Coldfire re-read: looking back at Demon's Wake

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Time flies - we've already completed the first book of Crown of Shadows and so tonight it's time to look back at Demons' Wake.

• Andrys. What do you think of him so far? (Moderator neutrality keeps me from being too outspoken myself ;-)



• Damien, by now, is amazingly tolerant where Tarrant is concerned, but at the same time he turns adamant where others - like the Patriarch - are concerned. He knows the temptation of using the Hunter for his own goals, but he tries to prevent that same temptation to be offered to the Patriarch. Do you think that was a reaction to his own dressing-down, or is it something else?
  
  
• prettyarbitrary, trobadora and I have been wondering about Amoril. He's not all that bright - or he'd have learned enough from the Hunter to not fall for the Unnamed - his personal hygiene is questionable, as are his manners. Why on Earth did the Hunter take him on as an apprentice? And why offer him the same blood bond as he offered to Damien?



• Narilka is back again, after not showing up once in WTNF. Was it a surprise to you to see her again? Did you expect her to play a role when the Hunter let her go? I remember that I was quite surprised to see her again; her storyline seemed finished in BSR to me. Not that I have any complaints about seeing her again!



• I have to say it once again - Calesta's failure to get his priorities straightened out when it comes to world domination (toy with your enemies later) bugs the hell out of me. He never worked for me as a villain because of it; he simply doesn't feel like a real threat.

On Monday we head into The Dark Within with chapters 14 and 15 - Narilka goes to see her goddess, and the Hunter goes missing.

Comments

[ariss-tenoh.livejournal.com]

Demon's wake? *blinks*

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

The name of the first book of CoS. Some of those section names are quite.... colourful. *g* It makes me wish Friedman had titled her chapters.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Regarding Amoril, Gerald said at one point he was in a bad, bad way when he first 'changed'. Maybe he picked Amoril up while he was in his worst state, and because of honour/pride/whatever you want to call it, felt he couldn't be rid of him? Plus, it helps to have a scary hairy man running around the woods, making the Hunter look even more savage and primal ;)

As for Andrys, really, I don't know if Friedman wanted him to be sympathetic. I certainly don't find him so: whiny, selfish and weak is about it. I kept on wishing that Narilka would bitchsmack some sense into him. You know, if the Hunter is your relative and tends to stay on one side of the fricking planet, if you're so afraid of him, go on a little journey to the other side. It's not impossible...

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

But if it came down to Gerald not quite having his marbles together during that early time, it would make Amoril a good few centuries old...

Agreement on the scary hairy man. *g* Maybe it's also a way of daily reinforcement why it's important to be a more genteel (and groomed) sort of evil.

You know, if the Hunter is your relative and tends to stay on one side of the fricking planet, if you're so afraid of him, go on a little journey to the other side. It's not impossible...

Though it probably gets tricky when you figure out the Hunter has a bit of an interest in your breeding capabilities. And that he's taken to travelling lately. ;-)
Whiny, selfish and weak is my image of Andrys too. And it seems that he was like that even before.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Well, we don't know how long a person can live if they use the fae to preserve their health, do we? Amoril could be surprisingly old.

Then again, it doesn't seem to fly, does it? If he'd been around that long, then the pact with the Unnamed looks even more amateurish; you'd think he'd have been able to work his way to power by some other means by now.

Or maybe he's really not very bright, and a few hundred years playing flunky to the Hunter without being able to get anywhere has disappointed both of them.

On the other hand, I can't imagine Tarrant not having beaten some hygiene into the guy's head by now, if that were the case.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

The older Amoril were, the weirder the whole situation would become. After a few decades of having to worry about wolves marking territory in his hallways, I can't imagine Tarrant having the restraint it would take not to fry the guy.

No, Amoril simply has to be a hangover-induced accident.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I don't hate Andrys. I mostly pity him. He is very much a wreck, but most of the blame for that is to laid at Gerald's foot, so I stayed mostly sympathetic to him despite his weakness. I think by that point in the story, we're too much enamoured with Gerald, we forgot a bit how much of a menace he is, so Andrys is a useful reminder of just how much of a SOB he is. It also helps showing us how far he's come from I guess.

Damien's possessive :) Actually I don't know. Yeah, I guess he knows he's been at least a bit corrupted by it as well and doesn't want it to happen to someone else. Also he's posessive :)

I did not expect Narilka to show up again! It was a great surprise.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I think by that point in the story, we're too much enamoured with Gerald, we forgot a bit how much of a menace he is, so Andrys is a useful reminder of just how much of a SOB he is.

