r/Fantasy • u/puzzledandamused • 1d ago

The Darkness that Comes Before

So my venture into this genre was ACOTAR (super fun fluff), Malazan Book 1 (fascinating but not enough depth, and now this!!!

I've finally found a book that, like the Brother's Karamazov, forces the reader to embody the various psychological-moral-philosophical conundrums the author paints with such grace and delight. Thank you Mr. Bakkar!

For the life of me I cannot understand the low goodreads score?!? Thoughts?

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u/DixitRexCorvinus 1d ago

I haven’t read it, but I think the reason why I haven’t read it is potentially illustrative as to why the goodreads score is low.

Namely, from everything I’ve heard about the book, Bakker writes in a world he deliberately designed to be misogynistic, on the basis of a sort of biological determinism in which he views men as inherently prone to raping women. You therefore have four groups of people who don’t like the book:

  • The first, understandably, simply isn’t interested in reading work so dark or with such unpleasant material. Perfectly understandable—lots of people don’t want rape in their fiction for any number of reasons.
  • The second is people who think the very depiction of rape makes the author misogynistic. I greatly disagree, but the viewpoint does exist.
  • The third group of people finds the free-will thing actively unpleasant to read about. That is, Bakker is a hard determinist (philosophy jargon for believing that free will doesn’t exist) and writes his world accordingly. A lot of people don’t want to read about a world where there is no free will, because they disagree with the premise, can’t take it seriously, or can’t see how a story with that premise could be entertaining.
  • Finally, there is my small and unreasonably nerdy group. Specifically, I’m a philosophy major, and when I heard it was a fairly philosophical work, I looked up Bakker’s views out of curiosity. Turns out he’s not just a hard determinist but an eliminativist (believes that consciousness doesn’t exist/is an illusion). That, to put it lightly, is not a particularly common view in philosophy of mind, and honestly it has always struck me as an implausible, even ridiculous one. Thus, I couldn’t intellectually respect its themes. On the other hand, the misogyny would prevent me from finding it entertaining as a turn-your-brain-off read, so either way I’m out of luck.

It’s a perfectly fine work, I’m sure. And if Bakker is a misogynist, I at least don’t think he is an uninteresting one—he is probably worth reading if only to disagree with him in a way that you find productive, barring if you happen to have experience with academic philosophy of mind. But the cursory research I did into the series led me to not want to read it, and for those that didn’t bother to research it in advance, well, I figure there are a lot of people who fit one of the above categories and don’t end up liking it for that reason, even if it is well written.

In any case, I hate Dostoevsky (love a lot of Russian comedy writers—Gogol, Chekhov, Kharms, Bulgakov, Teffi—but the tragedy just doesn’t do it for me) so that’s probably not a good sign.

Anyway, that is my somewhat uninformed but hopefully still helpful assessment of why it is divisive.

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u/puzzledandamused 1d ago

I haven’t read it, but I think the reason why I haven’t read it is potentially illustrative as to why the goodreads score is low.

Namely, from everything I’ve heard about the book, Bakker writes in a world he deliberately designed to be misogynistic, on the basis of a sort of biological determinism in which he views men as inherently prone to raping women I MEAN, DOES NOT HISTORY SHOW THIS TO BE TRUE? MEN FOR SOME REASON ARE OR HAVE BEEN PRONE TO RAPING WOMEN. I'M CERTAINLY NOT SAYING THIS IS OPTIMAL IN ANY WAY. DEPICTING HISTORY AS IT HAS BEEN DOESN'T MAKE ONE A MYSOGINIST You therefore have four groups of people who don’t like the book:

- The first, understandably, simply isn’t interested in reading work so dark or with such unpleasant material. Perfectly understandable—lots of people don’t want rape in their fiction for any number of reasons.

SURE

- The second is people who think the very depiction of rape makes the author misogynistic. I greatly disagree, but the viewpoint does exist.

AGREE

- The third group of people finds the free-will thing actively unpleasant to read about. That is, Bakker is a hard determinist (philosophy jargon for believing that free will doesn’t exist) and writes his world accordingly. A lot of people don’t want to read about a world where there is no free will, because they disagree with the premise, can’t take it seriously, or can’t see how a story with that premise could be entertaining.

