The Ending.

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Well, I finished the books Thursday night and am still in mourning - as much for there being no more to read as anything. Obviously, I have a lot to get out of my system. I flailed a bit and finally went to look for fic last night. I started at the bottom of the list and went up it just a little ways, looking for stories that work through the end of the books. What a great fandom - there were all kinds of jewels of stories in just the few I clicked on. Thanks guys. bwinter's Unfinished Business in particular was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. If anyone can point me to any more stories that work though the final chapters and open up the future like that I'd appreciate it. : ) I have some comments about the ending of the series but I'll cut them in case an innocent wanders by.

I understand there's a lot of controversy about the end. I'm wondering which part - Gerald's transformation? The restrictions on it? The end of the human connection to the fae? The alien connection?

Gerald's transformation/sacrifice:

I've been puzzling about how this works but I think I finally get it. Sacrifice is involved for really big stuff because that's what the human psyche expects and so that's what the fae and the Unnamed respond to. So, Gerald was working the fae at the end to effect his transformation but it's hard to work the fae now and what he was doing was big (where did he get that body??) so he needed a sacrifice in order to increase his power/effectiveness. It took me a while to get that this does all hang together because everything is a reflection of human expectation.

So. Gerald himself made these rules - effectively he sacrificed his relationship with Damien in order to live - it was the only thing worth having from his prior life - the only real sacrifice in his deal. That's romantic, isn't it? Tragic, anyway. What I keep thinking about is the time Damien spent up at Black Ridge Pass thinking about things, trying to get past Gerald's death but unable to. Apparently he spent a while there and apparently the new Gerald was there watching him the whole time. How long? Days? Weeks? He followed Damien up there and watched him why? Did he spend that time trying to decide whether to make contact with him? Was he drawn to him unable to stop himself - maybe angry at himself for not being able to stay away? He was taking one hell of a risk. Finally he did contact him - spur of the moment? Planned? Yet again he risked everything, putting his life in Damien's hands - relying not just on Damien's affection but also on his intelligence - that he'd be cautious from the start and understand what Gerald was telling him - the limits. I'd love to read a story about this time from Gerald's POV. Especially if it ended with Gerald hoping Damien would follow him. : )

Anyway, I know it's an unpopular ending but I think it's kind of beautiful. I also don't believe for a minute that Gerald and Damien won't find a work-around for it. They've worked around a lot worse before - including a rescue straight from hell.

The end of the human effect on the fae:

I saw in discussion that many of you are sure that the Church expected to be able to continue to use the fae in a controlled manner. I've read the books only once and way too fast but I thought the Church would be as happy without the fae at all - that they want to recreate the conditions of Earth. Maybe they hadn't imagined that they could achieve this much and so had only aimed for control rather than elimination. I am sure that Gerald wanted this new world. He was somewhat horrified at the idea (the nightmares) but he wanted it as "humanity's birthright" - a world that could be controlled by reason. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this new world and whether it makes sense in the context of the books.

The tone of the third book:

I felt that the author's grip on her world was slipping away in the third book. It suddenly jumped to a much more modern feel. Communication was a lot better, travel was easier. It could be that I misread the first book - putting a much more dark ages/medieval spin on it than was really there. What do you think? I thought the whole Riven as PI was flippant - like out of a Terry Pratchett book. It didn't fit the tone for me. Neither did the tourist thing up in the pass. Also, I thought the aliens were pastede on.

Andrys and Narilka (or whatever her name was)

Ugh. I could see what I was supposed to get from Andrys but I couldn't feel it - he just didn't do it for me and did not deserve the end he got. Narilka I'll save for another post. My plan is to make another post on women and one on religion.

Thanks for your patience - I know I've only read these books once and haven't read your old discussions where you've no doubt worked all this through many times before.

eta: another story that filled the need: Translation by Merry ... and Tabula Rasa by alighiera ... and Why I Sojourn Here by trobadora

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Transformation/sacrifice
IMHO, it's a question of the Patterns, built not only on human expectations but on big symbolical events that have affected the way Erna as a whole respond to humans. Previously on the one big pattern was Sacrifice - Casca's sacrifice. Gerald's self sacrifice to kill Calesta made a new pattern, stronger than the previous one and replacing it. So from now on, Self sacrifice is the key. Gerald had to do a self sacrifice in order to make his new body and save his own life. What he sacrificed was not his relationship to Damien (sorry :)) but his name and identity, in which he took so much pride in, as Prophet and especially First and Last Neocount of Merentha.

I agree with you on the end of the human effect on the fae.

On the tone, I think those books always had a complex tonality in term of modernity/archaic mentalities. It's, in a way, SF, so it's clear the psychologies of people is closer to ours than to that of our middle ages. But I agree there's shift between what we see first and what we see afterwhile.

