Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising - Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9

[trobadora]

And on we go – four chapters this time, since they're very short ones.

Plot summary

Chapter 6
The ship Neoqueen Matilla arrives in the harbour, weeks late. An enraged merchant waiting for his cargo discovers that on the way, the pilot simply forgot the route and all the landmarks. And he's not the only one who seems to have inexplicably forgotten important parts of his life. The ship has acquired three passengers on the way, but the crew all seems to have lost part of themselves.

Chapter 7
The Patriarch remembers his mother. She seems to have been addicted to drugs and alcohol. The doctor had warned her that the drugs and the alcohol would end up eating her brain. Coming home from school one day, he finds her dead – her brain literally eaten by faeborn creatures.

Chapter 8
Damien stays up to observe the true night and only goes to sleep after Domina has risen. Then he is woken again by an explosion. He runs to find the origin – the Fae Shoppe. It's been ripped apart by the explosion: there's been an attack, and a chain reaction in Ciani's wards. Senzei Reese turns up, and Damien realises Ciani must have been in the shop when it hit.

Chapter 9
The mysterious non-human strangers, unhappy that their attack on Ciani didn't go quite as expected, think about going home. Their leader decides that they won't go just yet.

Quotes

• "Two of Prima's months, boy - that's how long he said it would take. Two lesser months, come hell or white water or smashers from Novatlantis. And how long has it been, I ask you? A good three shortmonths, going on four - and my buyers threatening to blow my whole business to hell - so where the vulk have you been?"


• "It was like something took a part of you out," the first mate whispered. "While you were sleeping, it'd happen. And then when you woke, that part just wasn't there. It never came back, either. The captain ... it won't do you much good to talk to him, Mr. Jarrom. I say just take your cargo and go, and feel lucky it got here at all. And hope that whatever got us isn't contagious." He looked up again, met Jarrom's gaze with his own. "You catch my drift?"


• In the kitchen, dozens of things chittered; dark things, wet things, things with shining claws and sharp teeth that dripped bright crimson on the Everclean tiles. Things that sat on his mother's shoulders, dipping bright claws into her matted hair and bringing up soft, slimy tidbits to eat.
  He managed to take a step backward. Heart pounding. Mind reeling.
  Two steps. Another.
  It'll eat up your brain, the doctor had said.
  He ran.


• He tried to get some sense of the local currents - to read who might be Working this special darkness, and why - but it was like trying to focus on a single ripple in the midst of white-water rapids. At last, exhausted by the effort, he let his Vision fade. Back home he could have identified every sorceror in town by now, and spotted those few who dared to Work the stuff - but the currents here were so volatile and so complex that his skill was barely more than a child's by comparison.


• "You don't know what it's like, seeing something like that happen, feeling like you could stop it if you could just figure out what to do ... and then not being able to. Standing there helplessly, unable to save someone you care about ..."
  "I do understand," the Patriarch said quietly. "More than you know."

Thoughts

• It's very effective how Friedman evokes the terror of the memory-eating creatures - in most cases, she doesn't even explain what it was that was taken, she just hints at it. Which is all the more terrifying, I'd say: playing with the reader's imagination.


• The Patriarch's memories: More about faeborn creatures - fears, become literally true. Does it become clear here who summoned the creatures - the mother or the child?


• Damien and the currents of true night - it's interesting that he can read them so well at home, but is overwhelmed by the fae here. More evidence that the situation in the West is quite different from the East.


• Since this is the first mention of shortmonths - I'm very curious about Erna's calendar. How does it work? Is it ever explained anywhere in detail? There are shortmonths, midmonths and longmonths, presumably going by the three different moons – but which does the official calendar go by? Or is it any of them? We know that they use Earth month names, so they would have twelve months, and it would be rather surprising if that corresponded to one of the moons and to the solar year precisely. Any thoughts? Anyone remember anything said about the calendar elsewhere in the books?

As always, have fun discussing! On Thursday, we'll be continuing with chapters 10 and 11.

