hunters_forest | Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising

carmentalis.livejournal.com posting in

Thank you everybody for such a fantastic start on Monday!

Today it's chapter 1, where we meet a certain traveler called Damien, an adept called Ciani, and we hear rumours about a certain someone called the Hunter.

Plot summary

After dust, danger, and crossing mountain ranges where the paths go uphill both ways, Damien Kilcannon Vryce arrives in Jaggonath, on a mission from God. Or at least, on a mission from his superiors in Ganji.

After marvelling that people in Jaggonath are not nearly as afraid of the dark as everyone else he knows, his curiosity takes him to the local Fae Shoppe. In the shop, he encounters far more Worked objects than he ever thought possible, as well as a shop assistant who gets very little attention once the shop owner, certified adept and local Lore-Master enters the stage. Damien, despite his instant attraction to her, does the sensible thing and takes her out to dinner so he can get a competent introduction to this place that is so different from what he is used to. The matters first and foremost on his mind are Forest and rakh, and Ciani chooses to speak of the former.

She explains about the Forest's nature as a focal point of the dark fae, and about the creature called the Hunter, who dominates the Forest and uses it to snare his victims. She offers some insights on him - that he must be an adept, that she thinks the Hunter is a man, and that she believes him strong enough to rule the Forest rather than be ruled by it.

Damien takes Ciani home - road dust thwarts any progress beyond that - then returns to the destination of his journey: the Cathedral of Jaggonath. There he gets mistaken for someone unimportant, drops his name, and immediately is ushered in for a midnight chat with His Holiness.

Quotes

The sensible thing to do would be to find an inn and drop off his things, get his mount under guard, and affix a few wards to his luggage . . . but when had he ever done the sensible thing, when curiosity was driving him?
Be honest, Damien. You’ve always been attracted to things faewise, and here’s a true adept; would her looks have made much of a difference?
Set against the dark evening sky, the building glowed as though fae-lit, and drew worshipers to it like moths to a flame. On its broad steps milled dozens - no, hundreds of worshipers, and their faith tamed the wild fae that flowed about their feet, sending it out again laden with calmness, serenity, and hope. Damien stared at it, awed and amazed, and thought, Here, in this wild place, the Dream is alive. A core of order, making civilization possible. If only it could have been managed on a broader scale . . .
It was a focal point of the wildest fae, which in an earlier, less sophisticated age had been called evil. Now they knew better. Now they understood that the forces which swept across this planet’s surface were neither good nor evil in and of themselves, but simply responsive. To hopes and fears, wards and spells and all the patterns of a Working, dreams and nightmares and repressed desires. When tamed, it was useful. When responding to man’s darker urges, to the hungers and compulsions which he repressed in the light of day, it could be deadly. Witness the Landing, and the gruesome deaths of the first few colonists. Witness the monsters that Damien had fought in the Dividers, shards of man’s darkest imaginings given fresh life and solid bodies, laying traps for the unwary in the icy wilderness.
Witness the Forest.
“There’s a creature that lives within the Forest - maybe a demon, maybe a man - which has forced a dark sort of order upon the wild fae there. Legend has it that he sits at the heart of the whirlpool like a spider in its web, waiting for victims to become trapped in its power. His minions can leave the Forest and do, in a constant search for victims to feed to him.”
“You’re talking about the Hunter.”
In a whisper that was nine parts awe, and one part fear: "Father Vryce is a sorceror..."

Thoughts

Damien's intro always makes me imagine the new sheriff riding along the deserted, dusty main street in a Western, just as all of Jaggonath has a touch of the Wild West. An obvious and intentional image, I'm sure, but it never fails to amuse me.
Even with this first introduction of the fae, the rules are laid down. It responds to hopes, dreams, but also fears and nightmares - essentially, thoughts can become reality. It's quite a twisted concept of magic, and unlike how this is usually handled in fantasy. What do you think about it?
To Damien, a Westerner, it is startling to see the differences between Jaggonath and the West. A Fae Shoppe with so many Worked items, people who stay out when they should be protecting themselves from the threats of the night, different customs... And yet he adapts almost immediately to the situation. Before, I've never noticed that his curiosity is one of the first things we learn about him. What about you?
We see the first description of the Hunter in this chapter - the resident evil demon, or maybe a human adept who dominates the concentration of dark fae that is the Forest. To the people in the East, he is an omnipresent evil that cannot be eradicated, but very little concrete information is available. People seem to have arranged their lives around him, but they know nothing beyond speculation. Thoughts?
What do you think about the differences between East and West? There is very little we learn about the West throughout the books (actually this chapter might be the most informative one), but the East seems very strange in some aspects to a Westerner like Damien. Here, sorcery is thriving, while it is not welcomed at all by the Church at the same time.

