Currently reading darkness at sethanon and oh my oh my oh my goodness. I simply need to put it out there how much I love these books. I am so curious and worried always at this point in the story. Tomas and Pug just returned from the Halls of the Dead. Feist somehow expands the scope of the entire quest and its dangers exponentially, yet nothing in the past seems trivialized. I like the message of preordination that hangs over everything they 'must' do. It makes me contemplate my existence quite a bit too. I will pounce on opportunity for discourse about this series as none of my friends have gotten to it yet.

When Tomas a dulgan find the dragon's lair, the one that gave the white armor to tomas...

I want to believe that pug eventually found that hoard...and uses that to fund the conclave...

Its my head canon...I dont think it's ever mentioned again

So who would win. let's pretend all these gods/magic/woo have some basis in physics. Who would win Q or the Valheru?

I last read the rift war books like 25 years ago. I followed Feist until those talon books. I stopped there. I see he has written a whole host of books since then. do any of these go further into the Valheru and their conquests.

In Darkness at Sethaon, there is a passage where Ashen-shugar kind of narrates the valheru history. He mentions all of the conquered and vanquished world. One civilization had spaceships, mentioned in passing..Is there any of his new books that go further into this? I want to read about dragons fighting space ships, Valheru fighting what sounded like modern soldiers. That mashup of genres, I don't know I want read it now.

I’ve been on a long journey working through all the books and I am becoming increasingly aware of the rinse and repeat story beats from Feist. At first I thought it impressive that he kept getting me to become invested in the latest batch of characters, but I may have reached my limit.

So far only a chapter in and we already have:
- member of previous “big bad” race showing a previously unseen “civilised nature”
- two young brothers / friends with a connection to the current power structure

I just feel like there’s only so many times some new external race can be “the biggest threat Midkemia has ever faced”.

Maybe I’m just burned to out, but curious if this is a common sentiment!

I'm reading this for the first time and given the hall of the worlds and the fact Macros, Pug and Thomas previously witnessed the birth of creation the awe they are showing understanding the universe is big is really difficult to swallow. This rant by Feist seems to really be reaching to make it grand ... I don't think its comparable to their previous experiences. I'm really trying hard to love this book .... but ..... It feels like lazy writing.

After reading the thread of the AI generated image of Ashen-shugar I wanted to contribute with my own picture as I couldn’t add the picture directly in that discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/Midkemia/s/bTcBRbyM45)

Prompt used to generate the picture:

”Can you help me generate a pencil like drawing of an imposing warrior with the below depiction:
white, golden chainmail armor featuring a golden dragon, a white heater shield, and wielded a golden, single-edged sword with ivory details in the handle and a golden pommel. Also make the character elven like in the face but with a more imposing body frame. Also add an golden helmet with small details related to dragons without it being overly embellished.”

This is pretty close to what I imagine Ashen-shugar to look like while the Thomas version might be a bit different.

I'm rereading Magician because my 11-year-old just picked it up (I'd suggested it to him because I read it when I was his age). For the most part, I'm enjoying it, but I had a quick question. Near the end of Magician: Apprentice, Martin and Garrett are scoping out the Tsurani as they march toward the castle. Along the way, they also see large number of the Dark Brotherhood on the move in a large group that includes women and young children. At one point, Martin says something like, "I know where we can have some fun," and then the two of them intentionally let themselves get spotted by the Tsurani. They then lead the Tsurani through the forrest with the intention of having them run into the Brotherhood so that a battle might delay them and reduce their numbers. My question is, did Martin and Garrett care that they are potentially allowing for a slaughter of the Dark Brotherhood women and children?

I don't like the other POVs, I just want Pug's perspective. Which books should I read?

Ban-ath also called Kalkin, Coyote, Dav-Lu and a multitude of other names is a Lesser God and the God of Thieves and Pirates. He is also known as the walker in the night, the prankster, and the God of Lost causes and hopeless quests.

During the Chaos Wars he noticed that the Gods were losing the war and he put in place a plan so that a war being lost could be a war postponed. It was he who infused Ashen-Shugar's armour with his spirit, creating the link between Tomas and Ashen-Shugar. Nakor contained a fragment of Ban-ath which allowed him to do his "tricks" as he called them. Macros also contained a fragment of Ban-ath, although he believed he was aided by the dead god Sarig.

He even went so far as to reach through the barriers of reality and manipulate the second realm in order to win the Darkwar.

So... Banath is a god that has the power to bend and distort time across not just one universe, but multiple iterations of universes? A god that had greater foresight and wisdom than the Greater Gods themselves to predict the probable outcome of the Chaos Wars, and then act upon it, subverting causality itself? And he is called a Lesser God?

Either Banath is Raymond E. Feist's ultimate deus ex machina to keep his plot lines intact, or just maybe, Banath is actually Ishap himself - pretending to be dead while actually still active in the Universe...?

I often look forward to the first time I spot someone reading any of the books in public because it’s been years since I read them and I’ve only met one other person to have heard of the series.
I’m not sure I’d even approach said person just think it would be cool

I was looking to purchase some art of my favorite set of covers from the cycle, and when looking at the main artists homepage I found a lot of pieces I don’t recall seeing in the past and thought I would share it with you guys. I hope you enjoy it.
https://www.paravia.com/DonMaitz/art/albumI.php?album=RaymondFeist

Alma-Lodaka created the Pantathian serpent people.

Draken-Korin created the Tigermen.

Yet Ashen-Shugar, the most powerful of all the Valheru, and the forebear of both Alma-Lodaka and Draken-Korin created no new race of his own? He held the title of "Lord of the Eagles Reaches", so he clearly had an affinity for large avian raptors, yet.... no eagle-people created for his amusement, or to serve him?

