Coldfire re-read: WTNF - prologue and chapter 1

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

We're back!

For those of you who have been along for the ride for BSR, welcome back! For those who are new, welcome! And everyone - enjoy yourselves, as usual.

Since the feedback on the posting style/method/frequency etc was "keep it the same", we will do. So expect to hear from trobadora on Mondays and me on Thursdays, bringing you the discussion posts for the latest chapters. As before, there is also schedule of all chapters which you can find here.

So, onwards to the prologue and the first chapter of When True Night Falls:


Plot Summary

Prologue
Once again we start the story with a sacrifice, this time with a much larger impact as the first settlers figure out how to deal with a planet where your dreams come true. Unlike most sci-fi shows want to make you believe, the sacrifice isn't stopped at the last minute this time and the settlers from Earth lose all their technology in an impressive fireball.

Chapter 1
Damien writes his report on What I did on my summer holidays and sends it to the Patriarch, who is less than thrilled by hearing what Damien has been up to and in what unsavoury company he has been. Un-thrilled enough to cast Damien out of the Church for his willingness to accept Tarrant's company. It all turns out to be a nightmare, created by Tarrant who is still snacking on Damien's fear - something Damien is so accustomed to by now that he barely makes a fuss any longer. They share a little Titanic moment at the bow of the ship, while Damien once more walks the slippery slope of justifying to himself just why he brought Tarrant along.



Quotes

• They couldn't go back. They couldn't get help. This far out in the galaxy they couldn't even get advice from home. The seedship's programmers were long since dead, as was the culture that had nurtured them. Communication with Earth would mean waiting more than forty thousand years for an answer - and that was if Earth was there to respond, and if it would bother. What had the mother planet become, in the millennia it had taken this seedship to find a home? The temporal gulf was almost too vast, too awesome to contemplate.


• "I think they'll give us a tool. A means of communication. That's the challenge, don't you see? We have to impress the power here with Terran symbology, so that we have some way to reach out to it. To control it, Leo! If we don't manage that, then we may as well pack it in here and now. Because all our technology won't stop it from killing, when it controls the very laws of nature."
  "So you answer it with more killing? Feed it blood-"
  "Sacrifice is the most ancient and powerful symbol we have," Ian told him. "Think of it! When primitive man sought to placate his dieties, it was that blood of his own kind that he burned on the altar. When the God of the Jews decided to test Abraham's faith, it was the sacrifice of his own flesh and blood that He demanded. Moses saved his people from the Angel of Death by smearing the blood of animals on their doorposts. And when God reached out His Hand to man with His message of divine forgiveness, He created a Son of His Own Substance to serve as a sacrificial offering. Sacrifice is a bridge between man and the Infinite - and it can work for us here, Leo. In time it can end the killings. I believe that."


• Bind evil to serve a worthy cause, the Prophet wrote, and you will have altered its nature forever. I pray it will be so with him.


• Even the Holy Mother, Matriarch of the westlands, would respect and honor such a dismissal. Which meant that he was no longer a priest. Which meant in turn that he was... nothing. Because he suddenly realized that he had no identity that was not Church-born; there was no fragment of his psyche that did not define itself according to the Prophet's dream, the Prophet's hierarchy.


• After a while he gave up, exhausted. And sank back into his fear, letting it possess him utterly. It was a gift to the one who traveled with him, whose hunger licked at the borders of his soul even now. The one who had inspired his dream, and therefore deserved to benefit from it.
  Damn you, Tarrant.


• But for you we would all be dead. Four dozen bodies rotting at the bottom of the sea, our mission in ruins. And our enemy would be unopposed, free to work his will upon the world. Isn't that worth the sacrifice of a life or two? And he despaired, Where is the balance in it? How do you judge such a thing?

Thoughts

• The prologue here is the most obviously sci-fi part of the entire trilogy. Would you have liked to see more of this during the rest of the books?


• There's a distinct settler mentality to the colonists. With 4000 on the ship and only 3000 waking up again after the coldsleep, that's a willingness to take a considerable risk in order to settle on a new planet.


• I've never quite put it together at first, but - the seed ship is still in orbit, isn't it? So would it still be up there in the time of Gerald, and then later even Damien's?


• Anyone good at maths - if they had a little more than 3000 colonists and 12 centuries, at what kind of a population size are we looking in Damien's time?


• Casca and Tarrant are very similar in their understanding, reasoning and approach. And just three centuries make a difference between being shot as a madman, and hailed as a prophet. I think that to the colonists, losing Casca may have been a loss just as serious as that of the technology. He is the one who put it all together and who figured out the ramifications of the situation. Who knows how long it took them after his execution to reach the same level of understanding again?


• I have to admit that the idea of Damien drawing pictures of Tarrant and sending them in to the Patriarch always amuses me greatly.


• When you think of the Damien we met in BSR and the Damien here, the changes in his attitude are tremendous. He used to be so black and white at the start, but now he's discovered all those shades of grey inbetween. I wonder - do you think Tarrant's company is corrupting him because of some fae aspect, or is it more a matter of it forcing Damien to reconsider his position on many things?

Have fun, and we'll continue on Monday with chapters 2 and 3!

Comments

[trobadora]

Oh God, I'm so behind on everything Coldfire. I'll get back to the thinky stuff, promise, but in the mean time:

I have to admit that the idea of Damien drawing pictures of Tarrant and sending them in to the Patriarch always amuses me greatly.

That just made me giggle like a giggly thing. :D

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

He'd better hope Gerald doesn't find out about them. He'd never hear the end of it!

