Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising - Chapter 12

[trobadora]

We're continuing with chapter 12 - evolution on Erna! This chapter has some of the most fascinating description of the sheer alienness of Erna. I'm in love. *g*

Plot summary
Damien and Senzei visit the cathedral's archive, and Damien explains the evolution of the rakh - the part he knows about, anyway. They start plotting how to get into the rakhlands. Ciani despairs over the loss of her adeptitude, but Damien convinces her that they need to go together. And when Senzei tells his fiancée that he's going with them, Allesha breaks up with him - though more because of his obsession with the fae than because of the journey.

Quotes

• Damien shook his head. "No. Before that. As near as I can tell, it started right after the Sacrifice. But when Rakhi declared that this species was man's Ernaequivalent - that but for man's presence, the species would have developed advanced intelligence and complex dexterity and eventually taken to the stars - the pace picked up alarmingly. Such is the power of the popular imagination."


• "Of course, now we understand what happened. Now we know that evolution is a very different process here than it was on Earth. Here, if trees grow taller, the next gaffi calves are born with longer necks. If lakes dry up, the offspring of underwater creatures are born with rudimentary lungs. Their need affects their DNA, in precise and perfect balance. To us, it seems wholly natural; several adepts have even managed to Work the process, giving us our un-Earth species. But we understand this all now, after centuries of observation. Imagine what it must have meant for our ancestors, to see this happening before their eyes!"


• "Wholesale slaughter of an innocent species. And the unwitting creation of a host of demons, as byproducts of man's most murderous instincts. All feeding on his hatred, all savoring his intolerance. Is it any wonder that human society nearly devolved into total chaos? That the rigid social patterns of the Revivalist movement seemed to be man's only hope of maintaining order?"


• "You don't understand," she whispered. "You can't possibly understand." A tear gathered under her lashes, but lacked the substance to free itself; her body was too dehydrated to spare that much fluid. "What it's like to live with the fae. Like adepts do. Zen thinks it's like a constant Seeing, but it's not that at all." Her brow furrowed as she struggled for words. "It's everywhere. In everything. There are so many different kinds that I don't even have names for them all, some so fleeting that they're just a spark out of the corner of your eye - a flash of light, of power - and then they're gone, before you can focus on them. And the currents flow through it all - everything! - not just around it, like he Sees, but permeating every substance on this planet, living and unliving, solid and illusory. Sometimes you'll be looking at the sky and the tidal-fae will flux for an instant and there it is - like a flaw in a crystal that suddenly catches the light, a spectrum of living color that's gone before you can even draw a breath. And there's music, too, so beautiful that it hurts just to listen to. Everywhere you look, everything you touch, it's all permeated with living fae - all in a constant state of flux, changing hourly as the different tides course through it. And the result is a world so rich, so wonderful, that it makes you shiver just to live in it ..." She drew in a shaky breath. "Do you understand? When I touch a stone, what I feel isn't hard rock - I feel everything that stone has been, everything it might become, I feel how it channels the earth-fae and how it interacts with the tidal fae and how the power of the sun will affect it, and what it will be when true night falls ... do you understand, Damien? That bit of rock is alive alive - everything is alive to us, even the air we breathe - only now-" She coughed raggedly, and he could hear the tears come into her voice. "Don't you see? That's what they took! It's all dead now. I look around, and all I see are corpses. A universe of corpses. Like everything I see is sculpted out of rotting meat ... except it's not even rotting; there's life in corruption, you know, even carrion has its own special music ... and here there's nothing. Nothing! I touch this bed -" and she grasped the bedframe with her free hand, and squeezed it until her knuckles were white with the pressure, "- and all I feel ... gods, there's no life in it ... can you understand? It wasn't me they drained, it was the whole of my world!"


• "Thus speaks the guardian of peace."
  "There's nothing in my Order's charter about peace. Or in the Church's Manifesto, for that matter. That's post-war PR."


• "I mean the fae, Zen. I mean your hunger for something you can never have. Don't you think I see how it eats at you? Don't you think I can feel it in you every time I'm with you? Every time we touch? Feel it in you every time we make love - how you wish it could be more, how you wish you could experience it on all those different levels - don't you think I can sense your frustration? Your distraction?"

