Black Sun Rising

[kerravonsen]

Yes, I have managed to read it at last, mistraltoes! I am 2/3 of the way through now. Whee! I can see why you like it -- Gerald Tarrant is so Avonesque! Pale, elegant, brilliant, ruthless, honourable, contemptuous of most, completely pragmatic... And Damien Vryce is Blake-like in a good way -- idealistic, strong-willed, his first impulse is to help people. And it's a really interesting bit of world-building.

Unfortunately, I am finding the pace a bit slow for me -- or something like that. Me and 500-page books don't get along that well. (goes and checks) 585 pages. I keep on skipping ahead, and that is not a good sign. I'm finding it a bit of a hard slog at times. I'm not really sure why.

And, yes, it's very dark, and the other books will probably be just as dark.

Still, I have ordered book 2 anyway. But I may not read it straight away when it arrives.

But the characters! Squee!

Interesting names they have, BTW. Of course "Tarrant" and "Avon" are of a piece, because they both mean "river". Gerald means "spear" and "rule" and Kerr means "dark friend"...
Damien means "to tame" (aha!). I can't find anything for "Vryce" of course. Unless it's related to "Wright". Roj means "fame" and "spear" and Blake means "black/dark" so we don't get quite the same connection there...

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Pale, elegant, brilliant, ruthless, honourable, contemptuous of most, completely pragmatic...

Heh. I'm thinking you left out one... evil! Which is not to minimize his attractions - evil can be very attractive - but if you ignore his deliberate choice to become evil (and the fact that his motives for doing so are so easy to understand and sympathize with), the book's thematic depth is diminished.

And Damien Vryce is Blake-like in a good way -- idealistic, strong-willed, his first impulse is to help people.

The relationship between the two is perfect A-B, but Vryce is not an exact match for Blake. Vryce is, IMO, Blake the way Blake should have been written. I would have liked Blake if he were written a bit more like Vryce.

Unfortunately, I am finding the pace a bit slow for me -- or something like that. Me and 500-page books don't get along that well. (goes and checks) 585 pages. I keep on skipping ahead, and that is not a good sign. I'm finding it a bit of a hard slog at times. I'm not really sure why.

Television. Computers. Instant gratification. ::g::

But seriously... Friedman writes fat. It's epic + highly descriptive and detailed, and that can be overwhelming unless you're totally sucked in. I re-read it every year or two, but I try to wait until I"m ready to shut out the world, otherwise I find myself skipping, even though I know I like the whole thing.

OTOH, it's hard for me to fathom anybody who likes LotR finding Coldfire a slog... Coldfire at least sticks to the point.

And, yes, it's very dark, and the other books will probably be just as dark.

The thing is, with these books... if they weren't this dark, they would be trivial. The darkness here isn't gratuitous, it's necessary. But it makes it hard to recommend them to people.

Still, I have ordered book 2 anyway. But I may not read it straight away when it arrives.

I found the second one the least interesting, but it's worth it to get to the ending of the third, IMO. Though the first book stands very well by itself. It was years before I knew there was more than the one book.

But the characters! Squee!

Yes. And the themes. Both the characters and the themes hit all my buttons.

!). I can't find anything for "Vryce" of course. Unless it's related to "Wright".

I'd have thought it was a variation of 'Bryce', though I don't know what Bryce means.

But I'm glad you like the characters. :-)

[kerravonsen]

Pale, elegant, brilliant, ruthless, honourable, contemptuous of most, completely pragmatic...

Heh. I'm thinking you left out one... evil!

Well, I was listing the ways he was like Avon. Avon is not evil...

but if you ignore his deliberate choice to become evil (and the fact that his motives for doing so are so easy to understand and sympathize with), the book's thematic depth is diminished.

Well, his motives for doing so are rather a mystery for most of the book... except that you know, from the very start, that he felt driven to do so...
I must admit, from the start I was assuming that his motives were different than what they turned out to be, maybe because I was thinking of him as too Avonesque, and therefore was telling myself that there had to be some other explanation...
The fact that he chose evil, well, it makes me want to shake him for being so stupid.

The relationship between the two is perfect A-B, but Vryce is not an exact match for Blake. Vryce is, IMO, Blake the way Blake should have been written. I would have liked Blake if he were written a bit more like Vryce.

It isn't really A-B, because Avon isn't evil, and thus Blake doesn't have to vow to destroy him. The fact that the Hunter is evil throws an enormous amount of tension and ambivalence into the mix.

In some ways, Vryce is more certain than Blake, and in other ways less so. Or maybe that's just because the situation is so different.

I do agree that Vryce is a lovely strong character, and I certainly would enjoy a Blake like him. I think... Vryce is very competent, and Blake doesn't get the same sort of chances to show how competent he is. Vryce gets to kill monsters and heal people -- what does Blake get to do? Give orders and understand Avon's technical talk.

Television. Computers. Instant gratification.
Oh pu-leeze! (rolls eyes)

OTOH, it's hard for me to fathom anybody who likes LotR finding Coldfire a slog

But I was introduced to LotR via audio (my father's recordings) and therefore practically memorized it before I was a teenager; my experience of it can't really be compared to other epics.

The thing is, with these books... if they weren't this dark, they would be trivial. The darkness here isn't gratuitous, it's necessary.

True. Wouldn't have much of a plot there otherwise. But it doesn't feel like a horror story, even though it's so dark. The purpose of a horror story is to thrill and scare the reader, give them nightmares. The purpose of this story... is more exploring what human beings can be driven to; particular human beings, that is.
If there turns out to be redemption in this (and I think there must be, of a sort, or I will shoot the author) then it's got to be a long hard slog -- it can't be something trivial like what happened at the end of Star Wars.

I'd have thought it was a variation of 'Bryce', though I don't know what Bryce means.

Ah, yes, that does fit better. I must look it up later.

I found the second one the least interesting, but it's worth it to get to the ending of the third, IMO.

Darn. I'm really going to have to gather my strength before I read book 2 then.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

But I was introduced to LotR via audio (my father's recordings)

Would that have been the BBC radio version (I can't think of anything else that it could have been)? That really is magnificent. In some ways I even prefer it to the films.

[kerravonsen]

No, my father actually read the whole thing aloud onto reel-to-reel tape. It's very frustrating to me that those recordings are probably lost, not only physically lost, but we don't have a machine that can play them.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised just how literally you meant "my father's recordings". That was quite an undertaking! How long did it take him, and how many reels of tape did it run to?

If the recordings were to turn up, I'm sure that it would be possible to find an outfit who could transfer them to another medium for you, though it might not be cheap.

[kerravonsen]

I hadn't realised just how literally you meant "my father's recordings". That was quite an undertaking! How long did it take him, and how many reels of tape did it run to?

I don't know how long it took him, and there were quite a few reels. It was the cumulation of a series of projects, really. He would read to us at night, I think probably from the Fairy Books. Then we graduated to the Narnia stories, and that's when he started recording. There's one tape in which the recording is interrupted by a conversation about the map, and I'm one of the voices on it -- before I was of reading age. That may have taught him a lesson, because I think for The Hobbit he did it without an audience. The last one was The Lord of the Rings, which he did 99% of, apart from one chapter, which was read, for some unknown reason, by one of my cousins, which was rather disconcerting because she pronounced "Sauron" differently.