Coldfire re-read: Black Sun Rising - chapters 31 and 32

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Today we get a glimpse of rakh life, Damien contributes to our ongoing discussion about hunger, Tarrant grows feathers, and Ciani is her own inimitable self.


Plot Summary

Chapter 31
The Master of Lema gets an update on the situation from Calesta, and finally exhibits some signs of proper villainy by ordering Tarrant and Ciani to be taken alive.

Chapter 32
Meanwhile, back in an icy river, Damien and Tarrant are still held at spearpoint by the rakh, which irritates Tarrant to no end. They are taken back to the rakh encampment, but before they can get very far, Tarrant breaks free and proceeds to demonstrate just how hard it is to keep him captive. Damien, despite not wanting to do so, cheers him on (though he'd explain it away with being freezing cold and exhausted if he had to). They reach the rakh camp, where Ciani stumps her companions by getting them all declared honourary rakh. They are questioned, and coincidence has it that Ciani has been with these rakh before, and still has their respect. Tarrant once more shows his displeasure with the situation by making mincemeat out of a rakh, which leaves a lasting impression. After he is gone, Damien, Ciani and Senzei are taken to see a rakh who has had his memories stolen as well. It is enough to convince the rakh that maybe those pesky humans can actually be useful.




Quotes

• The look in Tarrant’s eyes was murderous. What must it be like, Damien wondered, to have a soul that could command the ages, trapped in a body that could be made so vulnerable?


• Damien wondered if an adept could Work the fae without seeing it . . . and then realized what the answer had to be. The woman had seen him in Morgot, and knew his power. She had bound him well.


• Half of him was jubilant to see a member of his party freed - and the other half of him shuddered at the thought of the slaughter that might take place if Tarrant’s fury was fully unleashed. Was there any way to stop that from happening? Did he have any right to stop it from happening?


• Shape-changing wasn’t supposed to be possible, at least not for the flesh-born - but he had seen it done, and the memory chilled his blood more than weather and river-water combined. Against his will, he recalled it: a budden burst of coldfire brilliance, so frigid that it blinded, human flesh dissolving as if in an acid bath, features running together like water in a whirlpool - and then, in that last instant, white wings rising up out of the conflagration, bearing the Hunter’s new body into a moonlit sky. But it wasn’t the transformation itself that made Damien’s blood turn to ice in his veins, or even the memory of human flesh dissolving before his eyes. It was the look on Tarrant’s face, in that last moment before he entrusted his life to the earth-fae. Utter discipline, total submission - and an echo of pain and fear so intense that Damien, remembering the man’s expression, still shivered before the force of it.


• Never thought I’d be this glad to have you around, you son of a bitch.


• Quite a woman, he thought, and his words resonated with admiration. She’s put us all to shame, for not having thought of it before.
  It surprises me that the Hunter can still experience shame, Damien thought back.
  Very rarely, he admitted. It’s not my favorite emotion.


• . But then he glanced at Tarrant - at the clean, delicate profile, the perfect skin, the eyes brimming with vanity - and thought. No big surprise. The man’s got his priorities straight. Appearance tops the list. And he smiled to note that the adept’s hair, though still wet, had been Worked back into a smooth, gleaming mass; the holes that the rakh had poked in his finely woven garments had been cleaned of blood and repaired, with similar finesse. He looked like a refugee from a garden party.


• "Our ancestors foresaw a time when we might need such fluency, perhaps to bargain for our lives - and so they captured women of your tribes, and sometimes men, and forced them to interact with our young. Until your English took root here, and our few khrast families were established.” With a short, sharp gesture he indicated his companions. “Each one of us has spent time in the human lands, among your kind, absorbing the vernacular. Some have passed as demons, some as visions, some - occasionally - as humans. We’ve traveled in your world; we know your ways. We seven can interpret your words so that our people will under¬stand what you have to say."


