Any body else read any of his stuff or am I all alone with that?
Any body else read any of his stuff or am I all alone with that?
A very nice guy (met him at a London signing a few years back) who's written one of the single most important, interesting, original and, above all, utterly pitiless works of epic fantasy of all time. His PRINCE OF NOTHING TRILOGY and its currently-in-progress sequel, THE ASPECT-EMPEROR TRILOGY, come across as LORD OF THE RINGS as written by Frank Herbert (complete with skinchangers). It's devastatingly bleak but relentlessly intelligent with lots of interesting ideas raised.
I still think it's funny that people stop reading the series because they hate Kellhus. Erm, that's the point ;-)
Cnaiur and Achamian are also very interesting characters, although I think Bakker needs to work on his women. I get that in his world women are downtrodden and oppressed, and the historical reasons why, but it still makes the series a hard read at times, and I know very few women who enjoy the series or can even finish it. He seems to be making amends for this with the introduction of the female sorcerers in the sequel trilogy, but I'm not sure if that's too little too late.
Also, the No-God is the best and by far the most WTF?-inducing Dark Lord fantasy has seen recently.
I've read all four books, love them!
Also, the fifth book of the overall SECOND APOCALYPSE series and the second of the ASPECT-EMPEROR sub-trilogy will be called THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR and will be published in early 2011, according to current info. The third book should follow at the end of 2012 and the final series (either a duology or trilogy depending on how things turn out) should continue to follow at 18-month intervals.
Bakker has also written a stand-alone thriller called NEUROPATH which is out now and is a bit pants, and has a second called THE DISCIPLE OF THE DOG due later this year, but he is putting other non-SECOND APOCALYPSE books on hold to concentrate on the main series afterwards.