Like before, feel free to start your own comment threads, join others, and generally post to your heart's content. :-)

On Monday, we'll continue with chapters 2, 3 and 4 - three chapters at once, since they are very short ones. You can find the schedule here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nebulia.livejournal.com

Yeah, I heard spaghetti western music when Damien came onto the scene.

Interestingly, though, right away I was hesitant about Ciani. Like, I've occasionally had issues with the characterizations of women in fantasy novels, and I thought it was just my own bias initially. I really wanted to like her, but I thought I was being prejudiced. But right away there just seemed something...not right about her and I figured I was being ridiculous. In the end, it ended up being her desire for knowledge, I think. Which isn't to say I don't hunger for knowledge, I do, but when that hunger overcame everything--feelings, even logic...I dunno.

On the other hand, I've also always loved her character; she's beautiful but she's also very flawed and thought I don't necessarily like her, her character is fascinating. Like a car crash or something, only not as bloody or destructive.

What were everyone else's impressions of Ciani?

From:

carmentalis.livejournal.com

I remember being fairly uninterested in Ciani during my first read, until somewhere in the middle of the book. I had her pegged as the typical female love interest, and that Damien immediately attempted to seduce her didn't help that impression. I liked her more during re-reads, mostly because I was watching for other signs in her then and she felt more rounded.

Her hunger for knowledge actually works very well for me, on several levels. On the one hand, it's interesting to see it in action already in this chapter, and then turn into such a vital matter later on. And of course there's the mirror to Tarrant. They both are adepts, they both have this yearning to know things, and it lets them connect. I actually think they're very similar characters, only that Ciani lacks a lot of the darkness. That they are both so curious is something I like about both of them, because it gives them an aspect that is often lacking in fictional characters. They want to know, not because they need the knowledge to achieve something, but because the knowledge in its pure form is worth something to them.

From:

trobadora

They want to know, not because they need the knowledge to achieve something, but because the knowledge in its pure form is worth something to them.

Yes, that is such a rare thing in fiction! And it's one of the things Friedman really does right - her protagonists are curious, they want to know things, they're never willfully blind. It's one of the more endearing things about Damien too, actually - he never turns down knowledge, no matter the source. None of that "you're evil, therefore I will discard everything you say" crap from him!

From:

carmentalis.livejournal.com

No, Damien is more the type for "you're evil, but you're also smart and you spent 900 years on research that could be useful. I'll kill you later, once you've told us all we need to know and once we've had a few chats to satisfy my curiosity about you."

It just annoys me whenever a book gives me characters who only want to find out what they need to know to survive to the last page.

From:

trobadora

Yep, that's what I like about Damien. (Can you tell I'm seriously annoyed by the "you're evil, therefore nothing you say can be genuine or true" attitude you see so often? *g*)

And I like characters who are interested in things - it makes them more alive, more real, and less puppets who are just there to execute a plot.

From:

carmentalis.livejournal.com

It's the result of every writer having seen Star Wars. Do not listen to the dark side, it may suck you in and then you'll do nasty things, like French-kiss your sister.

Characters need interests. They rarely enough get to have actual hobbies or pet projects because all that only distracts from central plots. Seeing Gerald with his huge biology experiments, or Ciani when she's happy to give away a valuable item for news that may or may not be immediately useful is such a nice change. And even Zen, with his manic research. They all like to know, because it might be useful one day.

From:

trobadora

Do not listen to the dark side, it may suck you in and then you'll do nasty things, like French-kiss your sister.

Best summary ever. :D

I love the way they all have interests - and the variety of it. Sometimes it takes an unhealthy turn, as with Zen. Whereas with Gerald, there were times when it was almost a redeeming trait - the one human interest, that wasn't twisted into a demonic hunger.

From:

carmentalis.livejournal.com

You could say that Gerald's need for knowledge took a really, really unhealthy turn in the prologue...

I agree abot the redeeming trait. It's what connects him to his human self - he's wanted to learn and to know more so badly. Someone who really learned the lesson that knowledge is power.

From:

trobadora

Oh yes, good point about the prologue. I love how nuanced it is - how the very same thing can be bad in one place and good in another. Friedman is really good with this stuff.

It occurs to me that the thirst for knowledge is a very appropriate theme for a story set in this particular world, which began with the loss of knowledge, their Terran heritage, in Casca's sacrifice.

From:

carmentalis.livejournal.com

Knowledge and curiosity seems to be quite a central theme, doesn't it? We get it with Gerald, who's considering it one of the most important things in life. Damien, who gets introduced already as driven by curiosity. Ciani, too. Zen, with a slightly more obsessed view. Narilka, to some extent. And as you say, the underlying theme of lost knowledge and the struggle to either regain it or replace it with something of equal value.

And when you think about it, the final enemy got beaten because Gerald and Damien sat down and figured it out - and it wasn't a magic weapon, it was, essentially, knowing about semantics.

Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising - Chapter 1

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