• “We’ll pass on what you’ve told us and let the others decide. But you should know this: We’re not a forgiving people, and our hatred of your kind runs very deep. The punishment for humans who trespass in our lands has always been death. In all my years, I’ve only known of one exception to that rule. One human who managed to bridge the gap between our species, and earn the respect of a southern tribe, so that they permitted her to live. One.”


• Something that was coming to life in her, here . . . as it must have come to life the first time, so many years ago. They had sensed it in her, and it had saved her.
  Hunger. A thirst for knowledge, as powerful as Senzei’s yearning for power - or Tarrant's hunger for life. Or my - my what?
  What did he hunger for? If his life were to be rendered down to one ultimate statement of purpose, if the energy that kept him fighting were to be attributed to one driv¬ing force, what would it be?
  To know, when I died, that my descendants would inherit Earth’s dream. To know that my children’s children would possess the stars. To believe that I’ve changed the world that much. Then: Nice thought, he reflected dryly. You need to stay in one place long enough to have children, if you want all that.

Thoughts

• Damien's taking another step away from his initial perception of Tarrant here, when he wonders not so much whether he can keep the Hunter from killing the rakh, but whether he actually should do it. And he keeps cheering him on, then bites his tongue for doing so. I hadn't realized just how torn he already is this early in the story. It certainly hasn't taken him long to move away from his "must only use him as a weapon, then kill immediately" approach.


• Finally the shapechanging. It's something that's always made me wonder whether Tarrant has any limits to what he's willing to try. That particular experiment could, according to what Damien holds as common knowledge, have killed him. And yet he went through with it at some point. Is there any limit to his curiosity?


• Tarrant, swooping in and changing shape just to catch Damien and keep him from crumpling to the ground? The inner fangirl in me had an absolute "awwwww" moment at that.


• I find it very kind of Damien to sit down and summarize the hunger theme for us. Isn't it ironic that what he hungers for now is what Tarrant dreamed of back when he was still human?


• I wonder, what are the results of Tarrant killing that leading male rakh? Hierarchical instinct is mentioned - should that be read as that he's gained himself a place in the hierarchy?


• The rakh are never really interesting to me. There is more development of their social structure here than 90% of all alien species (or should that be aboriginal species) in fiction get, but I've never managed to shake off the stereotypes some of the descriptions bring up. How about you?

On Monday it's chapter 33, when our heroes will once more be on the move and we'll get to know Hesseth a bit better.

Comments

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

The focus on Gerald's looks and attire and the feel of his skin (okay, mostly "it's freaking freezing!" which, y'know, not so romantic but still) when they get close doesn't exactly speak against the idea either. And the constant rescuing of one another.

Regarding Ciani: exactly! In fact, the first time I read these books, I kind of worried about her becoming a Mary Sue if she hung around after she got her adeptitude back. Of course, I didn't know Friedman's work then, and I'd just waded through a pile of Dragonriders and assorted fantasy with cookie-cutter love interests... I was so glad she ended up doing her own thing. I was like, "Take that, Mary Sues! Books don't need your banal token presence!" and "Go, Woman with Independent Interests Unrelated To Those Of The Male Characters!" at the same time.

Maybe Hesseth is obeyed because this is her area of expertise?

Could be. It would make sense to listen to the khrast because they know what's going on. And refreshingly, even the "fighting males" don't seem entirely instinctual and animalistic (you know, like those "primitive warriors" so often are in stories :P). They've got the brains to stand back and learn what's going on before they go cutting anybody down.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

The constant rescuing, and the way Damien keeps on going after Gerald whenever he heads off to brood somewhere. BFF, at the very least.

I remember reading BSR quite quickly on the first round, and I didn't catch some of the smaller details on Ciani there. I liked her a lot more on the re-reads, when I became more aware that this isn't the typical simpering woman, but a woman who could, if she wanted to, solve her problem by herself. I really have no doubts that she'd have hiked off into the rakhlands once she'd known what had happened to her.

Regarding the rakh: it would have been interesting to get more than one chapter on them. Hesseth by herself is hard to interpret because of her khrast background, so we actually get to see surprisingly little.