I'm one of the rare person around who doesn't mind Andrys very much, lol. He's not a hero, or a great guy, or whatever, but I don't think he deserved to suffer forever and ever or something, so i'm happy he got a happy ending :p

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

ohhhh, now I get it - thanks! From sacrifice to self-sacrifice, changing the pattern. How did the Patriarch fit in then - he knew it had to be self-sacrifice and so did it in order to weaken the human connection to the fae? I thought it was already weakened after Gerald's self-sacrifice?

Ok, I grudgingly give you that Gerald had a lot of pride in his old life as Prophet and Neocount and it was a sacrifice to give it up. Grudgingly.

I don't dislike Andrys so much as resent the amount of book time he got and also I suppose the idea that he's a Tarrant and somehow worthy. I don't dislike the weak, I just disliked him connected to Gerald. That's not even fair because Andrys wasnt really weak and he did what he set out to and he ended up a better man for it. Just ... he never did interest me. Senzei interested me more than Andrys.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

The Patriarch did do a self sacrifice that finished strengthening the Pattern, but I don't believe that it is why he did it. I think he gesture was one of symbolically taking onto himself all of his followers' sin - the anger, sadism, and violence tied to the crusade against the Forest - so that it would stop contaminating the fae/their own psychee. But since it finished stopping the fae from being affected by human emotions so easily, it's a bit of a "same diff". Also he was reacting to the divination, so perhaps he really knew it was finishing to do what Gerald had started.
BTW the Patriarch not only sacrificed his own life, but he also sacrificed his chance of seeing the future his Church fought for being realised - one of the big thing he's being contrasted with Gerald.

^_^

I agree Andrys is one of the weakest point of the third book, in term of characterisation, but... I don't know. He also brings something important.

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

If the Patriarch hadn't made his sacrifice would the fae have still been workable but just difficult to work? Would the crusaders have contaminated the fae but just not as much? And now that the Patriarch made his sacrifice is it not workable at all? I confess I didn't pay near as much attention to how that played out as I should have - too intent on the Gerald/Damien. Now I understand the time sequence a little better I think: Gerald's sacrifice, Gerald's next sacrice with the difficult to work fae, and then the Patriarch's sacrifice ending fae-working for good?

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

1. I don't know.
2. Judging by the visions of the future the Patriarch was playing with, yes, it would have been bad, but we don't know the specifics.
3. Only workable through self sacrifice.
4. Yes, that's how I see the sequence. (also Damien's using the fae to heal Gerald only because he determines his life is worth it plays into the sequence too)

[fallintosanity.livejournal.com]

Without the Patriarch's sacrifice, it's possible that the fae would have eventually gone back to the way it was before. Tarrant's original sacrifice only worked because, as the Hunter, he was tied by power, legend, and influence to a HUGE amount of people. He made his second sacrifice within the context of the new rules, but that didn't affect the fae as strongly, I think, because he was giving up his identity (and retaining the identity that gave him that kind of influence would have destroyed the sacrifice). As etrangere said, the Patriarch chose, separately, to sacrifice his own life to save his people. But he's not only sacrificing himself (and he has nearly as big a sphere of influence as the Hunter) - he's also symbolically sacrificing all of his followers. These two massive self-sacrifices, fueled symbolically by thousands or tens of thousands of people, were able to override Casca's original sacrifice and the centuries of reinforcing by sorcerers to create a new pattern of contact. The Patriarch sees all this in that last bit while he's dying and getting one last fae vision.

What this all translates to is that the fae is workable, but only with self-sacrifice. I think C.S. Friedman says in a Q&A that the continuation of that is, people see the fae is unWorkable (not many people are going to do self-sacrifice to figure that part out), and begin to believe that it's completely unWorkable, and that impresses on the fae that it's unWorkable, ergo, it becomes completely unWorkable.

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. It's taken me a while to understand all this but it's finally sinking in I think.

[ladyphoenix9]

I think the difference in the travel aspect is that they were in familiar territory, had a deadline, and only had each other, no "extra baggage" characters tagging along like Ciani, Senzei, and Jenseny. They actually killed horses by pushing them too hard -- something they never would have dreamed of doing before. They could take risks they wouldn't have in this trip because Damien wasn't having to play nursemaid to a bunch of hopeless city dwellers or sheltered children.

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I'm going to reread the first book and compare.

Thanks. : )

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Transformation/sacrifice

Part of the trick with the final sacrifices is keeping an eye on the Patriarch, because he finalizes what Gerald starts. They both killed themselves for large-scale workings, and with that they overwrote Casca's initial sacrifice pattern with self-sacrifice. Gerald happened to walk away from it, but then needed a way out. Which is where things always go hazy for me - there's no telling what he and Andrys got up to after Damien left them. But somewhere between that and the final chapter, he's sacrificed, as I read it, not so much his relationship with Damien but his self-identity, which may be as close to self-sacrifice as he could come.

