Darkness That Comes Before [Hardcover]

 

 

Create your own review

I am a seriously avid and persistent reader. I thoroughly dislike cliche fantasy novels, and have been enjoying the fresh breeze that authors like GRR Martin, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, and Steven Erickson have been bringing into this genre. So when I was struggling to survive until the next installments of Lynch's GBs and Martin's SoIF, I came across this book. The reviews seemed to suggest this was deep in philosophy and rich with language. I love philosophy and I enjoy rich texts, so i picked it up. about 130 pages in and I felt like a deflated balloon. the word "disappointment" doesn't do this book justice.
The first reading (yep, i gave this book a second chance) was exhaustive not because of the rich text, but because I could not convince myself to flip the page. I knew there'd be just more of the same: nothing. i guess that explains the title of the trilogy: the prince of nothing...because this is the book that leaves you feeling nothing. Nothing for the plot, the characters, the story, the world. ah! how I suffered. Still I pushed it aside and gave it a second chance 2 months later.

You know that phrase "most things are better the second time around!"? well, that doesn't apply here.

Here are a list of the problems with this book:

- the narration is very detached. Even 1000s of years ago, when people told stories around the fire at night, they knew to engage their audience. well, clearly our engagement is not sought after by Bakker. he just goes on and on and we are left to interest ourselves by clinging on to some non-existing thread of amusement in the storyline. Furthermore, sometimes I couldn't even begin to visualize the scene because Bakker hadn't provided enough info. It was like the scene was evolving in some kind of chaulk sketch instead of a painted canvas.

- there is no catharsis. the pessimism and misery just piles on.

- theres no humour!!!!Bakker has obviously overlooked this critical element. Martin managed to pull humour out of his darkest, most disgusting characters. Even Abercrombie, with that horrifically pessimistic storyline in his First Law trilogy, managed to incorporate humour into his story. This element makes characters all the more human and multidimensional because in order to have a sense of humour one must have emotions and must feel. but Bakker's characters are sorely lacking this and his storyline is too serious and thereby, self-destructive.

- as a continuation of the previous point, whereas other successful authors have shown at least some of their characters to be like spice palettes of personality, Bakker's characters are very much one dimensional and bland. Therefore, they are unrelatable, and not quite human. They could easily be machines. in fact, this storyline would work better if Bakker just told us they were machines, because then we would have some justification for this clear absence of personality and complexity.

- ah...where is the philosophy in this book?

- why are the handful of female characters in this book all prostitutes? Some reviewers have related this to the author's perception of women, but I think its more telling of his weakness in writing women. He clearly has difficulty developing female characters that do not display utterly whorish personalities. i.e. he cannot untangle the complexity of a woman's mind without resorting to her sexuality. this is very bad for a writer!

- much - too much- is openly borrowed from the real world. Now, Martin did the same thing with the War of the Roses, but he made the story his own to the extent that I was not reminded of the basis of the story as I was reading. With Bakker though, I was reminded of it at every other syllable!

- rich text? perhaps, but I prefer to describe the richness of this book with a cake metaphor. Triple chocolate cake is delicious and rich, but if you put a layer of melted extra sweet white chocolate over a slice of this cake, it'll be too rich to eat and you might have cardiovascular problems before you finish eating it; there is a point when rich becomes poor, and in the realm of fantasy, this book is that point.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. it is highly overrated. Expect to stumble all the way to the end... if you get there.

I bought Bakker's "The Darkness That Comes Before" on a whim, and it turned out to be a deeply satisfying read, with three-dimensional characters, all flawed and harboring feelings of self-doubt, holding on to past anger and frustrations, yet trying to improve constantly. Although I agree with other reviewers who say that they would have liked to see strong female characters that weren't prostitutes, I feel that the women were still drawn up as three-dimensional human beings who fell into unfortunate circumstances but are doing their best to internally overcome their lot in life while at the same time searching for that one person whose love for them will transcend their situation.

