[Shehzad]

I really liked that part of the growth of the characters: when Hari was prepared to drop his guard and become Caine for an instant: "I'll make you ****ing drown in it" while Caine exercised some Hari-like restraint-- this was less evident in HD than in BoT though.

[kater]

I thought BOT was clever because we got the reverse of the first, Hari is now Hari, he barely has the use of his legs and is in the sh!t, in order to overcome this he has to stop being two people and decide how its going to be, at which point Caine finally rears his head for good, issuing a big F*** you to all involved.

[Rob B]

I was enjoying how Caine would creep into Hari especially when he was dealing with Kollberg:

pg 314:

The rage drained out of Hari as though a scluice gate had opened in his heart, and Caine looked out from behind his eyes.

"Maybe I should just kill you. Maybe if I kill you, I'll get a better deal from the next chairman"

(p 316)
"Kollberg," Caine said, "I'm not gonna kill you. I'm not gonna kill you, because that wont hurt enough--"

Later on Overworld, after Hari and Duncan had spoke, Caine fights against using violence to solve his problems during his conversation with Ma'elKoth in the Brass Stadium.

Caine's internal dialogue pgs 419-420

Maybe I don't have to kill him.

Not only did he not have to kill Ma'elKoth here, he didn't have to kill him at all. That was a Caine pattern: when threatened, kil. But he could choose not to be a slave to his own past.

Which brings me to one of my thoughts of the book, which Eventine hit upon. Hari and Caine are the same person, just acting in thier percieved ways in seperate environments. A big part of the novel to me, is how Hari Michaelson and Caine resolve to be the same person despite their surroundings. Hari doesn't have to act completely like Caine when in Overworld and vice versa.

A bit down on page 420
Everyone thinks Caine is all of me; that's my edge.
The little bit that Duncan was in the book he was trying to show this to Hari, but Hari being the stubborn guy he is, it takes a while to settle in.

At the outset of the novel, Hari may be out of place on Overworld and vice versa, but as the character grows through the novel, this distinction is even less clear, if there at all.

[kater]

I think its a good point and the whole fact that the woman he loves has this love-hate relationship with Caine puts him off balance, effectively he is predominantly Caine but in order to please her he has to reverse this situation otherwise she can't accept him. It becomes ironic then that she also comes to suffer the dilemna when she is parted from the river.

[Rob B]

Good call Kater, about Pallas/Shanna and Chambaraya, I hadn't noted that.

Part of why Hari resolves his Caine aspect, and why he does virtually everything in the novel boils down to that good ol' four letter word:


LOVE

[kater]

I think a key theme is also that Love is so often intertwined with pain and suffering, it becomes more clear in BOT but that once you've loved and lost and sunk as low as your gonna get, there really is only one way to go. I think this is what struck me so profoundly about Stover's writing, Hari/Caine suffers so badly and always you feel really terrible and then it gets worse but in the end its not as bad as you feared, because once you get over that fear of loss things work out.(sorry poorly explained, I had it for a minute there :rolleyes: )
Fitz if you look at the main characters, they all suffer these dichotomies, Ma'elkoth goes from god to human being, magic to technology, Hari/Caine, Shanna/Pallas, Overworld offers the environment for the creation of an alter-ego much like Bruce Wayne/Batman that reflects a part of your character which is more obviously hidden in the 'real' world. Its to Stover's credit that he then slaps you across the face by asking "Is there a real world?" and this is what all the characters eventually learn in their own way.

[Rob B]

You say dichotomy, I say duality, but yeah, that's an underlying theme that was prevalent to me as well.

Agree about Stover getting us to ponder about whether our world is the Real World--to me that's the same effect that 1984 still has on me, are we proles? Are there aktirs among us?
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One thing I was expecting, that could have been somewhat predictable if handled by a lesser author was to make Kollberg and Ma'elKoth the same person.

In my first reading of the book, I was trying to make connections between the two, looking at their speech patters, etc. expecting there to be some kind of connection, primarily that Kolberg was Ma'elKoth.

[kater]

I think once you understand what he was trying to do with BOT the reason he didn't do it became clear but at the time I can't say I associated them.

[Shehzad]

Same here. I always thought of Ma'ElKoth and Kohlberg as two different adversaries that Cain/Hari had to deal with in two different ways. At the same time, I thought Ma'ElKoth was a more sympathetic character than Kohlberg. Previous discussions have brought up the fact that there are many characters in the book who could be considered to be doing good. While Caine's motivations for what he usually does are not the purest, the events in HD for him are driven by love. Ma'ElKoth is essentially a benevolent dictator who's trying to better the lot of his subjects. Pallas Ril is a more traditionally "good" character, and her motivations are more abstract, centered around traditional ideas of "honor" and "justice" which do not always work in the real (well... sorta) world. The only true malevolent characters are Berne and Kohlberg. The others are mere adversaries for Caine.

[kater]

I never felt that Ma'elkoth was an 'enemy' and that there was a certain sympathy to the character that was destroyed by having him sent to Earth, I think he represented the 'better' part of megalomania in that he really did have his 'children's' best interests at heart and Caine seemed to realise this and was Pallas/Shanna not involved I doubt Caine would have gone near him.