Oi, putting this together was a nightmare. This post should have been up yesterday, I mean it isn’t really very long or anything but I’ve been having problems with one of my computers and I only started writing it after work etc… etc… excuses and more excuses.
Now, all that above is true and the damn rootkit virus found on my system whilst I was finishing a write-up for something almost had me go another day without posting. Almost - until I saw Andrew’s post which was angsty and forlorn. With one fell swoop he finally guilted me into posting. I told him that we live in a Guilt Society damn it!

Which is an interesting topic, but not what I wanted to talk about. Basically, I have half-written, part-edited, mostly-thought-up, almost-posted, critically-destroyed and kinda-pretended about writing so many posts that I finally just had to post something. Not anything, but definitely something. Or someone… and something.


Anyway, R. Scott Bakker is the author of The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor trilogies informally known as The Second-Apocolypse is a man I highly admire and respect. He is, to me, one of the foremost authors in fantasy at the moment and his novels are truly compelling stuff.

I should now admit that I have only finished up the Warrior-Prophet and taken a Cursory glance at his Sci-fi thriller Neuropath which is strange stuff from anyone that knows me because if I really like a series I tend to gobble it up pretty quickly. However; this is for one of the reasons I love his work so much - it is very dense. The time I started reading his series I was full swing into the heaviest reading for school I have ever done, which is a lot of boring textbook material and thought-provoking articles, but I also had to critically deconstruct numerous texts historically, philosophically, sociologically, mythologically, or symbolically depending on my course. So, when I read for fun it tended to be light and fluffy. This is a horrible phenomenon that seems quite common for University and College students with many who stop reading all together until they're finished.

As I was saying, Bakker's novels are not light and fluffly. They are dense and dark and covered with spikes like a mace. His apocalypse feels world ending, his oppression that feels truly crushing and characters that feel live and believable. But also his themes and ideals are explored carefully and with real literary depth and not just in a "death of the author fantasy fans love to deconstruct, evaluate and analyse novels" kind of way (which is obviously true too) but a real "I write literature with a purpose even if it is fantasy" kind a way. With a background in literary criticism and philosophy and a penchant for D&D this makes perfect sense.
What all this amounted to is that I stopped reading the series, but thoroughly enjoyed the two novels I did read and planned on picking it up after a certain time. With his latest novel The White-luck Warrior released recently and being badgered to read it by an internet colleague I decided I would do just that and pick up the book this Friday. I also happened to luck into an interview with him whilst lurking the web which sparked this post.

Without further ado - the man himself (or his text). This wonderful interview is brought to us by fantasy hostlist:
http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-r-scott-bakker-interview-part-1.html

If you read the interview I’m sure you’ll understand what I said. He certainly answered those questions like a smart man. He also answered in a way that echoes my ideas of "critical" thinking in University (also known as a hate-on for rationalization), the intellectual or pseudo-intellectual, strong-versus-weak characters and the nature of human failing as well as death of the author. All of this means that he basically wrote up (and edited and made thoroughly enjoyable and thought out) many of my half-written, part-edited posts for me. Not only that, but it was done in the self-deprecating, outwardly friendly and cynical tone typical of Canadians which is just a bonus. It doesn’t mean that I won’t write about them at a later date because they are all topics worth exploring, but I don't have the mind-to-page exactness needed to write about them at the moment.

I should say much more about Bakker (not about me, technically this whole thing was about me) as he is not without faults. Firstly, I should say he is not as challenging as I made him out to be. I think he is that interesting and there is depth to his work, but looking at what I typed up there makes it seem as if he is unreadable, which he is not. All I meant was that there was more mind-work involved than most fantasy novels.
His work is sometimes buried beneath to many philosophical red-herrings and his themes sometimes railroad the actual narrative. Once in a while he gets a little too holier-than-thou (which I think, is accidental) and his attacking of human flaws (hubris, weakness) seem to piss people off a little too much. That and he has that special kind of personality that seems to get panties in bunches, which I might write about another time but either way that is that.

So, what was this post for? Mostly guilt getting the best of me and an endorsement of R. Scott Bakker, if you haven’t read his novels at least give them a chance they are wonderful even if they aren’t for everyone.