Another extremely satisfying aspect of this novel is that Bakker attempts to show all characters and all sides equally. You get an impression of every single character's understanding of what is going on around them, allowing a detailed construction of the overarching story line, without feeling partial to anyone necessarily. His language can become sheer poetry at times, his conversations are realistic, all of his characters are desperately trying to hide their flaws and come out on the winning side of an argument.

Overall, a fantastically constructed, well thought-out novel, which deserves much attention. I will definitely be reading the other two books in this series.

This book has garnered outstanding reviews and the author is being hailed as the heir to Tolkien.

I'm not sure that I see why. While this first novel has some original touches and nicely avoids good-versus-evil cliches, it doesn't really stand out to me. The worldbuilding is that of generic epic fantasy, with civilizations lasting thousands of years, emperors, dark lords, and multiple species; some distinctly Frank Herbert-esque touches of religious cults, killing words and Mentat-like trances add interest, but are not really well developed. (I do think the Sranc, murderous creatures perhaps best described as goblin-elves, are interesting.) Rapid POV switches between characters who are broadly sketched rather than vividly developed makes the plot not so much hard to follow as hard to maintain interest in.

Sentence-level writing is sparse, at times to the point of dullness; there is an overall lack of imagery, and though I applaud the author's desire to avoid infodumps I think readers may find the setting generally underdeveloped. While reading, I never felt drawn into the world; not only visual but sensory detail is largely lacking from what feel like rapidly sketched scenes.

The work shows potential, but not brilliance, in my opinion.

This will probably appeal to fans of epic fantasy; I don't think it transcends the genre.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 26 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingriffictabulous
For those of you finding yourself growing out of the 90's Fantasy of Wheel of Time and looking for a more modern character driven story... STOP LOOKING. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Cal 0_o

5.0 out of 5 stars A good start.
A great starting fantasy book "The Darkness That Comes Before" is in my opinion a strong hard fantasy. Read more

Published on July 26 2008 by Ali Siddiqui

4.0 out of 5 stars A fresh and gritty approach to fantasy
This is a very interesting series, and I'll base my review on the complete series, as I assume you'd be interested in reading the whole story. Read more

Published on April 23 2008 by Thiago S. Silva

1.0 out of 5 stars Do Not Waste Your Time
As an avid fantasy reader I have enjoyed my way through R.A. Salvatore and his adventures with Drizzt as well as his ancillary novels; Robert Jordans Wheel of Time Series, Terry... Read more

Published on Aug 9 2007 by Drizzt 39

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Canadian "High" Fantasy
I enjoyed this. A warning to potential readers though: It's slow paced. But not boring! It's just that being about holy war, the subject matter's pretty heavy (especially in... Read more

Published on Sep 4 2006 by Barxrockingm

2.0 out of 5 stars Hard to like
A fantasy account of a crusade. Two stars for at least some interesting ideas and the odd exciting battle scene. However, there are major problems with this book... Read more

Published on Feb 22 2006

5.0 out of 5 stars Drew me into fantasy
I've never really been one for fantasy, but after reading about this on Amazon.ca's site, I picked it up and was thoroughly blown away by the intrinsic philosophies and... Read more

Published on Jan 11 2005 by Don Eglinski

5.0 out of 5 stars A hard book to put down!
Normally I do not read fantasy books, but I ran across this book in my public library and decided to try it. I absolutely loved it and couldn't put it down! Read more

Published on Aug 31 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars I really wanted to like this book too...
I began reading the book with high hopes - especially after reading some of the very positive reviews here. Read more

Published on Jun 27 2004 by N. Finney

5.0 out of 5 stars Great and Deep book
This is one of the best fantasy books I've read in a long time. Like one of the critics said above, the book brings you into a story thats been started a long time before... Read more

Published on Jun 19 2004 by Ifeoluwapo Eleyinafe

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 26 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!