I happen to be exactly half way through the
Prince of Nothing trilogy (half finished with book 2), and I'm pretty disappointed with it.
My comments below aren't really a response to the review above, which basically details only the plot, but is instead my reaction to the work.
The story seems fine, but the prose is, at best, clumsy and the characters are largely one dimensional. The author uses such a limited palette and lack of nuance that the whole thing is like a cartoon world (a world heavily cribbed from the era of the Crusades - a world of Holy War that unimaginatively apportions both "scimitars" and "Jihad" to the "bad guys" as well as replicating the various squabbles/self-inflicted disasters experienced by our own world's "good guy" Crusaders).
One bad writing example that especially grates on my ear is the overuse of the word
fool (and fools/foolish/foolishness). Characters are always saying "I'm such a fool" or "He's such a fool" - over and over and over again. It's practically the only way that characters express views of each other. Not only is it lazy writing, but it's not realistic (or nuanced). In real life, while it's not too uncommon for me to think "How can such an otherwise smart and reasonable person say such a thing?", I rarely think of that person as an unmitigated fool. And Bakker should know better, being an English Lit kind of a guy. Clown, ass, oaf, berk, simpleton, chump, gull, mooncalf, mug, jackass, idiot, coxcomb, prat, git, muttonhead, etc. - all these, plus many other earthier and/or more imaginative options are available, but I guess Bakker's just a fool writer.
After book 1, I had hoped that someone (his non-existent editor, perhaps?) might have given Bakker a thesaurus, but if so, Bakker didn't get the hint - on page 10 of book 2, Bakker used
fool no less than five times in the space of a few lines. I guess it was some sort of statement that he's not fooling around. I've now made something of a game of it - how many pages can Bakker go without using it?
Another example of simplistic, crayon-world writing occurs on page 106-107 of book 2, as follows:
"What do you mean, my prince?" Xinemus asked.
"We think things will be more glorious than they are, that they'll unfold according to our hopes, our expectations ..." He unstopped his waterskin, took too long a drink. "The Nansur actually have a word for it," he continued. "We 'idealize.'"
Statements such as this, Cnaiür had decided, partially explained the awe and adoration Proyas roused in his men, including those who were names in their own right, such as Gaidekki and Ingiaban. The mixture of honesty and insight...
Ah, to be able to use the word 'idealize' - awe-inspiring indeed!! (And as a bonus, farther down on page 107,
fool is used three more times!)
As can also be seen from this brief passage, the writing is pedestrian and the neologisms are leaden (the name of one Coithus (a significant character appearing elsewhere) seems to me to have been particularly ill "conceived").
So far as the touted boundry-pushing and inclusion of philosophy that I've read about elsewhere, I don't really see it. There are tons of philosophical fantasies out there -
Mikhail Bulgakov,
Jorge Borges,
Brooks Hansen,
Victor Pelevin,
Ismail Kadare,
Salman Rushdie,
Jose Saramago,
Flann O'Brien,
Angela Carter,
Cormac McCarthy,
Alasdair Gray,
G. K. Chesterton,
Haruki Murakami,
Robert Irwin, and many, many more.
My problem with Bakker's philosophy so far is that it basically all falls in the oh-my-god-thats-so-obvious category and/or the we-hashed-that-one-out-in-jr-high-school category. None of it is thought provoking. I've had more thought provoking philosophical questions come up in YA work (
Le Guin -
Earthsea,
Langton -
Hall Family Chronicles,
L'Engle -
Wrinkle in Time series, etc.)
For straight-up epic fantasy well seasoned with philosophy, not so many. Still, many well written epic fantasies include in an off-hand fashion more thought-provoking philosophy than does Bakker's laborious dialectics.
J. R. R. Tolkein,
Guy Gavriel Kay,
Jack Vance,
M. John Harrison, etc.
There are, however, three previous epic fantasies that are strongly philosophical that tower over the
Prince of Nothing trilogy - both in terms of philosophy and especially in terms of the quality of the writing and storytelling:
Gene Wolfe's massive
Sun sequence,
E. R. Eddison's
Zimiamvian trilogy (plus his
The Worm Ouroboros - possibly my personal favorite fantasy book), and
T.H. White's
The Once and Future King.
So, as to Bakker's originality, you can either say that, yes, there's nothing new under the sun, or, you could say that Bakker has written something shining and new, except that he did it
badly. I guess my take (so far!) is that Prince is a fairly generic sort of story, badly told, that includes some interesting elements, but that it fall far short of its ambition. In the hands of another author, this might have been a compelling read.
This might sound like a harsh indictment, but consider, not all books can be great books. In fact, almost all books perforce fall short of the Platonic ideal (there is only one
Pale Fire). In your quest for Great Books, one must wade through many a mire (this being one of them), but even mires can have their occasional charms that sustain you. Most books fail to meet high expectations, and this one is one of them.
However I think there's only one reason for Kelhus to destroy the Consult, which is that they are the only force that can challenge him and stand in the way of him subjugating the entire world. But, perhaps he thinks he can influence the Consult in the same way he did the Holy War and thus learn their secrets too. Just conspiracy theorising out loud.