Comments

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

The Patriarch chapter was the one where I really understood how the fae works. Parents on Erna need to be careful what they tell their children to scare them, or the results can clearly get very, very ugly.

What gets me about Damien reading the currents is that he apparently has an alarm clock. One of those annoying mechanical ones that make you sit upright in bed when they go off. :-)
True Night... seems to be a seasonal thing. Is it anything like our nights getting longer in winter, I wonder?

Calendar... I don't think we ever get a concrete number of days per month. But since Erna does orbit a sun, the distance would have to be roughly equal to that of our sun and Earth, or the climate wouldn't work. So I'd assume the year would be somewhere similar in length. Add or subtract a few days here and there, and you can probably keep Earth months.

[trobadora]

Hehehe, I had to laugh about the alarm clock too. We never see it again, so he apparently didn't take it along, but it was fun while it lasted. :D

True night definitely is a seasonal thing, and you can probably draw conclusions on Erna's orbit around its sun relative to the galactic plane here. If I were better with astrophysics I'd try to work that out, at least in general terms, but I've forgotten most of what I ever knew. :-(

But since Erna does orbit a sun, the distance would have to be roughly equal to that of our sun and Earth, or the climate wouldn't work.

Errr, no. That might only be true with the same star type as our sun, and we don't know what type Erna's sun is. (Probably not even there, because a lot of the climate depends on the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.) With Erna's sun, its light is described as white at one point, and dimmer than Earth's sun, so one can draw a few conclusions from that, but seriously, the possibilities are endless. And the year could be anything, especially in relation to local days, which again might be anything. (On Venus, which is within the habitable sphere, a day is about ten times as long as here.)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I knew there's a reason why I never went into astronomy.

I suppose some guesses can be drawn from character ages. If a year isn't simply counted as 365 days rather than one complete circle around the sun, that is. Damien as mid-30s sounds about right to me from physical descriptions, and it more or less works with Jenseny as well. So that could be an indication.

Local days must be somewhere around the 24-hour-cycle, though. Or you'd see far more characters having sleep trouble (unless, of course, humanity adapted to that).

[trobadora]

Yeah, you're right, that would suggest the years and days aren't too far off from Earth standard, but how far is "too far"? I just wish she'd included the info somewhere, I like to know these things!

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Well, we know that the day has, at the very least, 8 hours since Damien had 3:35am on his alarm clock. And I'm fairly sure that once we get to the on the road bits, there will be some more time measuring. We'll just have to keep an eye out for it.

[trobadora]

It's definitely on my list!

[juonetar.livejournal.com]

I don't think we ever get a concrete number of days per month.
We get the length of Tarrant's reprieve in CoS, one longmonth, 31 days. The Unnamed decides that "one longmonth from today" Tarrant's old contract would be dissolved. Later that day Damien actually sees Tarrant thinking what's waiting for him - in 31 days.

[trobadora]

Ah, thank you! I'd forgotten about the 31 days. If that's a longmonth, just how short is a shortmonth, or a midmonth? *wonders*

[squeakygeeky]

The Patriarch's memories: More about faeborn creatures - fears, become literally true. Does it become clear here who summoned the creatures - the mother or the child?

I've always read this as the mother having summoned them because of what the doctor said, never as the Patriarch as a child having done so. It actually really surprised me that anyone thought otherwise, though it makes sense now I think about it. While it would be absolutely fascinating if it was the Patriarch, I still think it was the mother:
a) he wasn't there at the time the fae creatures started attacking her, he only walked in after they'd eaten her brain
b) he's an adept, and even though it's all unconscious, I don't think he'd accidentally summon creatures like that, while it's made pretty clear that ordinary people's fear often does bring fae creatures
c) if it had been him I think his hatred of the fae would be mixed with huge guilt, especially once he learns what he is (this is assuming that if he had summoned them he would have some way of knowing that) but my main sense of him is that he hates the fae on a deeply personal level

[trobadora]

I think the reason people assume it was the child was that taking the doctor's phrase literally would be unusual for an adult, and the faeborn creatures that killed the mother seem like something straight out of a child's imagination.

