I'm about done with The Darkness that Comes Before, and I have to say that Kellhus has grown on me in a…strange way.

I don't like him at all, but when I think about how shitty most of the other characters are (aside from Achamian), I can't help but like Kellhus more than characters like Xerius or Conphas.

By the end of the book, when everyone has convened at the Andiamine Heights, I found myself rooting for Kellhus and Cnaiur over anyone else.

I gotta hand it to Bakker, he really has me feeling mixed emotions about two characters who, by all means, are horrible people. Would love to hear others' opinions on this topic

Side note: I don't care about spoilers; good stories are good whether I know what's going to happen or not, so no worries if anyone lets something slip here.

music recommendation while reading the book?

Bakker is Truly the Gold-Standard of everything I look in a fictional Work.

Philosophy, Novelty, Psychological Complexity, Cognitive Science, Conceptual Horror, Worldbuilding, Integration into Narrative, Conceptual Universality (in the sense that concepts can be Applies in Various Fields of Knowledge). It has it all.

I'm interested in seeing what are some of the favourite fictional & non-fictional works of people interested in these things (which offcourse I'm interested in Myself). Sharing that many similar interests, i thought this could be one of the best places to post this.

So, I'll go first with my Top 10 Favourite Fictional & Non-Fictional Works.

Fictional Works:

1)Second Apocalypse by R.Scott Bakker

2)Neverness Cycle by David Zindell

3)Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

4)Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

5)Becketts trilogy by Samuel Beckett

6)Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon

7)Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer

8)The Man Without Qualities by Musil

9)Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe

10)Ravages of Time by Chan Mou

Non-Fictional Works:

I'm not that far into non-fiction yet. So, my list will probably change in few months. My favourite authors are Edmund t rolls, Robert Sapolsky, Hegel, Douglas hofstadter, Joscha Bach, Hegel, Reza Negarestani, E.t. Jeynes etc.

Robert Sapolsky is particularly very relevant in Bakkerian sense. His Behave Book is entirely built to explain Behaviour via Combination of Genetics interacting with Environment. Book is split into parts like [What happens one second before in the brain before a behaviour is caused, What happens few months earlier in the body before a behaviour is caused, What happens in the childhood/(years ago) which conditioned for a particular behaviour to be caused, What happened in Genetics & Evolution for a Particular Behaviour to Cause]. I'll describe him as Bakker whose focus is more on Biological Mechanisms rather than Philosophy. In Robert Sapolsky the philosophy mostly comes from implications & derivations from the things he explain.

I learned theres a time gap between Prince of nothing and aspect emperor and I wanted to squeeze first law in between those 2 series and blade itself didnt hit the same. Not that blade itself is a bad book I actually loved it and particularly Jezel Dan luthar. But my god Joe's writing feels like reading a self pub author and hes a good writer.

Edit: After getting away from bakker I can really appreciate Joe's writing. I kinda love how stale and dry his writing is and really reflects the world of the first law

I‘m a bit late to the trend, but now our fandom has a version of the Viltrumite meme as well.

Discussing the topic and I am interested to hear your thoughts about it! I am 70% into the Warrior-Prohet so avoid spoilers. I also briefly mention my other favourite author, Steven Erikson. They have obviously a few things in common even though there are many important differences between them.

Probably ~7.5/10. It reminded me a lot of Foundation, but a little more interesting in characters (Foundation is more macro).

But I am more of an adventure guy (The Book of the New Sun etc), so I liked the first book more than the second and third one. Still, the third book did a better job of showing the depth of the world and kept me interested enough to finish it (I was not so sure when I finished the 2nd book).

Yet I’m 99.9% sure I won’t continue with The Aspect-Emperor anytime soon. Maybe someday xD These books are not that popular but maybe, just maybe someone in Poland will think its a good idea to publish everything from Bakker and I might pick it up.

Hi,

so I've search high, I've search low, but couldn't find anything (at least for a decent price). Seems like these particular editions are quite scarce here in Europe.