Enough to get the new body (though that really isn't one I'd ever have expected for him), and it's tempting to think that he did something else with all the power. Self-sacrifice just for altering his appearance and getting out... he could have hit Andrys over the head and escaped, that would have been a lot more straightforward. But if he did something else along the way...

Human effect on the fae

I think the new world order makes sense for the Church - it is not exactly what they wanted, though. Gerald's stated goal as the prophet was to either make God listen and help mankind in regaining the stars by using the fae, or, lacking a God, to create a God to achieve the same. Now, to quote Nietzsche, God is dead. And even the possibility of creating one is dead unless there is a mass self-sacrifice. So the Church is going to have to do a lot of adjusting and re-thinking to cope with being handed a new means to achieve their goal. They wanted the fae under control so it wouldn't interfere. Now, for all ends and purposes, the fae is gone. Which has the risk of throwing them back to the beginning once more because they never developed any of the technology that works without fae. But they will need to do that now, so what I expect here is a sort of Industrial Revolution in the making.

Third book

It's the only book where we really get to see city life rather than nothing but trekking through wilderness, so the changes work for me. However, it feels to me that her control over the characters slipped to a point where some of the plotlines turned character-driven rather than plot-driven like in the earlier two books.

Riven as PI? *groan* Riven in general is.... questionable, as far as I'm concerned. The tourists work for me because they get occasional mentions before that final chapter, and they make such a nice contrast to Damien. I try not to picture them Twoflower-esque. ;-)

Andrys and Narilka
And yet we pass up another opportunity to finally have an Andrys fan around here. *g* If you ever go back through the discussions, expect to hear very little enthusiasm about him. He's just such a twerp.

Enjoy the fix-that-ending fics!

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Thanks - you guys had to talk me through the sacrifice to self-sacrifice thing. I didn't read it closely enough - too worried about Gerald I guess.

I'm still not sure about Gerald's stated purpose - to get God to help mankind in regaining the stars - but surely by stopping the fae from hindering them? Which is what he got in the end?

I'm about the start the first book again and compare Jaggonath and some of the early travelling to the feel of the third book. It's very possible that a lot of what I thought I was reading was what I brought to the book rather than what was there. I just didn't get much modern feel from that first read.

I actually feel bad for the Andrys character in that I think he *could* have been a good character in the way Senzei was - but somehow it didn't work - partially because of him and partially because his better, Gerald, was clearly so doomed. Eh, I don't know. Something just didn't work there.

Thanks for the encouragement - luckily there's still a lot left on the fic list to read!

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I'm still not sure about Gerald's stated purpose - to get God to help mankind in regaining the stars - but surely by stopping the fae from hindering them? Which is what he got in the end?

Depends on the way the fae is stopped. The Church wants the fae, and sorcery, gone or at least removed from easy access, so they got their way. Gerald wanted it harnessed for mankind to use, which is further away now than it was before. But the Church came out as the winner once again in this when the Patriarch confirmed the new pattern.

I just didn't get much modern feel from that first read.

Let us know what you think? I'm really curious, and you're a rare chance for us veterans to hear a fresh impression!

I actually feel bad for the Andrys character in that I think he *could* have been a good character in the way Senzei was - but somehow it didn't work - partially because of him and partially because his better, Gerald, was clearly so doomed. Eh, I don't know. Something just didn't work there.

What I felt lacking from Andrys was growth. He didn't get anywhere, didn't shake any of his bad habits, and he just let everyone use him. The contrast with Gerald didn't help, but I think even without it I'd not find him an interesting character. But still he is the one who gets the happiest ending - I just don't feel he did enough to deserve it.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Enough to get the new body (though that really isn't one I'd ever have expected for him), and it's tempting to think that he did something else with all the power. Self-sacrifice just for altering his appearance and getting out... he could have hit Andrys over the head and escaped, that would have been a lot more straightforward. But if he did something else along the way...

Well, I always assumed he did a whole-hog shapeshift, and he needed the self-sacrifice of his own "death" to power it at that point, so... But it wasn't just about getting out alive. He had to change his appearance, because at this point, thanks to Andrys parading around, everybody knows what he looks like. And, maybe, Damien had finally gotten through to him to the extent of wanting a little bit of redemption...or perhaps Gerald figured that if he throws over his entire identity and becomes someone else in what passes for truth with the fae, he could escape the sins of his past life and literally start out fresh. He's got to do something, because he's mortal now and he's only got a human lifespan to work things out in (so naturally he created a younger body for it, and one that is opposite of his old self in almost every way :D).

