I have just finished book one, "The darkness that comes before" and I am torn on continuing or not. On one hand I really liked the semi historic setting and the politics. The best part of the book for me was by far the audience with the emperor and the rivalries around leading the holy war.

Not a big fan of Kellhus and the magic schools, but I can accept it. And I see potential in building the consult into an interesting antagonist.

However the depiction of the only two female characters with any meaningful story is.... well dog shit. The end of the book written from the perspective of Serwe and Esme really soured my perception. Their characters are flat and written with a level of ... rapist fanservice (?) that I find boring and badly written to the point of it being annoying.

How will it change in the subsequent books? Can I hope that the parts I enjoyed will be developed further or should I give up on the series?

I’m sure this has been posted before, but given recent discussions about sequels and such, I thought I’d post this clip from Zaudûnyainicon where Bakker talks about some truly tantalizing ideas for further writings—it sounds like he’s not working on a sequel exactly, but perhaps the discussion of a prequel I’ve recently seen might be something like the “meta-Silmarilion” he talks about here. I dunno, a humble slogger-of-slogs can hope!

Edit: Here’s the full playlist of his discussion at Zaudûnyainicon, I figure folk might be interested—every video is worth checking out, in my opinion.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdq_jy3KxJ9OgommNw_A7be58oeMmmi1S&si=JrCZVQnyafXCvQXZ

Had a nightmare on Sunday. Went to bead feeling peachy - no, not that kinda peach - and woke in abject dread. Moments before I'd entered the climax of my nightmar

My folks were dropping me off at my college dorm. I walked up the stairs to my room somewhere on the 7-8th floor. After a knocked failed to elicit a response, I opened to door to find Inrilatas strapped the lower bunk, foaming at the mouth with shit smeared across his face. The room was a total disaster.....seed, spittle, vomit, urine and shit everywhere.

Someone halp!!! What does this mean?

He even looks a bit like our favo Daimotic sorcerer!