Thoughts

• Natural evolution on Erna: Trees grow higher? Well, then the animals grow longer necks! No natural selection at all - no evolution in the way we understand the term, just mutation as perfect and immediate adaptation. Is Friedman poking fun at certain ideas of the way evolution works, by making them literally true here?


• Evolution as influenced by humanity's presence on Erna: I'm endlessly fascinated by the way Friedman uses the fae for this. The rakh become humanoid because humans imagine them to be human-like. Considering humanity's tendency to anthropomorphise everything, it's a miracle they don't have talking pets on Erna. *g* I mean, anthropomorphising inanimate objects would probably just birth a demonling, but a living thing might actually be altered. What do you think? I did notice they don't really seem to have pets, and horses, cats and the like are altered.


• We also get some more insight into the history of Erna: crusades against the rakh, chaos and dissolution in the wake, and then the Revival, and the birth of the Church. And again, reference to a significant change in the Church "post-war" (which I assume refers to the war against the Forest again). It's such a rich history with so many details, and yet I've never really been able to work it all out. Do you think Friedman had a full timeline, or did she make it up as she went along? How well does it all hold together?


• Damien's practicality strikes again: He wants to argue with Senzei about demons, about gods, but he doesn't because he knows they have to work together, and it's no use right now. I really admire him for that - too many characters in too many stories always feel the need to insist on their POV, no matter how counterproductive an argument would be in any given moment. Of course, his approach is a bit inconsistent: he wants a world without demons, and he's made uncomfortable by the mention of gods, and does seem to look down on those who worship faeborn godlings, but at the same time he's fascinated by the fae and wants to use it. He's certainly not above using it when it suits him, even to the point of Working Ciani. Do you think he could really be happy if he got what he claims to want? Do you think he will be, when he gets that world without the fae in the end?


• Speaking of authors who insist on having characters argue out every disagreement: Maybe they feel they need to do that to set up the contrasting worldviews, but Friedman shows here how you can make the contrast perfectly clear and real without having characters get into pointless arguments over it. Friedman continues to impress me with the way she seamlessly integrates any amount of exposition without ever making it feel artificial. And that's very impressive indeed in this chapter, with all the recap. Did it ever feel infodumpy to you?


• I apologise for the very long quote above, but I thought it was worth it: This chapter gives us a very vivid description of what adepts are, and how they see the world. They really are different from "normal" humans in more than just Sight - and yet Tarrant at least seemed convinced that this kind of adaptation to Erna wasn't incompatible with the project of remaining human enough to be able to regain the stars. How do you think an adept would react to space travel? Being cut off from Erna and therefore the fae, wouldn't they feel as deprived as Ciani does in this chapter? Is Tarrant deluding himself, or is he correct that if ordinary humans can learn to live with the fae, adepts can learn to live without it?


• And here's a tangent, since this keeps tripping me up: I always thought the word was spelled "sorcerer", and so say all my dictionariers. So does the e-book version I have, even. But in the book, it's spelled "sorceror". Is that just an idiosyncratic spelling chosen by Friedman to distinguish her kind of sorcery from the "usual" kind, or is there some subtlety of language I'm missing? *is confused* Splainy?

As always, have fun discussing! And on Thursday we'll be continuing with chapters 13 and 14. And then we'll already have finished the first third of the book!

Comments

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

I'd wondered what it might be like for Tarrant once they shut down access to the fae. He said adepts could still See, but they couldn't touch anymore, and given Ciani's description about what "seeing" really means for adepts, I wonder how extensive that severing is for them. But I hadn't given any thought to what it might be like for them to leave the planet. Tarrant, at least, seems to have an interesting perspective on it. He's built devices and founds ways to bar the fae from reaching them. So when he stands in that warding circle around his telescope, he's cutting himself off. I always wished he'd seen fit to talk about that a little.

In hindsight, I see a lot of infodumping going on, but while I'm reading, it seems so interesting. World-building like this--inventing creative new settings and giving thought to the details and what they must imply--are kind of a thing for me. And since it's the characters who are sharing the information, what they know and what they focus on gives you some insights into them as well as the world they're discussing. I think that helps make it feel like less an encyclopedia entry.

