Coldfire re-read: Crown of Shadows - chapter 19

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I apologize for the missing post last week - it has been entirely my fault, but thankfully the lovely trobadora picked up my chapters on Monday.

Tonight, we go to Hell with Damien. :-)


Plot Summary

Damien goes to Hell. Literally. And he brings back Tarrant as a souvenier.

"My life is on the line here, too," he said. She said. "And I can't change form in this place, any more than you can. I needed a body that would be strong, enduring, and versatile. Given your orientation, it had to be female. Given your memories. . . ." The woman shrugged stiffly. "I'm sorry. I didn't catch the mourning until it was too late. I meant no disrespect."

"This isn't my realm," Karril said testily. "I wonder if it would even exist without your Church doing constant publicity for it. Come on."

For a moment it seemed impossible ... and then, with a chill, he recognize the pattern. Yes, his flesh would heal itself, just fast enough to allow it to suffer more. Like the Hunter's own flesh had done when the enemy trapped him in fire, forcing him to regenerate just fast enough to burn anew. To burn eternally.

He remembered the Hunter sharing his dreams of Earth with Damien to make him afraid, and there was no denying their power. Had the Prophet feared the very world he idolized, and mourned the concept of a world without sorcery even as he worked to bring it into being?

"You summoned it," she growled. "You deal with it."

He was suddenly glad that she had come here in a female form. It didn't matter worth a damn in reality-a demon was a demon-but he would have felt like an idiot squeezing hands with a man in this darkness, even knowing the truth.

"That's your Unnamed, priest. Erna's great devil. Like everything else, a creation of your own species."

We reclaim a gift he no longer deserves, it told Damien. What he does after that is his own concern.

"I need him!" he snarled. Making his voice as callous as it could become, smothering every last bit of sentiment his human heart might nurture. "I need him as a tool, and when that's done I couldn't give a damn what happens to him. Let Hell have him if it wants. God knows, he's earned it."

Thoughts

• Karril wonders whether Hell would exist without the Church "doing publicity for it". Tarrant tried to eliminate the concept from Church canon. What do you think? Could Hell have been erased, or would it have existed whether it had been an official part of the belief system or not?



• By now it's a trend that Tarrant gets tied up somewhere and tortured terribly, until Damien shows up to save his damsel in distress nemesis and carries him back to safety. Once in each book with the tying up, and several more instances of carrying-to-safety after grievous bodily harm. Small wonder Tarrant occasionally remarks that Damien is bad for his mental and physical well-being.



• When Damien tells the Unnamed that Tarrant has earned to stay in Hell, do you think he still believes it? Or is it a lucky coincidence that the Unnamed decided to check Tarrant's mind rather than Damien's to confirm this?



• The description of Hell has never quite worked for me. In part because we only see two facets of Tarrant's fears - and surely there has to be more than eternal burning and being haunted by your victims - and in part because it's just too surreal but Damien doesn't react enough to it. To me, that scene has always been one of the weakest in the Damien/Tarrant plotline, even though I love Damien arguing with the Unnamed. But the trip through Hell... it doesn't convince me. Dante's was better.



• I like that little thought of the Prophet fearing the reality of Earth and its lack of the fae. It makes me wonder what path Tarrant would have chosen if the possibility of a fae-free life had come around in his lifetime. Would he have accepted it? Or would he have tried to find a loophole?



• It's been remarked before, and I have to echo the sentiment: Karril turns himself female because of Damien's orientation. And yet he stays male for Tarrant. One might wonder... ;-)

On Monday we continue with chapters 20 to 23 - a collection of shorter chapters. See you then!

Comments

[trobadora]

Not sure about the existence of Hell. I don't think it's all in the publicity, but if it could be got out of the popular imagination, that might have done the trick.

Is someone still doing the rescue tally? I think last time we counted, Tarrant was ahead with the saving. *g*

I do believe Damien is convinced Tarrant has earned Hell, but no longer believes he deserves it. Not in his heart of hearts.

Damien's remark about the world without fae - I'm really not sure about it. It's something we've discussed before. Was it really the Church's objective, in Tarrant's vision, to bring about a world without fae? Or wasn't it more to make the fae no longer respond to the human subconscious, to make it controllable? I feel the trilogy's a bit inconsistent on that point.

As for Karril and gender - he says explicitly that it's because of Tarrant's unpleasant predilections that he doesn't take female form in his presence. He doesn't want to attract that kind of attention from Tarrant. It's interesting, because you so rarely get explicit statements about a character's sexual identity. Needless to say, it doesn't stop me from slashing, but ... yeah, they're really rather heterosexual in canon, both of them. *sighs*

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Not sure about the existence of Hell. I don't think it's all in the publicity, but if it could be got out of the popular imagination, that might have done the trick.

