The Warrior-Prophet
Book 2 of The Prince of Nothing
R. Scott Bakker
Penguin Canada, 600 pages
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R. Scott Bakker’s ambitious and literate epic fantasy trilogy, The
Prince of Nothing,
continues in this second volume.
In the land of Eärwa, in the region of the Three Seas,
the leader of the Inrithi faith has called a Holy War against the
heathen
Fanim, in order to liberate the holy city of Shimeh.
A vast host has gathered in the Nansur Empire, composed of faithful
from every
nation of the Three Seas under the leadership of some of the greatest
nobles of the age. This
huge army
has been delayed by infighting and political maneuvering; but the
conflicts
have come to a surprising conclusion in the granting of Generalship not
to the
Emperor’s famous warrior nephew Ikurei Conphas, but to Cnaiür urs
Skiötha, a mad,
battle-scarred Chieftain of the heathen Scylvendi. Now, at last, the
Holy War can
march.
Drusas Achamian, Mandate sorcerer and spy,
has been joyfully reunited with his lover, the prostitute Esmenet. They
travel with the
mysterious Prince Anasûrimbor Kellhus of Atrithau, who has asked
Achamian to be his teacher. Achamian can no longer escape his certainty
that Kellhus
is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, according to which the
return of a
descendent of the lost royal line of Anasûrimbor heralds the
imminence of the Second Apocalypse. He can’t share this knowledge with
his companions,
for they would not believe him; the Mandate is alone in its certainty
of the
continued existence of the dreaded Consult, the cabal of generals and
sorcerers
that raised the No-God Mog-Pharau and precipitated the First
Apocalypse. Nor
does he wish to inform his Mandate brethren, who would stop at nothing
to seize
and imprison the Harbinger. For just as he’s certain that Kellhus
presages
the coming of terrible events, Achamian has begun to believe that
Kellhus
may be something more--perhaps even a savior.
Unbeknownst to Achamian, Kellhus is not a Prince at all, but
a Dûnyain, part of a secret monastic sect whose members possess
almost superhuman powers of intellect and persuasion. In dreams,
Kellhus has
been summoned to the holy city of Shimeh by his father,
Anasûrimbor Moënghus, also one of the
Dûnyain. The Holy War is a means for Kellhus to reach his father;
it is also, in the way of the
Dûnyain, a thing for him to dominate, to manipulate to his
purpose. Through
carefully calculated speech and action he convinces an ever-widening
circle of
people, including Achamian and Esmenet, that he is not simply a man of
extraordinary gifts, but...perhaps...a Prophet. Only Cnaiür, who
knows who and
what Kellhus is, isn’t fooled. But he and Kellhus have a bargain, for
Cnaiür
too searches for Kellhus’s father, intent on a mission of vengeance.
For now
Cnaiür keeps Kellhus’s secret--even as his hatred of the man, at
whose hands he has
suffered humiliation and worse, grows.
As the soldiers of the Holy War battle their
way toward Shimeh, winning victory, enduring defeat, sowing chaos and
atrocity,
the Consult stirs--both within, through skin-spies that are capable of
mimicking any form and have replaced many real nobles and soldiers, and
without,
as a hideous and powerful being observes the army’s progress from
above. Like
Kellhus, the Consult seeks to dominate the Holy War: just as Achamian
suspects, the
Second Apocalypse is near. Meanwhile, in Shimeh, Anasûrimbor
Moënghus waits for his son, his purpose the only mystery that
Kellhus, with all the power of
his Dûnyain intellect, can’t unravel.