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

G: "What are you looking at me like that for Vryce?"
D: *hides pictures with little hearts on them in his notes* Reminding myself how much I'm going to kill you.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

G: And why would you need crayons for that?

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

D: Graphic plans. I need colours. Charts. Like a flow chart of alternative scenarios and options. Did I mention I want to kill you? Hard. God, so hard. With my weapon. My big, hard weapon.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

6 comments into the book and minds are already in the gutter. We'll have to see if we can beat that with CoS - BSR had nothing on this!

ETA: my mind, at least.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Good thing Damien doesn't have a locker to put his pictures up in ;)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I bet he kept the earlier drafts, at the very least. Or even the best set of drawings, and sent the Patriarch the second-best.

They're probably getting distributed all over the Jaggonath church offices, too. Copies are being made. Fan clubs are being founded.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

"That one doesn't really do him justice. I'll just keep it..." ;)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

"No, can't send that one either, the Patriarch might get the wrong idea..."

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

"And the one with the satin underwear would really raise unnecessary questions..."

[masteroftrouble.livejournal.com]

I love both of you. XD

Casca and Tarrant

[ninedin.livejournal.com]

I find your insight on the similarity between Casca and Tarrant absolutely fascinating. What I believe makes the difference is not just the 300 years: it's 300 years ON ERNA, 300 years of separation from Earth culture and traditions, of forming a new culture in significantly different environment. The change is great, but not enormously so, though: it did not take that much, after all, for Tarrant to be called an accursed sorcerer instead of holy prophet, even in his lifetime.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Insanity!

He'd totally wear silk underwear!

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Actually he might be too concerned about panty lines showing to wear underwear.

Re: Casca and Tarrant

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

We're doing our best. *g*

Re: Casca and Tarrant

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

It really got me today when I was paying close attention to what I was reading. Casca's lines could have come straight from Tarrant's mouth, with a slight change in vocabulary. The concepts are so absolutely identical.

Ernan culture feels like Earth culture on fast-forward, at least the first few centuries. Go from space age to deepest medieval standards to renaissance, all that in three centuries.

are we spoiling for the whole series? I can't remember. :)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I would absolutely liked to have seen more of the sci-fi in the series, especially since the end of the whole thing is so sci-fi oriented.

I also thought that must mean the seed ship is still out there orbiting. They'd know if the orbit had decayed and it crashed. That would be monumental no matter where it landed.

What killed me the most, what I loved the most about that flashback to the original settlers is how we readers assume that the sacrifice is of flesh and blood--that it will be the taking of life. And then when we realize it's the knowledge--who they were, what they knew, all those things that kept them tied to and of Earth? Wow. Really freaking powerful.

Re: Casca and Tarrant

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Go from space age to deepest medieval standards to renaissance, all that in three centuries.

That always interested me. What made Friedman decide that medieval/Renaissance was the template that'd take over? It seems based on the fae: it does things things based on what it finds in our minds, we react by adapting culturally to meet what the fae does. It makes sense that people would adapt to the culture that generated what the fae is picking up on...but why medieval?

It's not just these books. I've noticed for a while now that we have a tendency (in Europe and North America, anyway) to assume a fall-back to those time periods in the event of a social breakdown. Especially in North America, I wonder why we don't imagine ourselves turning back into the Wild West or something... Anyway, I just find it curious. I wonder what it says about us.

Re: are we spoiling for the whole series? I can't remember. :)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have any new readers around, so spoil ahead. ;-)

Can you imagine what it must be like to have that ship in orbit? That would be a constant reminder of everything that's lost, so close but absolutely impossible to get to.

It's the biggest sacrifice possible, when you think about it. One or two deaths - well, those happen. But erasing your past? Actually, when you think about it, this is a lot like Gerald's final sacrifice - he gives up the past too. And there is a blood sacrifice here when Casca gets shot, so it's a combination. Case may accidentally have imprinted blood sacrifice on the planet when he shot him.

Re: Casca and Tarrant

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I think it's because the Middle Ages were the absolute low in technology, culture and all for Europe, so it's the worst possible outcome imaginable. You'd have to go back well before the Minoans to get similar standards - Greeks and especially the Romans were on Renaissance levels and beyond in many areas. Medieval times... if it were to get worse, you'd have to go stone age.

*waves hello* Hope you don't mind my joining in

[9thcircleofhell.livejournal.com]

What I wouldn't give to see Damien's rendering/interpretation of the Hunter! Pictures convey emotion after all and if anything pissed the Patriarch off, I can see it being how Damien see the former Prophet. I'd actually forgotten that Damien could draw (and apparently quite well if he's sending portraits). Maybe it's just because I have negative artistic talent but that little fact gave more depth to Damien's character for me even if it wasn't meant to (and I don't think it's ever mentioned or utilized again). And the image of his sitting down to sketch a picture of Gerald . . . ^__^

[alice_montrose]

My mind as well, definitely. But the end of BSR, I was already convinced of the slashiness. And this was back in my teenage years, when my overactive imagination was first exploring the ways of slashing. I was not jaded by too much m/m smut back then. *glomps Damien*

Re: Casca and Tarrant

[9thcircleofhell.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The Wild West or even the Renaissance had technology, progress and wide-scale travel. While the situation on Erna really does seem in many ways more akin to the Dark Ages when society did experience a breakdown and go backwards from where it had been socially, culturally and technologically.

[9thcircleofhell.livejournal.com]

I loved this particular nightmare and how much insight it gives into Damien. The description of what being ousted from the Church meant to him, how his identity was so intertwined with his profession made his ultimate, voluntary withdrawal all the more poignant. And though it probably wouldn't have occurred to Damien, couldn't that sacrifice have been strong enough to have powered its own Working?