Tarrant seems to have thought he could have erased it, but that may have been theoretical and youthful enthusiasm. Every religion on Earth has something like Hell, so it seems to be a logical conclusion to create it that goes beyond cultural boundaries.

Is someone still doing the rescue tally? I think last time we counted, Tarrant was ahead with the saving. *g*

Once I dig up my books again from the countless boxes, I'll have to get back to it. *g* But I suspect Damien caught up after the end of WTNF.

Was it really the Church's objective, in Tarrant's vision, to bring about a world without fae? Or wasn't it more to make the fae no longer respond to the human subconscious, to make it controllable? I feel the trilogy's a bit inconsistent on that point.

I'm with you there. It never seems to really get looked at, except for possibly those final CoS chapters.

Needless to say, it doesn't stop me from slashing, but ... yeah, they're really rather heterosexual in canon, both of them. *sighs*

I know, and it's such a pity. *g*

[trobadora]

Rescue tally would be fabulous! I don't even remember where we stopped counting. *sighs*

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Even if Gerald tried to erase it from canon, surely it is a person's own thoughts that trigger the events? So, he believes he should be condemned to hell, so that's what eventually happens.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

At least if you've already got a general consensus of people to create the place that you're then condemned too, yeah. That's what I figure, too.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Karril states that he stays male for Tarrant because Tarrant's tendency to prey on women, so sadly, no dice there. But we can still wonder!

I've seen very few descriptions of Hell that live up (or down) to my expectations *coughSupernaturalcough*. But the point is that it's indescribably awful, so attempting to describe it will naturally fall short. Especially when you don't want to devote an entire book to it.

The Unnamed came across fairly well, though. I like how intelligent and calculating it is.

I once wrote a paper tracking the "who saves whom" phenomenon in these books, and if I remember, they each get a chance to come to the rescue of the other in each book (I also discovered repeating patterns of threes in the sacrifice/redemption motif). Sadly, while the scholarship was good, the paper itself was dreadful, so I'd rather not share. But maybe I should hunt through it sometime and post the patterns I found. Could make an interesting discussion topic.

[trobadora]

Oooh, that sounds fascinating! If you don't want to post the paper, at least post the salient points? That would be fabulous!

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just thought of something. We don't see a whole lot of what Tarrant used to be like back when he was mortal. But we see his wife fuming over the mistreatment of his benevolent genius by the masses, and we see Tarrant's attempt to remove the concept of Hell from the canon, and when the chips are down, we see the lengths he's willing to go to in order to get what he wants.

And I wonder: just how nice a guy was< he when he was alive, really? How much of it was a kind-hearted desire to help humanity, and how much was a genius's desire to carve the world into something he thought was better? This story is riddled with unreliable narrators, so how can we trust anybody's personal perceptions of how things are?

[rekishi]

it's yuletide. you could make a request for "the concept of Gerald's first incarnations of a mortal - altruism vs. megalomania" ;)

[rekishi]

*as a mortal, of course *rolls eyes at self*

[alice_montrose]

I suspect it's a mix of both, because every genius I've known/heard or has been self-absorbed to some degree. So desire to help humanity, certainly... but there must have been some amount of vanity thrown in, because I doubt he's changed that much over the centuries. Certainly, there seemed predispositions for pride, stubbornness, perseverance.

Though I always did wonder what it is about Damien that makes him overlook his desire for self-preservation so often, after spending centuries trying damn hard to stay alive and out of Hell at all cost!

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Though I always did wonder what it is about Damien that makes him overlook his desire for self-preservation so often, after spending centuries trying damn hard to stay alive and out of Hell at all cost!

Now that is the million dollar question!

[alice_montrose]

Now that is the million dollar question!

... and not something one should ask a slasher. Is it a wonder half of this (small-ish) fandom is Gerald/Damien-oriented? XD

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

^___________^

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I suspect he started out with a good deal of idealism, but also a healthy dose of arrogance and the conviction that he can do this. Otherwise I doubt he'd have tackled the sorts of problems he worked on.

I'm leaning more towards the "shaping the world to his ideas" than humane motivations, though. There'S so much we get to see about his curiosity and his interest in experimenting to see if something can be done, it just seems more plausible. Helping humanity, only in the sense of improving them according to his ideas.

[trobadora]

I wonder how much of it was also pure self-defence. I mean, the fae's uncontrolled reaction to the human subconscious isn't exactly safe. *g* And the Revival came directly after the Dark Ages, so the worst of it would have been vivid in people's memory.

[trobadora]

I'm quite sure he was never a particularly selfless person, but I don't think helping humanity and impressing your own vision on the world are incompatible, so. *g*