I love this chapter for showing Damien's scholarly side. It also brings to attention the Church's service as an academic body. Note that Senzei, who has dedicated himself to understanding the fae with a zealot's passion, is sorely lacking in this particular area of research, which Damien has obviously studied extensively (this chapter also does a good job of juxtaposing the mindset of an earth-human to the gymnatics of reasoning required to make sense of Erna).

Damien's perspective is that of an observer when it comes to the fae. Whether he judges or not, he looks on it as an outsider--and this, you begin to gather, is due to the nature of his faith. On Erna, faith is not only a matter of belief, because belief-as-reality becomes a scientific fact. It becomes a matter of living in a way that allows you to recognize and even use that fact to your (well, humanity's) advantage. The Church is as much a technological endeavor (in the sense of 'technology' as any tool that is bent to human use) as a religion; this 'faith' is in the end a faith in Erna's form of physics.

It's so very, very Tarrant--elegant, brilliant, and featuring a coldly logical harnessing of emotion.

But it makes me fascinated with the clergy of the One Church, too. Damien demonstrates that the priesthood, at least, is well aware of the nature of their religion. These are men and women who study, live, and expand upon the Prophet's work. On the surface, the Church bears so much similarity to Catholicism and other easily recognizable Earth religions...but strip off the trappings, and you find very distinct motivations and thought processes. Again, the way Friedman uses this world-building to shape and inform her characters is one of the things that I love about these books.

[trobadora]

Tarrant, at least, seems to have an interesting perspective on it. He's built devices and founds ways to bar the fae from reaching them. So when he stands in that warding circle around his telescope, he's cutting himself off. I always wished he'd seen fit to talk about that a little.

Oh, yes! That is such a fascinating moment, and I hadn't thought about what it must be like for an adept, to deliberately cut himself off like that. I wonder if it was equal parts scientific curiosity and reassurance for him - reassurance that despite this adaptation to Erna, he was still human enough to have access to the stars, that as an adept he wasn't bound to Erna.

World-building like this--inventing creative new settings and giving thought to the details and what they must imply--are kind of a thing for me.

Me too - I absolutely adore this. And I admire Friedman for presenting it so entertainingly, which is something very few authors can manage.

The Church is as much a technological endeavor (in the sense of 'technology' as any tool that is bent to human use) as a religion; this 'faith' is in the end a faith in Erna's form of physics.

It's so very, very Tarrant--elegant, brilliant, and featuring a coldly logical harnessing of emotion.

Yes, it's brilliant, isn't it? Faith is a tool here, and yet it has to be genuine faith at the same time, or it won't work - managing to create a religion that can be both at the same time really is a stroke of brilliance.

These are men and women who study, live, and expand upon the Prophet's work. On the surface, the Church bears so much similarity to Catholicism and other easily recognizable Earth religions...but strip off the trappings, and you find very distinct motivations and thought processes.

Deliberately calling on traditional symbols and structures, but use them for a differen purpose - it makes sense, for the Prophet and the Church to choose this, and it works on the same level for the readers - even as it builds on the familiar for the humans on Erna, it does the same for the reader, providing a superficially familiar structure as an entry point. So cool.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Note that Senzei, who has dedicated himself to understanding the fae with a zealot's passion, is sorely lacking in this particular area of research, which Damien has obviously studied extensively

I wish we knew more about Zen's background, and whether there is such a thing as fae studies (or universities which could provide it, for that matter). Damien obviously had a good education, and if the Church is the primary record-keeper and library/research material provider, then this would be the same situation as with medieval cathedral schools as centers of education.

The Church is as much a technological endeavor (in the sense of 'technology' as any tool that is bent to human use) as a religion; this 'faith' is in the end a faith in Erna's form of physics.

It also works on several layers of belief. The purely spiritual, God-bound version for the masses, because this is the one that is possibly the simplest to understand. A second layer that adds the aspect of controlling the fae through faith in God. And a third layer where faith in God is less important than faith in the structure and possibilities of this religious project.