Prince of Nothing, Orphans of Chaos


I've been reading a lot of good books lately, but sadly, I rarely think to blog about them. Let's remedy that.

I received as a christmas present the first book in the Prince of Nothing trilogy, the Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker. Though you might find it strange, I generally avoid fantasy in favor of good science fiction. I guess because I was having trouble reliably finding good fantasy. Anyhow, R. Scott Bakker's trilogy (which includes the Warrior Prophet and the concluding Thousandfold Thought) was surprisingly fresh and I quite enjoyed the entire story arc. I confess I sometimes found myself skimming in order to make it through a couple elaborate battle scenes, but that was certainly the exception. Mr Bakker's prose is top-notch, and when things got down and dirty, he delivered.



I also just finished Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright. Billed as a fantasy, I almost didn't pick it up, but since I enjoyed his science fiction trilogy so entirely, I decided to give Orphans a whirl. And I was happy I did. Despite what I suspect are opposing politics, Mr. Wright writes the sort of prose to which I am drawn: Wagnerian images and mythic themes mixed with down to earth people and oddly appropriate flashes of modern-day idiom. In this way, Wright's books are Zelazny-esque; Roger Zelazny is one of my all-time favorite authors. In particular, I quite enjoyed Orphans' mixture of fantasy with such interesting science fiction concepts as tesseracts and higher-dimensional consequences of a being forced to live in three dimensions--from the point of view of someone who believed she'd always been a three-dimensional being.




Last night I started the Algebraist by Iain Banks. I put the book down some time after midnight. So far, it rocks.


Posted: Sun - April 9, 2006 at 11:07 AM          

©