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zek's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I am aware that at this point I sound like a broken record. That being said, like the two previous novels, The Thousandfold Thought is a literary masterpiece.
R. Scott Bakker is an absolute treasure of an author, and the only consolation I have that The Prince of Nothing has now come to an end is that The Aspect-Emperor awaits...
R. Scott Bakker is an absolute treasure of an author, and the only consolation I have that The Prince of Nothing has now come to an end is that The Aspect-Emperor awaits...
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Incest, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic
dwimblim's review against another edition
3.0
Maybe I'm just getting a bit tired of the world/characters, but this book didn't really do it for me. I was a bit relieved that the series is over. It was still fine though I guess.
natethesnake's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
mobysbooks's review against another edition
4.5
In the conclusion of Prince of Nothing, R. Scott Bakker cements himself as one of my favorite authors, which is quite the comeback. I said in previous reviews that I didn’t enjoy this upon first reading, but rereading the first two books and finishing the third for the first time was an experience I can only describe as intense.
I won’t talk about the story, which is impossible without spoilers for the final book of a trilogy anways. If you’ve come this far, you know what is at stake and what you can expect from the fulminant climax of the Holy War.
Bakker’s writing places him in a very exclusive circle of fantasy authors who have reached a level of literary excellence. The way he writes creates an unparalleled maze of immersion you get lost in while reading. I’d best describe this as a mixture between Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Malazan. Epic fantasy that reaches deep into philosophy and high concept fiction. The themes are masterfully executed, not just pretentious word gibberish but deeply profound and sophisticated concepts hat deal with the intricacies of the human psyche, or the influence and dangers of religious fervor and fanaticism.
The philosophy and musing on characters’ thoughts, which can sometimes occupy a whole chapter, gets even heavier than in the previous books, which demands a lot of patience and can sometimes become exhausting. This is not a particularly long book, but it is challenging. My only issue, which takes half a star away, is the meandering pacing in the first half.
The vast, almost crushingly dense atmosphere and world building are truly some of the best in fantasy. Terms like dark or grimdark don’t even begin to do these books justice. Bakker ticks all the boxes of brutality, cruelty, abuse, hopelessness and despair. This makes other „grimdark“ books look like YA in comparison.
The Second Apocalypse continues after this trilogy with the Aspect Emperor series, and as far as I’ve heard they are even more intense, and even darker which I can’t even begin to imagine.
I won’t talk about the story, which is impossible without spoilers for the final book of a trilogy anways. If you’ve come this far, you know what is at stake and what you can expect from the fulminant climax of the Holy War.
Bakker’s writing places him in a very exclusive circle of fantasy authors who have reached a level of literary excellence. The way he writes creates an unparalleled maze of immersion you get lost in while reading. I’d best describe this as a mixture between Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Malazan. Epic fantasy that reaches deep into philosophy and high concept fiction. The themes are masterfully executed, not just pretentious word gibberish but deeply profound and sophisticated concepts hat deal with the intricacies of the human psyche, or the influence and dangers of religious fervor and fanaticism.
The philosophy and musing on characters’ thoughts, which can sometimes occupy a whole chapter, gets even heavier than in the previous books, which demands a lot of patience and can sometimes become exhausting. This is not a particularly long book, but it is challenging. My only issue, which takes half a star away, is the meandering pacing in the first half.
The vast, almost crushingly dense atmosphere and world building are truly some of the best in fantasy. Terms like dark or grimdark don’t even begin to do these books justice. Bakker ticks all the boxes of brutality, cruelty, abuse, hopelessness and despair. This makes other „grimdark“ books look like YA in comparison.
The Second Apocalypse continues after this trilogy with the Aspect Emperor series, and as far as I’ve heard they are even more intense, and even darker which I can’t even begin to imagine.
norman1895's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
hewhospeaksoftales's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
rogerhes's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
pascalibrary's review against another edition
2.0
I really enjoyed the first two books in the Prince of Nothing series. This one, though, let me down in ways that retroactively make the previous two worse. I’ll outline my general thoughts on this one below.
In the first book, Kellhus is called out from the Dunyain monastery by a dream-call from his father. This mission that Kellhus undertakes, to find his father, becomes one half of the driving force of the trilogy. The father’s motives, the confrontation, and Kellhus’s actions are the aspects of this plot-half that are supposed to entice the reader to keep reading. In this book, that confrontation happens, and…
It’s completely underwhelming. We learn.. how the father discovered the consult, which was an extremely similar way that Kellhus discovered them. We learn that Kellhus has actually believed he was a prophet, which kind of comes out of nowhere and is NOT set up properly. Then, Kellhus repudiates his father and stabs him. Awesome. If you haven’t read the books, this might seem whelming as opposed to underwhelming, but I promise you that this scene is extremely disappointing and the information I said is either not interesting, poorly set up, or already known. Even the philosophical exchanges they have are just restatements of the core tenets of the series.
So, the driving force of the plot, Kellhus’s side, at least, is kind of made pointless in the end. What about the other half? Well, the division into halves is kind of a farce because Kellhus’s mission sweeps up all the other plot lines. Achamian, Esmenet, Proyas, Cnaiur, Conphas, and others all come to have their existences centered around Kellhus. Only Cnaiur retains any agency, and his plot line, while disturbing, was always engaging.