Point taken. Now that Gerald got drafted into saving the world, it's easy to gloss over his actual nature. But Sisa's suicide earlier on, and later the trip to Hell with all the victims, would have been enough! No need to include the whiny brat! :-)

What I miss with Andrys is proactive behaviour. He only reacts, he never does anything out of his own volition. And then he whines about it.

Yeah, I guess he knows he's been at least a bit corrupted by it as well and doesn't want it to happen to someone else. Also he's posessive :)

This is my Prophet, I found him first! *g* Though I think that if Gerald had been a bit more... descriptive about how important it is to have the Patriarch on their side, and if he'd badgered Damien long enough about it, Damien would have given in. The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one, and all that...

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

A note on whining characters in general : do they actually whine aloud, or do you perceive them as whining because their inner monologue is focussed on their (legitimate) pain? I mean, I'll defend Sansa or Catelyn of ASOIAF when they're called whiner by (usually sexist) bashers, and I'm not sure Andrys is in a different situation. I agree he's not very proactive, though, and more pathetic than likeable, definitely. I just don't think he's... to blame for it? Well, I guess, he's just a characters in a fiction of course; but I tend to have a thing against even character bashing.

This is my Prophet, I found him first!
quite :)
Damien's the first priest Gerald interacts with again after a long while, and the first one Gerald finds himself working with, in good entente so to think. And this is, for Gerald, after the way the Church turned against it even before he made that pact with the Unnamed, is fairly meaningful. I wouldn't find it weird if Damien was be aware of this in a subconscious way, and feel proud for the role he's done in redeeming Gerald a little.

And yes, given more time, Gerald probably could have convinced Damien.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Sansa I'd call terrible naive at times, but not a whiner. Catelyn, definitely not a whiner! With Andrys it's partly the inner monologue and the way he justifies his actions - or lack of them - to himself, but also the actions themselves. He pities himself for the life he leads, but at the same time he doesn't do anything that really changes his life. The womanizing, the drugs etc were there even before, but with the Hunter he now has someone to blame for it rather than take responsibility.

[rekishi]

Actually, while I suppose Gerald would have convinced Damien in the end, Damien has quite a good reason to not to want them to meet:
The Patriarch forms the Church. If the Patriarch was to be corrupted by Gerald, so will the Church. Can he risk that? Can Gerald?

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

But would it be a corruption of the Church? It's the one thing Gerald is willing to actually die for - and that's saying something in his case. He's spent nine centuries pondering the best ways and methods of harnessing the fae, and he's spent the same amount of time thinking about how the Church could use it. The Church might not stay the same as it is now, but those changes might bring it closer to their goals.

[rekishi]

The fae, yes, but the Darkness that is Gerald's soul? I don't know if Damien, who admittedly had the most contact with Gerald over the last years, would be able to effectively run the Church and rally all those people to its cause.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Damien wouldn't be able to run the Church, but that's more a case of personality rather than personal convictions. The biggest issue probably would be that the Prophet's Fall has been dogma for 900 years, and it's not something you can just take back and say "whoops, we changed our minds, and luckily he's been hanging around for all that time".

Still, getting a bit more of Gerald's (and Damien's) pragmatic outlook when it comes to using the tools at your disposal would be immensely helpful.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

I think he maybe didn't want to push Damien to that point. It would exactly be healthy for Damien's state of mind, would it? And aside from delightfully slashy reasons (omg he so totally doesn't want to break Damien that way at this point!), that's just not a practical thing to do when you've got a bad guy waiting to prey on your every weakness.

[trobadora]

About Calesta: He never did get his priorities straight, right up till the end. Remember he only actually went after Tarrant himself way after Tarrant had come back from hell itself? He still thought setting him up to be chopped apart by a bunch of manipulated people would do the trick. He underestimated him all the way through and seems to have regarded the whole thing as little more than an amusing side game. Or so it seems to me.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

He keeps underestimating him and Damien, but at the same time he can't ignore them for a while and go get his big plan into motion. If there ever was a Iezu suffering from ADHD...

[trobadora]

Maybe that's the explanation! *g*

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

They should have put him on Ritalin, it would have saved them a world of trouble.

[ladyphoenix9]

Amoril...wow. Certainly one of the worst mistakes in evil underlings ever made.

