christmas. Will my kids love The Second Apocalypse?No. No, they won't. You definitely don't want to give these books to your kids without having read them yourself first. These books are firmly adult, and as such they are probably not appreciated by kids under 18 or more likely 25 (... though I'm not sure about this one - that's my opinion anyway...).
How should I go about reading The Second Apocalypse?They should definitely be read in the order they were published, as later books contain spoilers for earlier ones. This means starting out with the
Prince of Nothing books, and reading them in the following order:
- The Darkness That Comes Before.
- The Warrior Prophet
- The Thousandfold Thought
When starting with
The Darkness That Comes Before, do not give up until you have read at least around 200 pages, preferably the entire book. Names will be troubling for some at first, since many of them are very unfamiliar, but ignore this - the important ones will stick eventually. Be aware of that almost everyone, even die-hard fans of the books, found the beginning to be tough going. If you found all of the first 200 pages to be completely unreadable garbage, you probably won't like the rest either, and you can start looking for something else to read. If you found something that piqued your interest, regardless of it being the political machinations, some of the characters, the magic system(s) or something else, keep on reading until you've finished the book. Then make the decision if you want to read on, keeping in mind that the next two books,
The Warrior Prophet and
The Thousandfold Thought, are generally considered better than the first one.
Then continue with the
Aspect-Emperor trilogy, in order:
- The Judging Eye
- The White-Luck Warrior
- The Unholy Consult (not yet published)
On RSBs web site there are two short stories,
The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin and
The False Sun. They were released after
The White Luck Warrior, and are probably best read after that book. However, be aware of that
The False Sun contains a spoiler for
The Unholy Consult.
This Kellhus guy seems to act very weirdly for being the hero, right?Yes. This is intentional. Beware of considering him a hero, quite possibly he is the main villain. As of writing this FAQ, five books into the six book series, his status as a hero and/or villain is still very much undetermined and subject for some great discussions on this forum.
What are all these strangë chäractërs? They make mÿ head hûrt.(...)