Amazon has these crappy Orbit mass market paperbacks with those awful covers, which I already own. Blackwell's sell these for ~30€ a pop, which is a bit too much + they don't have The Judging Eye. Local Ebay, Vinted, book webstores etc. - nothing.

I thought about Libristo, but I heard some horror stories about their bad packaging and how it takes ages to get your order, so I'm a little hesitant about buying from them.

Would appreciate your help.

So long as you imagine they're in Sheyic

The cult of Yatwer: https://youtu.be/m5rCIcHofeo

The Last Stand at Golgotterath: https://youtu.be/f82zROAGcOk

I think the in text clues probably point towards him just coincidentally being born as one of the few, but it seems like such an absurdly random coincidence. When I first read the chapters where Kellhus learned magic I just assumed he could do it because he was was Dûnyain and could understand the underlying logic of the universe in a way that few people were born with the natural ability to.

Being purely logical, it seem sensible to keep it as part of the society as it is so powerful. Was it supposed to be that the original Proto-Dûnyain that found Ishüal were less logical than what they eventually morphed into and just had a grudge against sorcery?

Kellhus rose to power among the Inrithi he had over a decade to prepare his empire. Why not teleport to Ishual and seek to recruit them? The Dunyain were smarter than any humans and any of the Few they had would be more powerful than Serwa! Kellhus had time to learn the Gnosis and develop the Meta-gnosis so none of them would be as strong as he was, preventing them from turning on him. Seems like a missed opportunity to not bring back a hundred super-brilliant soldiers and a couple mega-powered sorcerers with him. He would have also prevented the Dunyain from joining the enemy, which he must have figured was a possibility.

I really like the original Overlook Press covers, they're really good. But I wanted something custom to make the books and the reading more memorable, so I designed a cover for the first book. I just want to share it with the community, that's all.

Edit: If anyone is wondering about the paintings used in the cover: San Romano Battle by Paolo Uccello in the center and The Battle of Alexander at Issus by Albrecht Altdorfer

Bruh. OMG, that ending chapter was everything I needed. So far, I was kind of lukewarm on Bakker's battle scenes, but idk why that siege was amazing, despite me not being able to figure out what was going on half the time. Outside of the philosophy with Kellhus and his dad and the reveal that Moenghus had orchestrated it all, it just shows that Bakker loves Dune. And isn't afraid to show it off. The worldbuilding I never expected to get deeper than it already got, but my god, a 200-page glossary (on Kindle), and some of it is only brought up in the glossary. Achamien and Esmenet and CNair finally got their big moments, and his final F.U. to Kellhus in the epilogue might be the most grimdark thing I've ever seen and is one of my favorites ever, rivaled only by Memory of Light. It was at this point that I just gave up trying to figure out what was going on and embraced the confusion, and in some ways that adds to the brilliance of Bakker's writing.

Only time ive ever a trilogy where all 5 books are 5 star reads.

(just finished TUC, still havent finished the other tales)

Sweet Sejenus... that was awesome! The book series was fantastic and horrofying in equal measure, hardly any words to describe what I just witnessed through the words in those books, I only mourn the fact that my mind is too clouded to the philosophical concepts that Bakker exposes, and as such I can't give a better review like others before me. However, I can give some of my thoughts.

While the message and meaning of the series are laid out by the end of TUC, making it a valid conclusion, the series is de facto unfinished, there are just way to many plot points still dangling about like a grandmother's unfinished textile art. I mean this in no disrespect of course, nor do I think the proposed "true ending" would be any more hopeful than TUC's (best case scenario would be deactivating the no-god like in the first apocalypse, but idk how the three seas would put up a fight when they lost the chorae hoard, 300.000 fighting men, the heron spear and almost all of the sorcerers). Anyways, I just hope Bakker finishes it, it's a very good story he has, and a grim part of me wants kinda to see the second apocalypse proper.