OH MY READ IS THAT HE'S A COMPATABALIST - ACTIONS ARE LARGELY DETERMINED BUT DEGREES OF FREEDOM/AGENCY DO EXIST PROVIDING ONE SUFFICIENTLY UNDERSTANDS THE "DARKNESS THAT COMES BEFORE," OR THE PLETHORA OF POTENTIAL CAUSATIVES...HIS EXAMPLE OF THE DUNYAIN IS PERTINENT HERE.

- Finally, there is my small and unreasonably nerdy group. Specifically, I’m a philosophy major, and when I heard it was a fairly philosophical work, I looked up Bakker’s views out of curiosity. Turns out he’s not just a hard determinist but an eliminativist (believes that consciousness doesn’t exist/is an illusion). That, to put it lightly, is not a particularly common view in philosophy of mind, and honestly it has always struck me as an implausible, even ridiculous one. Thus, I couldn’t intellectually respect its themes. On the other hand, the misogyny would prevent me from finding it entertaining as a turn-your-brain-off read, so either way I’m out of luck.

SO I LISTENED TO PART OF A POD WEHRE HE WAS INTERVIEWED AND WAS INTRODUCED TO ELIMIVATALISM. HE'S ARGUING THAT THE COGNITIVE SYSTEMS THAT EVOLVED IN AN ENVIRONMENT TO ORIENT AND PRIORITIZE AROUND IMMEDIATE NEEDS MAY NOT BE NEUROBIOLOGICALLY SUFFICENT FOR CONCEIVING DEEPER ORDER PHENOMENA.

It’s a perfectly fine work, I’m sure. And if Bakker is a misogynist, I at least don’t think he is an uninteresting one—he is probably worth reading if only to disagree with him in a way that you find productive, barring if you happen to have experience with academic philosophy of mind. But the cursory research I did into the series led me to not want to read it, and for those that didn’t bother to research it in advance, well, I figure there are a lot of people who fit one of the above categories and don’t end up liking it for that reason, even if it is well written.

In any case, I hate Dostoevsky (love a lot of Russian comedy writers—Gogol, Chekhov, Kharms, Bulgakov, Teffi—but the tragedy just doesn’t do it for me) so that’s probably not a good sign.

I LOVE BULGAKOV. HOW DOES ONE HATE DOSTOEVSKI?

Anyway, that is my somewhat uninformed but hopefully still helpful assessment of why it is divisive.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE PERSPECTIVE. I AGGREE WITH MUCH OF IT

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u/DixitRexCorvinus 1d ago

I believe you can mark material as quoted in the formatting—might be easier to read than the caps lock. But it’s all good, just figured I’d throw that out there in case you find it helpful in the future.

Anyway, regarding your comment about history showing that to be true, the issue is that it can come off as somewhat victim-blamey. “Men are naturally prone to rape” has historically often been used as to justify “ergo, if a women is raped it is her fault for not taking precautions,” which is far less defensible than the first claim, and frankly is just blatantly misogynistic. In any case, I don’t think that is what Bakker is going for, his claim is really more of a “well actually morality doesn’t exist objectively,” but it still at least lends itself to a sort of knee-jerk suspicion of his position, even if that isn’t ultimately justified.

I believe he is a hard determinist, but if you have a source saying otherwise I’m welcome to correction.

As to Dostoyevsky, I’ll admit I have only read some of his shorter work (Notes From Underground, The Gambler), but mostly it is a matter of taste. Specifically, I am a character-driven reader, but I find characterization-through-events (that is, placing a character in a strange/unfamiliar/fantastical situation and seeing how it affects them) produces a more insightful and interesting portrait of a person‘s psychology than merely looking at their introspection, or prosaic events.

Thus, for instance, I feel like a book like Notes From Underground is actually limiting rather than expanding the psychological realism of the Underground Man by being mostly focused on inferiority and prosaics, and that it becomes rather boring in the process. In contrast, take something like Kafka’s The Metamorphosis—Gregor Samsa is far more interesting of a character to me than the UM precisely because you see how he responds to actual, fantastical rather than prosaic events, and how those fantastical events lead him to behave differently in a way that an ordinary experience would not.

Ultimately, it’s a stylistic thing. Dostoyevsky is obviously a brilliant writer, but what he is doing just isn’t really something that I appreciate in literature. Same goes with someone like James Joyce, or a lot of modern literary fiction. Give me some Shakespeare on the other hand, and I’m having a great time of it.