The preceding novel, The Darkness that Comes
Before, was one of the most impressive books I read last year. Even
so, I had a number of reservations, finding it too digressive at times
in its preoccupation with scene-setting and with the backstories of its
protagonists. No
more. All that careful preparation pays off in The Warrior-Prophet,
in
which, because the world and its inhabitants have already been so
thoroughly established, very little digression is needed. At six
hundred pages, one couldn’t
exactly call this a lean novel (a baroque density of form and style
being an
integral quality of Bakker’s writing), but it is a well-knit and
muscular one,
with a more straightforward plotline than its predecessor and a
headlong
narrative momentum that keeps the reader riveted to the page. In some
ways it’s less
character-centered than the first volume, for where Darkness
focused most intensely on the many viewpoint characters, whose
struggles and choices often eclipsed the larger drama stirring around
them, in The
Warrior-Prophet the larger drama dominates, particularly the
progress of the Holy War (though in many ways the Holy War is itself a
character, complete with its own viewpoint: an omniscient, god’s-eye
perspective that encompasses the entire field of battle). Drawing
inspiration from the First Crusade, Bakker compellingly dramatizes the
eternal
paradox of wars of religion, where faith and atrocity walk hand in
hand, and
religious fervor is interpreted as divine right. The martial scenes,
which depict
battle in all its sweeping horror and magnificence, are among the best
I’ve
ever read.
The greater emphasis on action doesn’t
eclipse characterization, which as before is very fine. Bakker pulls no
punches, delving unflinchingly into the exalted heights and seamy
depths of human
nature; many of the players, such as the ego-mad Conphas, are truly
repellant, and
even those who are sympathetic aren’t fully so, not even Achamian, who
is
fatally wracked by selfishness and doubt. Esmenet, whom I found a
little wooden in the
previous novel, comes into her own in this one, a woman wrestling not
only with
the challenges of her own fate but with a woman’s role in a world ruled
by
men--a somewhat hackneyed theme that’s frequently too didactic when
addressed
by women and too earnest when attempted by men, but is handled by
Bakker with
both sensitivity and an admirable sense of cultural context. Once
again, though, it’s
Kellhus who dominates, in every sense of the word. The process by which
he
wills and schemes himself to Prophethood is conveyed mainly from the
outside,
through others’ fearful or skeptical or ecstatic perceptions of him;
it’s quite
a trick to create a character whose inner processes and outer aspect
are almost
totally at odds, who yet is fully integrated and believable. Just as
impressive, Bakker succeeds in making Kellhus’s awesome intellectual
superiority
completely convincing--a feat that other writers, essaying similar
characters, have carried off
far less well.
Underpinning everything is the meticulous world building. Eärwa
is a creation of enormous depth, unique in detail, fascinating in
custom and history. No aspect has been neglected; it is, for instance,
one of the
few fantasy settings I’ve encountered in which there appears to be a
real
literature--literature for literature’s sake, that is, not mere
window-dressing or a way for the author to sneak in a few infodumps via
an ancient
document or two. Creating a world is not so difficult--anyone, with a
little
invention and a lot of time, can do it--but to create a world so
nuanced, so
consistent, so fraught with the kind of moral ambiguity we daily
encounter in our own
non-fantasy lives, is far more difficult. Magic and monstrosities
aside, one feels
one is reading about a place as real (or a real place as convincingly
reinvented) as Robert Graves’s Rome. It’s a subtlety, and an
intelligence, that informs and challenges at every
level of this commanding novel.
The Holy War stands poised upon a turning point as the book
concludes, as do most of the protagonists. But the meta-story--the
nature and intent of the Consult, the approach of the Second
Apocalypse--has only
just begun to unfold. Much is promised for the third volume (which
completes, I understand, only one portion of an even bigger story). In
true epic
tradition, The Warrior-Prophet doesn’t stand alone; a
précis of the previous book is provided at the start, but this
is not a conventional
“story so far” rehash to clue new readers in, rather a conceptual guide
to
world, theme, and character that provides a refresher course for those
who’ve
already read the first book. To properly appreciate the scope, sweep,
and power of
this series, not to mention its complex thematic structure, it must be
read
from the beginning. And it should be read. Violent, passionate, darkly
poetic,
seethingly original, these are books that deserve attention from all
true
connoisseurs of fantasy.
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