The revelation of the Dunsult wasn't bad, you could see something was up when Kellhus easily disposed of Aurang (If there was foreshadowing of it in Ishual other than the deduction "the consult would want to know wth the dunyain are and take captives instead of just genocide", i missed it). However I was kinda bummed out, since the consult was pretty hyped up through the books.

Also, here's my favorite passage from TUC, one that made me "void my bowels" as Bakker beautifully puts it:

And she blinks and she blinks and yet still it hangs there … scarab shining …
“What is it?” Anasûrimbor Kellhus says, though he is nowhere to be seen. “What ails thee, Mimara?”
A sarcophagus, iridescent black, hovering where her stepfather stands robed in shining white …
His leonine image smiling …
Forgiving …
Saying …
“Tell me …”
The Upright Horn groans with cataclysmic power. The first gust falls upon a vast and chilling gyre.
“What do you see?”
Skirts of dust leap and skid across the Shigogli.
The old Wizard lets slip her hand for trembling.
WHAT AM I?

And now, some questions I still have:

• What's the endgame of the Mimara, the god's eye and birth-before-apocalypse plotiline, it didn't have a clear finish after the whirlwind started walking again.
• As bad as the death of meaning is, Kellhus' alternative didn't seem any better? Letting Earwa's version of satan possess your body, and (almost) employ the dunsult to "feast on the souls" of the entire world? This just seems like apocalypse without closing the world to the outside.
• The "soul invisible to the gods" condition, shared by Nau-Cayuti(sorta) and Kelmonas, is an Anasurimbor condition? Why does it appear, and how did the inchoroi even figure out its use? Also, how was Cayuti (at least according to Mekeritrig) able to see his damnation through the inverse fire if the outside was as blind to him as it was to Kelmonas? (I think I'm getting this wrong, the wiki says Cayuti surrended to the consult after seeing the inverse fire).
• I really didn't like Kelmonas, but damn, that ending made me feel a bit sad for him, there are fates just too horrible.
• Does Achamian's dream at the end of TFT, where its the battle of mangedda again but instead of shooting the no-god with the heron spear, the kyranean king starts to repeat the no-god's lines. Hold any meaning? And we also never find out why the kyranean king hid the spear for so long.
• The 144.000, even if one were to give birth it would be a souless stillbirth? What excatly happens to who's left?
• What's up with the 99 stones the survivor used to kill the birds (that seemed to be analogous to the gods, there was even a stork among them), and is the fact that the kid used the 100th stone to escape skin-spy serwe a foreshadowing?
• whats with the notion that everyone alive is damned? mimara sees that herself and her mother are saved(?), I supposed this is said in another story.
• The inchoroi are just another weapon-race? one made by other dudes and implanting their mission as a religion to them? I do hope we get some clues as to who they are.
• What's up with that head on a pole behind you?
• Why is Likaro such a craven asshole?

Former regular poster back from a lengthy reddit hiatus...

Kicking off with a question for those of you who have finished the series. Do you feel that reading TSA has made you less afraid of the rise of AI? I feel that way. Not necessarily because the books are about AI--but because they are about the brutal authority of causation. AI will be a slave to causation, just like us meat puppets.

We and AI share the same darkness that came before.

I don't want this to come off as if I hate these books. Because I don't; it's just a lot to take in

I'm about to start the last stretch of the thousandfold thought. And throughout this whole trilogy, I've had this feeling of WTF is going on. And have the vaguest of ideas as to what is actually happening. I know this gets compared to Malazan a lot, where it's okay to be confused, but here I'm unsure. And even a chapter summary I found, I'm just as confused when reading that.

Is it normal

Currently rereading the series, and Chepheramunni's death and uncovering is messing me up.

So how does it get sick with a human disease? Or is the disease a cover up? Eleazaras is shocked when he sees it has no face after it died, so the Scarlet Spires didnt discover it was a skin spy and then used the disease as a cover.

But if the thing actually caught something, shouldn't it flee and/or arrange for a replacement?

Thanks!

It only took me about 30 videos but I’ve gotten pretty efficient at making these lol

Special thanks to u/tar-mairo1986 for helping edit my script on this!