But you've got good reason for the opposite interpretation - I'd say it's left ambiguous very effectively here.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

The Patriarch's memories: More about faeborn creatures - fears, become literally true. Does it become clear here who summoned the creatures - the mother or the child?

I think it was left ambiguous whether it was the mother or the child who summoned the demons. In some way, I think it's more likely the Patriarch because his mother would have understood the doctor's comment as a figure of speech, while for a child, it's more likely to be taken literal and a scary-as-heck image to boot. Nightmare material enough to turn into conjured monsters. Although if his mother is addicted to alcohol and/or drugs, it might have done a number on her imagination too...

What amazes me in these few chapters (it amazes me throughout, but here it's condensed) is Friedman's ability to conjure terror. The chapter about the sailors, especially with the demons' amusement and the ending) hit me almost harder as the in-your-face gruesomeness of the Patriarch's mother. Though that is quite a feat too - it illustrates, as alighiera says below, how the fae works, and does so with a bang you're unlikely to forget.

I liked the Patriarch's decent human response to Ciani's 'death' too - he's such a layered character.

[trobadora]

Yeah, it does seem like monsters right out of a child's imagination, doesn't it? I didn't think the mother would have taken it literally either.

Friedman's ability to conjure terror

Yes, that's absolutely amazing, isn't it? The chapter with the ship is fantastic, and utterly chilling, all the more so because we don't get to see most of what happened. She leaves it to the imagination, and that's almost always more effective than spelling things out.

Yay Patriarch sympathies!

[fragorl.livejournal.com]

I think that character is so misunderstood... :)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I liked the Patriarch's decent human response to Ciani's 'death' too - he's such a layered character.

He's certainly able of keeping private and professional interaction apart. Damien irritates the hell out of him, but that doesn't stop him from offering comfort. I don't think that was done out of any kind of duty to another man of the Church - it was just one human to another.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

I don't think that was done out of any kind of duty to another man of the Church - it was just one human to another.

Yes, I agree - that's what impressed me so.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

And yet he has no qualms about basically press-ganging Andrys into what is practically a suicide mission. He's got his priorities sorted out, and human compassion gets to play only when the needs of many don't outweigh the needs of the individual. God, the man should have been a Vulcan.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

He out-Vulkans Sarek for sure ;).

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Not got much to add by ways of discussion, but I do like how these chapters do a lot to expand on the world as well as making you acutely aware of exactly what the Fae and the potential enemies are capable of.

Incidentally, I also love this chapter - as mentioned - for the layers it provides on the Patriarch's character. He knows how to separate personal from business, and I think it's telling that Damien doesn't expect such sympathy from him.

[trobadora]

The Patriarch's memory is the first real look we get at how the fae works, isn't it? We are told things before, but this is when we truly see it in action. And it's very vivid, too. *shudders*

I'm really ambivalent about the Patriarch. On the one hand, he's a fascinating character, and a good man. On the other, his whole worldview as it relates to the fae irritates the heck out of me, and I want to punch him. *g*

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I think that image of the Patriach's mother is one of the strongest one in the series. Just the image of a child staring in as his mother's brain. Yeah. well. Icky.

Yay for nuanced characters :D

Funnily though, not many people seem to be looking a good deal at Zen. I've noticed he doesn't get much attention, despite the key role he has in this book. The Patriarch has so much more presence than the character who is there a lot more.

[trobadora]

Oh, you're right about Zen! We definitely should talk some more about poor Zen. He's not a charismatic character like the Patriarch, doesn't have much influence over anyone, but I find his desperate desire to become an adept fascinating - not the least because we learn a lot about the fae that way!

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Interesting thing is even the way the characters are written and draw us in reflected their nature. I mean, look how people are responding so much to the Patriarch and yet putting aside the Everyman who sacrifices so many things to help Ci.