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

The more modern feel in the third book was interesting, actually. We've spent two books far from civilization (the Eastern continent being...weird), so this is the first time we get to see the human world of Erna. It's surprisingly modern, yes, in the fairly narrow region that humans have tamed. I just think we took a roundabout path to the city.

I see Riven as less PI and more bounty hunter. You can hire him to do anything that involves hunting people down. To me, he's almost a scary remnant of a more primitive time that is now coming to an end.

I loved Damien's ending, in a painful, poignant way. It's the truest sacrifice in the books. He's not Working the fae, or cheating, or overpowering one reality and substituting his own. He has burned everything he has, everything he is, essentially for one other man to win a chance at redeeming his own soul. All the other sacrifices are about magic and agendas. Damien's is truly about faith and love. Here, I'll just be narcissistic and quote myself from trobadora's LJ entry (http://trobadora.livejournal.com/182846.html):

"Yeah. I can live with Damien not getting a happy ending, because in a way he actually does by winning Tarrant another chance. But given the ending in the books, I have a feeling that he's spent everything he had. He's left with the prospect of a lonely future full of not much in particular, which for a man who has always lived his life for a purpose seems terribly empty.

Still, at least he achieves a pyrrhic victory. There's sort of exaltation in the wake of his sacrifice, and it's almost more poignant because he's still standing there in the ashes (literally), aware of everything he's given and gotten. It fits for a priest. I'd still like to see him get something more, of course, because it seems so unfair (out of everyone, Damien lost the most, and gained the least for himself--though of course he didn't want anything for himself--and no one will ever even know), but artistically it works.

*snerk* It occurs to me just now that of course Tarrant came back to tell him, because of all people, Tarrant understands the need to see your one great life's work completed.

But the ending still blows, and I think you guys nailed what bothers me so much about it in your long comment thread--the resolution for the fae. It really does seem like a letdown, even a betrayal, that we're given this vision of learning to adapt and grow in an amazing new world, and then in the end it's thrown over in favor of going back to what we know. Stories aren't supposed to be about returning to your comfort zones. It feels like humanity collectively decided to run away and hide."

Which leads me to my final point. I think that Gerald's vision of the fae (and Damien's) is different from the Church at large. Certainly, the Church wanted what it got--a humanity free from the influence of the fae.

But Gerald was annoyed (and/or threatened) by the Church's exclusion of adepts and sorcery. His original plan (he states) was to use the fae to create a God if one didn't exist before and to catch His attention if He did. That's in the text. What I also infer is that he had a dream of harnessing the fae to the human will. He didn't seem inclined to have humanity and fae live in isolation from one another. Maybe he just couldn't imagine that being possible or how to make it happen...but he had a plan for uniting all of humankind on Erna into a single paradigm, so I'm thinking he could've gone that way but chose not to. I think his adeptitude and scientific mind led him to a place where he could see the fae made into a tool, a human-guided technology, rather than humanity's master.

(Now I think of it, that's a terrifying vision. The way Erna works, that would've resulted in an entire planet commanded by the human will, lock, stock, and barrel.)

But I feel it's a cop-out regardless of what Tarrant wanted. What we're presented with is a scenario where humanity can learn to live in a new world and persevere, to become something new and wonderful in a world where magic can be real and the human will can be unfettered...but what we get is essentially bombing that world into submission.

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah... When I first read that ending I did exactly what you wrote you did. After having calmed down a little, I, too, went in search for ff. Though back then, there has been far less CF ff than there is now so you are more fortunate than I was back then. And you could go to skyehawke archives, there are a few fics too, you can try fanfiction.net or yuletidetreasure.com (but I think you were there already, 'Translation' by Merry is archived there if I remember it right). And since most of us aren't happy about that ending... Well, read yourself!

[fragorl.livejournal.com]

I was always upset by the ending but more recently am actually seeing it in other (perhaps more favourable lights) At first glance it seems dissapointing I will agree. As if she had created a truly fascinating world and then effectively reduced it. But isnt our reaction to this perhaps the point? She has given the humans what it was they wanted, freed them from the dangers that had haunted them, and our response as readers is one of dissapointment. It manages to show how a 'happy ending' can be more subtle and have undertones that are not happy at all, which given the start seems somewhat inevitable. Damien is not a character who ever could have had a traditional happy ending - doesnt he mention somewhere at the start that he is incapable of settling down and living his own life? Gerald destroyed his own potential for happiness thousands of years ago when he effectively killed the beautiful woman/ family that is generally the reward of the hero of good, making him far more interesting than the general stereotype... Maybe the only one who COULD have a happy ending was Andrys, and this in itself is making a point. Even Narilka is left vaguelly aware that she is settling for second best... Just my thoughts though, may be entirely wrong...