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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Overlook TP
Manufacturer: Overlook TP
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 560
Printing Date: January 30, 2007
Publishing house: Overlook TP
Sale Popularity Level: 192213
Studio: Overlook TP
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
The Darkness That Comes Before, R. Scott Bakker's magnificent debut, drew thunderous acclaim from reviewers and fellow fantasy authors. Readers were invited into a darkly threatening, thrillingly imaginative universe as fully realized as that of any in modern fantasy and introduced to one of the genre's great characters: the powerful warrior-philosopher Anasûrimbor Kelhus, on whom the fate of a violently apocalyptic Holy War rests. Bakker's follow up to The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet enticed readers further into the richly imagined world of myth, violence, and sorcery. The startling and far-reaching answers to these questions are brought into thrilling focus in The Thousandfold Thought, the conclusion to The Prince of Nothing trilogy. Casting into question all the action that has taken place before, twisting readers' intuitions in unforeseen directions, remolding the fantasy genre to broaden the scope of intricacy and meaning, R. Scott Bakker has once again written a fantasy novel that defies all expectations and rewards the reader with an experience unlike any to be had in the canon of fantasy literature.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I will give Bakker one thing, he had some original thoughts and writing in a genre that has increasingly become stale and cliche`. However, he is overly dramatic and instead of telling just the story, he twists and turns and adds loads of description and characters that I can only describe as distractions. It seemed like in order to make the book unpredictable, he just kept introducing fake threads.
In the whole book I would say there is one character that you really like (Akka) and one character that you grow to like but with reservations (Cnaiur). You keep thinking Kellus is going to change, reach some conclusion that makes him less robotic and souless, but right when that point seems like it is coming to pass, he changes his personality and the book ends.
SPOILER ALERT
Seriously, this ending was a replica of the Soprano's series finale. I personally believe that people who like the ending are really just saying they like it because they liked the series and think that Bakker had some deeper meaning. In truth I think everyone hates the ending and I almost think Bakker was forced to finish the book early or has an inflated view of his own intelligence. To be honest I loved the last chapter, I loved Achamian telling everyone off (especially Esmenet) but I thought it was going to lead to a thread that would have Kellus changing and Akka changing and Esmenet returning to Akka or at least dying (I hated her if you couldn't tell).
SPOILER OVER
No Bakker messed up and got too complex for his own intelligence and tried to turn this book into some work of abstract art. I needed to vent here I was so angry when the book ended. Bakker turned his potentially very good series into a book I would recommend no one reads because it doesn't end. I would have preferred a crappy hokey ending that closed all the threads to the stupid "reality is far more complex than to have endings and beginnings, this chapter is over but the story never ends" BS ending Bakker did.
Don't waste time with this series unless you really like insanely open endings or you enjoy being angry.
Rated by buyers -
Ok, I am in the middle of the book. While I like the story it very confusing with so many char. in the story. I am also in the part of the book where a char we think is dead is alive again so that does not help. What I need to the index as a seperate book as I spend 1/2 my time flipping back and forth. I really want to thank the author for finnishing the story in 3 books, see (WOT) OMG is that long and not done yet or several others that I am waiting for the last or subsequent to the last book to come out.
Rated by buyers 
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First, I'll lend my voice to the scattered reviews that I've seen, lauding this as the subsequent best thing shince Martin's Ice and Fire series. Sadly, I'm a picky reader and find myself putting possibly great books down within the very first 10 pages because they don't sufficiently convince me early...or they don't at least entice me to read further. This series enticed without fully convincing within the very first 10, but by the end of book one I was hooked, and by the end of book two I was swept up in the crusade, as helpless as all of the other participants from stepping off the road.
I'll make this claim about the ending. It couldn't have ended any other way. I would even venture that those who were frustrated with the it, or felt that it was incomplete didn't know what the story was about. That's really okay, because I don't think the main characters know what the story is about either, and that's the beauty of it. By the time one of them finally gets it, it's too late, and even the all-knowing demi-god among men, Kelhus has bought into his own narrative so completely that he is rendered flawed by his own infalibility.
Throughout this series capper the enemies remain ominous, but I'm no longer as clear who the bad-guys are. I follow the crusade with a furoius interest, like watching an inevitable car-crash, but I don't hope the semi takes out the dump truck by this point, I see that there aint going to be any real winners,or (rightful winners) and I'm left awestruck by the sheer pathology of it all...
I confess I don't have it all unraveled. I don't know what everything ads up to. I do know that it didn't take rooting for a side to have the wind kicked out of me many times throughout this ending. I do know that the surface conflict and the more sinister "real" conflict with the Construct are absolutely engaging, but that by the end they have taken a back seat to the truly scary enemy in this book, which I have a sense for, but don't think I should try to put into words here.
That's important, becuase I think its a read that's as challenging as you want to make it, but also works on a sheer conflict driven level for almost the whole book, up to but possibly exluding the ending, which if read straight, would seem much more like a cliff-hanger than it is.
Rated by buyers 
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Imagine you're reading the Lord of the Rings. You get to the battle of Pellenor Fields, you see a Ringwraith killed and a huge army of Sauron's minions destroyed. Then imagine that instead of finishing the book, doing things like, you know, DESTROYING SAURON, Tolkien just held a coronation for Aragorn and ended it at that, with the fate of Middle-Earth still up for grabs. That would be this book.
This trilogy could have been done in 1 1/2 - 2 volumes. Which would have been great, because it would have left room for the story to actually have an ending. But instead we have three bloated texts full of revelations and re-revelations of Kellhus' awesomeness, accompanied by descriptions of battles that somehow end up being dry and utterly boring. I'm giving two stars because Bakker has quite a way with word, but he has to learn when to stop using them and start advancing his plot.
Rated by buyers -
No one remarked on this one yet: What gave me the shivers is the gradually revealed SF background in this fantasy setting. Although it is more hinted at than fully described, the idea of creating a fantasy environment with an ancient alien crash landing is gorgeous! And its a grey black scenario that Bakker creates: Sorcery against genetical engineering, absolute hostile behaviour of the alien arrivals (instead of "here's how to build a warp-drive works, folks"), the near elimination of the Non-Men (Tolkien's elves lent to these) by applying alien gen-tech. As said: You don't find it as part of the main plot, but it is all there, mostly in the very well made glossary, the Sagas and Seswata's dreams
Apart from that: I just love sorcerers that wield the power of tactical nuke warheads in battle!
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