Thanks to Mr. Bakker for creating a uniquely enjoyable reading experience.
Thanks to the online community for helping me to better understand what the hell I have been reading. By both filling in where I missed something AND by putting me at ease when I thought I had missed something but where in fact it was still a mystery.
I read spoilers prior to reading TUC, which probably tempered my reaction. However, as a casual reader I felt I was going to need to “Cliffs notes” ahead of time to improve my understanding.
For many, it seems that Mr. Bakker’s comments post release have generated as much frustration as the book itself. I feel the opposite; they clarified a lot for me. He constructed the nature of this ride intentionally, we all chose to participate and could have gotten off at any time. I salute him for sticking with his approach. In the long-run I think the non-traditional decisions he made will cost him financially in terms of book sales but he created a truly memorable story.
These two quotes said it all for me:
“…so if you were expecting a traditional discharging of narrative mysteries, you were bound to be disappointed…”
“Frustration on the part of a good number of readers--we all have varying tolerances for uncertainty--is something I take as a sign of achieving my narrative and thematic goals. I would have been bummed if some hadn't reacted negatively.”
I think elusiveness and obscurity it is a very effective tool for world building and engaging a reader. The reader fills in the gaps and infuses a world with their perspective. Mystery and narrative dysphoria creates online communities like this, which only enhances the reading experience. The fact that I still don’t know what to think of Kellhus is both disappointing/frustrating and awesome at the same time.
The non-traditional aspects of Mr. Bakker’s books are what pulled me along. In a traditional book, Akka would have been the voice of the author or the stand-in for the reader. Perfectly positioned to inform, observe and judge. However, in the end I believe the reader is really Proyas, completely mind-fucked, used, and wrung out. After volumes of depravity that “What have you done?” scene was soul-droppingly amazing.
Despite all my praise, I am not sure how I feel moving forward with Mr. Bakker’s work. I maintained a high level of “tolerances for uncertainty” throughout the series, but I think I am too traditional for Mr. Bakker and in the end I want reveals. I want understanding. I can take nihilism, shades of grey, obscurity, and the end of the world but I want some narrative closure in a book that the author says is the end they imagined.
I was excited to hear there was a glossary in TUC but that thing is a giant troll to the reader. It became a joke as I read, the number of times I flipped to the back only to find some useless piece of information about a battle or geographic feature but not the thing I wanted. It was the worst kind of filler.
It left me wondering if Mr. Bakker has a clear understanding of his own creation. Has he been spending his time taking a fleshed out world and intentionally making it mysterious or has he been simply writing without a substantive perspective and leaving it to the online community to create substance?
So thank you Mr. Bakker, you constructed a literary ride unlike anything I have experienced. However, I think I am getting off the ride.
Who am I kidding? When is the next book coming out?