It occurred to me that perhaps Tarrant was a bit lonely, and then this crazy kid showed up on his doorstep. He knows Amoril is pretty much useless, but maybe he's bored and wants to run some socialization experiments. Or just use him as a guinea pig for some experiments requiring live humans.

Even more disturbing, I thought of Tarrant might possibly still have some paternal urge buried deep inside his black heart, and he kept Amoril around to replace his kids...this sparked from the comment about Amoril and his "wolf pets" and even the sort of vaguely annoyed tone your mother gets when she asks you if you washed your hands before dinner...it's like Tarrant never put Amoril on an adult level with him.

The blood bond is baffling, though...

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Here's a thought: maybe the blood bond was a way of controlling Amoril? Tarrant and Damien never use it on each other that way because they have an agreement, but Damien spent a bit of time pondering the potential effects of it in the beginning. And if Tarrant kept a leash on Amoril, it'd explain some things.

Narilka surprised the heck out of me. It seemed so random...which is a funny thing to think when she was inserted all the way back at the beginning of the first novel. Clearly she's the opposite of random...and yet if it was planned for all the way at the beginning, why does that whole plotline feel so tacked on?

Andrys annoys me, but I went through the same realization with him that I did with Senzei: a lot of my reaction is because I'm reacting to less than perfect protagonists. We're not kind to people who're supposed to be heroes but aren't. A bit selfish, less than courageous, not strong...a reader just can't forgive it. So when I work my way over that...Andrys is still annoying, but mainly because he's this sudden focal point of the story who effectively didn't even exist up until now. I don't know what I'm supposed to make of him. Am I supposed to find him a bit more heroic by the end? Am I supposed to see his killing the Hunter as a partial victory for the bad guys? Or the good guys? Or just one of those crazy unfair (or fair) things that happens sometimes?

[trobadora]

Good idea about controlling Amoril. Still, it seems so intimate ... *shudders*

I don't mind that Andrys is less than perfect. What I do mind is that there's not a single moment, not one in the whole damn book, where I actually found him interesting. Even unexceptional people occasionally have their moments; Andrys never does. He just stumbles along and eventually collects his reward ... without it ever feeling like more than an accident. I don't know what Friedman expects the reader to make of him either, but like I said in another comment earlier, I could never get over the nagging suspicion that I was supposed to like him ... and I just don't see any reason why I would. There's nothing there.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

As for Calesta, he's threatening--his powers are formidable, and he's certainly got the very worst goals--but he's too unfocused. Alien, maybe. Maybe he's paying attention to the priorities that a Iezu has instead of what we expect from a human. Or maybe he's just kinda scatter-brained.

I think Friedman missed out on the whole villains angle a bit. We spend most of the series living not only in Damien's POV but in his inner monologue (or occasionally Tarrant's, in a weird roundabout implicit third person way). It's a gorgeous example of interior voice, but the problem with it is that our priorities and perceptions are entirely Damien's. We see what he's thinking about...and mostly he's thinking about Tarrant. He's not frightened by the villains. He's concerned about them, on a strategic level, but all his fears and estimations of their relative power levels, strengths and weaknesses happen in a very dispassionate, tactical way, so there's very seldom any sense of looming threat (which says a lot about Damien's mindset and estimation of his own capabilities). Basically, none of the villains ever look like a real threat because our main access point to the world never lets them intimidate him. Like Tarrant says, Damien's hard to spook.

Of all the villains, I thought the Prince worked the best. Sadly, it undercuts his effectiveness to say that he was really only Calesta's puppet. For that matter, while the Iezu are cool, the whole thing about them being alien lifeforms...does it really fit into the books thematically? We've got the rakh as well, and it seems like she intended to do a sort of comparison between the human mind and the minds of other sentient species, but she never actually got around to doing that very much.

I'm forced to consider whether the real mistake Friedman made in writing these books was to allow Damien and Tarrant to overpower the narrative...in which case the very thing that draws us in was an accident.

[trobadora]

Interesting point about Friedman's villains and the POV! Damien is worried about a lot of things, but he's rarely afraid. Horrified and shocked, yes - but afraid? Almost until the very end, Calesta doesn't manage to elicit that kind of response. Whereas the Hunter does, on more than one occasion. So it's not surprising we've got a bit of a skewed image there. *g*

Also, good question about how the Iezu fit in, thematically. I'll have to ponder that for a bit!