[trobadora]

Hopefully we'll get a lot more Zen discussion once the narrative gives him some more spotlight.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Senzei didn't really begin to catch my attention till the group headed out on their way. He's pretty quiet until they hit the Rakhlands, when their reliance on him to spot water hazards suddenly made me realize how skilled he must be--and made me wonder at sorcerers' relative skill compared to each other.

But here...well, he's the one who works out the Sacrifice of the shoppe, isn't he? And who gets Ciani to safety. On a reread, I find myself wondering randomly about his relationship to Ciani--how much is love (and whether it's platonic), and how much is obsession with anything related to the fae. I suppose none of that that really comes into play in the books, but they're questions I have about him as a character.

[trobadora]

On a reread, I find myself wondering randomly about his relationship to Ciani--how much is love (and whether it's platonic), and how much is obsession with anything related to the fae.

That's all asked directly in the book too, isn't it? Though no explicit answer is ever given, IIRC. And I think Gerald says at some point - in CoS, probably - that Ciani was Zen's salvation, that he might have succumbed to his hunger in much worse ways if it hadn't been for her.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

He'd probably have been one of the screaming voices during an earthquake, if she hadn't been there to stabilise him.

[trobadora]

Or he might have chosen a much darker path. That's what Gerald seemed to think, anyway.

[alice_montrose]

I really do like Friedman's tendency for short chapters that mean a great deal... while at the same time, I hate her for not making said chapters longer. I'm still not sure how things balance out in the grand scheme of things, but they do so I can't really complain.

The thing I liked most was the Patriarch showing his human side. He seemed like such a cold and unbending person before, so his compassion for Damien at was quite unexpected.

[trobadora]

You know, I didn't even remember how many short chapters there were - and from how many different POVs! I'm really impressed by how smoothly and seamlessly it all comes together, and it's slowly but surely curing me of fandom's brainwashing - if you went by fanfic, it'd all have to be one POV, all the time! *g*

[alice_montrose]

Short chapters and non-Damien POVs usually go hand in hand. Even Gerald POV chapters are on the shorter side. And they offer different perspectives on things, which is great.

Anyway, I'd say about a third of the chapters were short/different POVs? The ratio may be different in COS, because Andrys and Narilka chapters tend to be long... especially Andrys chapters. Long and packed with info, woe is us! ^^;;;

[trobadora]

Yeah, you're definitely right, CoS is a bit of an outlier that way. Usually she uses the other POVs to give us more info on the same plot, but in CoS there's a whole separate subplot all for Andrys. Woe indeed. ;-)

Oh yeah, and some chapters have scenes from more than one POV. It's pretty cool. I mean, she even has a chapter from the POV of a xandu!

[alice_montrose]

Must love the xandu POV. :)
(And that chapter offered some hidden info on humanity and the rakh, too!)

[trobadora]

Yeah, it's not like she said, hey, let's do crack today and insert a totally random animal-POV chapter! She's using it very effectively. It's fantastic.

[juonetar.livejournal.com]

The calendar thing is fascinating. I try to keep track of things related to that as I reread! At this moment I only manage to remember the length of the longmonth. 31 days. It's mentioned in CoS. After Damien's reasonable arguments the Unnamed let Tarrant out of the hell for "one longmonth". A bit later (I think it's still the same day) in Karril's basement Tarrant and Damien think that there's only 31 days left.

Which of the moons is the slowest one, I wonder...

[trobadora]

It is fascinating! I wish she'd told us a bit more about which moon goes with which type of month, and how their calendar works.

Of course it's convenient, isn't it, that a longmonth is basically a Terran month ... and they're using Terran month names as well, so are we to assume there are 12 of them too? What a coincidence! ;-)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Begs the question... can humans on Erna influence the lunar cycles by assuming they'll be the same as on Earth?

[trobadora]

No, I'm quite sure they can't - that really wouldn't make any sense. The fae is restricted to Erna itself; it doesn't exist in space, where it would have to be for that. You can't just move moons around nilly-willy without influencing the whole system.

And on top of that, the original colonists knew the lunar cycles on Erna before they ever landed, and their descendants would have no reason to assume Terran cycles; they were born on Erna, after all.