- Hardcover: 592 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (1 Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743256689
- ISBN-13: 978-0743256681
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.2 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 775,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Darkness That Comes Before
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Darkness that Comes Before is a strong, impressive, deeply imagined debut novel. However, this first book of an epic fantasy series is not accessible; it reads like a later volume of a complicated ongoing series. Author R. Scott Bakker has created a world that is very different from JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth, yet in depth of development comes closer than most high-fantasy worlds. In addition to providing five appendices, Bakker attempts to make his complex world clear to readers by filling the prologue and opening chapters with the names of characters, gods, cities, tribes, nations, religions, factions, and sorcery schools. For many readers, this approach will have the opposite effect of clarity. It's like demonstrating snowflake structure with a blizzard. --Cynthia Ward, Amazon.com
Product Description
A score of centuries has passed since the First Apocalypse. The No-God has been vanquished and the thoughts of men have turned, inevitably, to more worldly concerns...Drusas Achamian, tormented by 2,000 year old nightmares, is a sorcerer and a spy, constantly seeking news of an ancient enemy that few believe still exists. Ikurei Conphas, nephew to the Nansur Emperor, is the Exalt-General of the Imperial Army and a military genius. He plots to conquer the known world for his Emperor and dreams of the throne for himself. Maithanet, mysterious and charismatic, is spiritual leader of the Thousand Temples. He seeks a Holy War to cleanse the land of the infidel. Cnaiur, Chieftain of the Utemot, is a Scylvendi barbarian. Rejected by his people, he seeks vengeance against the former slave who slew his father, and disgraced him in the eyes of his tribe. Into this world steps Anasurimbor Kellhus, the product of two thousand years of breeding and a lifetime of training in the ways of thought, limb, and face. Steering souls through the subtleties of word and expression, he slowly binds all - man and woman, emperor and slave - to his own mysterious ends. But the fate of men - even great men - means little when the world itself may soon be torn asunder. Behind the politics, beneath the imperialist expansion, amongst the religious fervour, a dark and ancient evil is reawakening. After two thousand years, the No-God is returning. The Second Apocalypse is nigh. And one cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent start to the Prince of Nothing Trilogy,
By J.Yasimoto (Essex) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Darkness That Comes Before: Prince of Nothing, Book 1 (Paperback)
This is another one of those books that assaults you with so many cities, lands, names, factions, races, etc. that for the first couple of hundred pages you don't know your arse from your elbow, despite a couple of helpful appendices.
But stick with it because thankfully in the second half of the book everything settles down. All the major characters have been introduced and you get a far greater understanding of the world in which the story is set. In style and content the writing is very similar to Steven Erikson. If you are a fan of the Malazan series of books you will enjoy this. Alternatively, if you enjoy this book and haven't read Steven Erikson, I suggest you check him out (first book: Gardens of the Moon). This is a great fantasy book that manages to build a believable other world which has an unusual medieval Arabic flavour rather than the more common medieval European background. I would recommend it to all apart from younger readers who might struggle with the complexity. Hope this review helps.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark and doomy - a fair start!,
This review is from: The Darkness That Comes Before: Prince of Nothing, Book 1 (Paperback)
This isn't the easiest read on my shelves, but it is certainly one of the most interesting. This is the sort of book that you have to be in a particular mood to read. If you enjoyed the philosophising and deep politics of Erikson's Malazan series, as well as Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books, there's plenty for you here. The characters are well-drawn and very fallible, and the storyline is sketched out with just the right shade of foreshadowed tragedy to pull the reader along.
If the book has any failing at all, it is that there is no relief from the incipient misery, and virtually no humour to be found at all. Bakker's well-constructed "schools" of magic, more resembling the schools of thought of ancient Greece, are also tough going for anybody who doesn't want a story too rooted in psychology and philosophy. There's also the feeling that not a tremendous amount really happens - the main characters are being shuffled into position for the next act in what could be described as a very extended prologue (Bakker's Wikipedia entry confirms that this first trilogy was originally intended by be one single book). But as the first part of what looks to be one of the stand-out fantasy series of both this and the last decade, The Darkness etc. is definitely worth a good look.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top class stuff,
By Longbelly "anleodhasach" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Darkness That Comes Before (Prince of Nothing) (Hardcover)
Despite reading complaints regarding the highly detailed and complex world created by Bakker which stated his book was quite hard to get into i bought it because of the promise of a darker, more mature fantasy than normal. I was not disappointed. Bakkers writing and the world he creates have a depth and subtlety which are all to rare in the fantasy genre and the story/characters are as dark as anything those other masters , George R.R Martin and Steven Erikson, could hope to conjure. I hesitate to go into any great detail on the book itself for fear of introducing spoilers but suffice to say that the writer and book are of the very highest class and have even attracted deserved praise from the quality, literate papers such as the Guardian as well as his successful peers.
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