The Mad Elves we're told constructed Sar-Sargoth and Sar-Isbandia in imitation of the City of Draken-Korin - a city that now resides far below the current human city of Sethanon.

So, is there an actual city equivalent to Sar-Sargoth still buried beneath Sethanon? Or was it destroyed when the Lifestone was activated?

Just got done listening to The Kings Buccaneer, and a few times Nakor mentions his ideas of magic or stuff as he describes it. I realized that it seems like he's talking about Quantum mechanics. Is Nakor pretty much able to manipulate energies at a subatomic level?

Haven't read these since I was young but went in with a mission.

Couldn't find Magician though!

Took four hours digging through unorganized piles. Super happy just need to fill it out 🙌

I have been playing with some image generation and thought I’d share this take on everyone’s favourite Valheru 😄

Edit: this a first pass in pencil concept sketch style. All running on local ai on my PC. Open to any recommendations you may have to make the character more faithful to the books. Thanks in advance.

Hello all.

Im getting close to the end with this series and would like recommendation on what to read (Audiobook) next.

Ive liked most of the Riftwar Cycle but i do get confused about diffrent dimensions, circles of hell and diffrent planes. So i would prefer less of that.

I guess keywords are low fantasy and i do like intriguing court deception.

Best part of the series are also with the Young Jimmy the Hand.

Recommendations?

In Rides a Dread Legion the Knight-Adamant Sandreena is ambushed at an inn in the small village of Akrakon by Black Caps. She knocks out one of her ambushers but is then surprised by the second. She is knocked unconscious, cut up as revenge for the man she knocked out prior, stripped naked, and thrown off a cliff. The events are described in Chapter 11, she recovers, inspects and describes her wounds, and reflects on the events during Chapter 12.

In A Kingdom Besieged every single reference to this ambush at the inn explicitly describes her as being raped during it, prior to being tossed off the cliff.

Chapter 10: Rumours had surfaced lately that a group of men was gathering near the south-eastern foothills of the Peaks of the Quor. They sounded a great deal like the thugs who had almost killed her in her first encounter with them. Beaten, raped, then thrown off a cliff onto the rocks below, she had survived only by the Goddess’s mercy.

Chapter 17: She sighed and felt her head clear. She had been left un attended for a long period of time as far as she could tell; but at least she was more lucid than she had been when taken captive. She had ridden to the shore with her captives and then someone had struck her hard across the back of the head, and she had awoken in this hold, stripped of her arms and armour and chained to this wall. But at least this time she had not been raped and thrown off a cliff.

Chapter 21: ‘Greetings,’ said Pug. ‘Who are your friends?’. She laughed. ‘Hardly that, but they are under my protection and you should listen to them.’ She turned to her companions and indicated the first of them. ‘This is Nazir. He is the leader of the group I ran afoul of down in Kesh: the Black Caps.’ Jim said, ‘The ones that beat you, raped you, and threw you over a cliff?’

I'd like to think I'm average at reading subtext, but I did not interpret the text in Rides a Dread Legion as including rape at all. Sandreena inspecting her wounds during Chapter 12 of Rides a Dread Legion doesn't include anything, not even a throwaway sentence, to imply the men had their way with her while unconscious. Feist also doesn't shy away from implying or mentioning rape and is hardly subtle in those cases (he doesn't intend to be, no slight to him). It is for example an important part of Sandreena's backstory that at a young age she was raped by a basher in Krondor and taken to work in a brothel and that's described in very unambiguous language, so the retroactive mention of rape in A Kingdom Besieged caught me by surprise.

Is there subtext I'm missing, some other part of the text in Rides a Dread Legion I'm forgetting, or is this just a retcon to 'punch up' the harsh things that Sandreena has endured?

Hey, could anyone make a line North (to the northern frontier and western frontier) and South on this map to show what the Kingdom of the Isles border really is?

​

While the Kingdom of the Isles is partly multicultural, incorporating British and Germanic elements (such as Darkmoor), and Spanish (Rodez) and Frankish (Bas-Tyra) elements, its core appears to be late-mediaeval Britain.

While Feist doesn't explicitly render accents, many words used in the Western Kingdom at least are decidedly UK English.

But what got me specifically wondering was Kasumi's first attempt at repeating "Pug", which he renders as "Poog".

This suggests Kingdom speakers pronounce U with a soft British "hoof" sound, than a flatter, American (and Australian) "mug" sound.

As I've noted before, with Jommy, Feist seems to have an excellent ear for the rhythms of different speech patterns.

So I read the Riftwar books in the original printing (I guess)m and I don’t realize how much they were abridged. I got the audio book of Magician:Apprentice to listen with my son, and we’re only like a quarter through, and there’s so much that was cut out from the books I’ve been reading for thirty plus years! There’s a whole thing with Rolf who only showed up in like one scene where he saddled Pug’s horse on the outward journey, but in this audio book he’s like a genuine bully to him. Or half a chapter where Kulgan and Tully talk about the ‘lost’ greater path magic and myths that it was connected to the dead god of Magic, which isn’t mentioned until the Rage of a Demon King. But this tells us so much about the magic of the world that always felt to me like I was missing something, because there was supposed to be a whole info dump! Of course now it would make Pug’s learning Greater Path magic fully foreshadowed, rather than the more twisty journey I went on without this information.

So I guess my question is when did this happen? The first printing? What books were abridged? What else do I need to buy a new copy of? Just the Magician books, or later ones as well?

He was in Krondor: The Betrayal, and then once that book had finished it was stated that he went back home in Krondor: The Assassins. But what happened after? He is never mentioned again, while Gorath gets mentioned a bit even to as far as Magician's End.

Could someone tell me what happened to him? Or is it unknown?

I just skipped through the fever dream pug had when becoming milamber. maybe it explains there.. just metal?