Esmenet, one of the best characters in the first book and a half, becomes relegated to a largely agency-lacking wife of Kellhus. Achamian, gnostic philosopher-spy, becomes Kellhus’s teacher despite his personal misgivings. Proyas comes to worship Kellhus. Conphas, a complete caricature, remains slightly interesting but still finds his plot line directly opposed to Kellhus.
On one hand, I get why this is. Kellhus dominates and manipulates. He makes people define themselves around him, he becomes the measure of their lives, so it's only natural that the characters would become more and more centered around his focal point. I just do not think that this is done in an interesting way. It seems natural that as the characters lose more and more of their agency to Kellhus, the narration would show his POV more and more, but this wasn’t what happened. We just got the same characters we loved endlessly talking about and heaping praise onto Kellhus. There ended up being a massive lack of tension because of this.
So, the characters become increasingly flat and lifeless, and the main driving force of the plot fizzles out.
Bakker is an A.B.D. In philosophy. He’s a smart guy, and one of the attractors for this series was the supposedly deep and systematic philosophy that he expounds throughout. This could have been a case of other people exaggerating what the books were like and giving me false expectations, which would suck, and I hope this can maybe temper what others may think before they read.
The philosophy here was cool, somewhat Nietzschean, somewhat Buddhist, somewhat Heideggerian, at least what I personally picked out, but I don’t think it was the centerpiece of the series. A few core ideas were repeated throughout, and that’s basically it. The metaphysics were there, but occupied maybe a page or two in total. Definitely not the point of the series.
What did seem to increasingly become the point of the books were large, bland battles and very uncomfortable sexual violence. I won't go into detail on the second one, except to say that this aspect was very gross and frequently seemed excessive. The first one came to completely replace the political intrigue that dominated the first book and existed in the second book. So many battles where flat generals and knights with unmemorable and unpronounceable names die. This is definitely my least favorite aspect of the fantasy genre, so I guess its not surprising I didn’t like this, but I’ve seen Steven Erickson and Joe Abercrombie write excellent battle scenes, so I know it can be done well.
So, yeah, I didn’t like this book and I don’t like where it took the series. I’d even say that if you liked the Prince of Nothing, you probably won’t like this book and shouldn’t finish the trilogy. I certainly won’t be reading the sequel QUADRILOGY which apparently eschews the viewpoint of Kellhus altogether.
In the first book, Kellhus is called out from the Dunyain monastery by a dream-call from his father. This mission that Kellhus undertakes, to find his father, becomes one half of the driving force of the trilogy. The father’s motives, the confrontation, and Kellhus’s actions are the aspects of this plot-half that are supposed to entice the reader to keep reading. In this book, that confrontation happens, and…
It’s completely underwhelming. We learn.. how the father discovered the consult, which was an extremely similar way that Kellhus discovered them. We learn that Kellhus has actually believed he was a prophet, which kind of comes out of nowhere and is NOT set up properly. Then, Kellhus repudiates his father and stabs him. Awesome. If you haven’t read the books, this might seem whelming as opposed to underwhelming, but I promise you that this scene is extremely disappointing and the information I said is either not interesting, poorly set up, or already known. Even the philosophical exchanges they have are just restatements of the core tenets of the series.
So, the driving force of the plot, Kellhus’s side, at least, is kind of made pointless in the end. What about the other half? Well, the division into halves is kind of a farce because Kellhus’s mission sweeps up all the other plot lines. Achamian, Esmenet, Proyas, Cnaiur, Conphas, and others all come to have their existences centered around Kellhus. Only Cnaiur retains any agency, and his plot line, while disturbing, was always engaging.
Esmenet, one of the best characters in the first book and a half, becomes relegated to a largely agency-lacking wife of Kellhus. Achamian, gnostic philosopher-spy, becomes Kellhus’s teacher despite his personal misgivings. Proyas comes to worship Kellhus. Conphas, a complete caricature, remains slightly interesting but still finds his plot line directly opposed to Kellhus.
On one hand, I get why this is. Kellhus dominates and manipulates. He makes people define themselves around him, he becomes the measure of their lives, so it's only natural that the characters would become more and more centered around his focal point. I just do not think that this is done in an interesting way. It seems natural that as the characters lose more and more of their agency to Kellhus, the narration would show his POV more and more, but this wasn’t what happened. We just got the same characters we loved endlessly talking about and heaping praise onto Kellhus. There ended up being a massive lack of tension because of this.
So, the characters become increasingly flat and lifeless, and the main driving force of the plot fizzles out.
Bakker is an A.B.D. In philosophy. He’s a smart guy, and one of the attractors for this series was the supposedly deep and systematic philosophy that he expounds throughout. This could have been a case of other people exaggerating what the books were like and giving me false expectations, which would suck, and I hope this can maybe temper what others may think before they read.
The philosophy here was cool, somewhat Nietzschean, somewhat Buddhist, somewhat Heideggerian, at least what I personally picked out, but I don’t think it was the centerpiece of the series. A few core ideas were repeated throughout, and that’s basically it. The metaphysics were there, but occupied maybe a page or two in total. Definitely not the point of the series.
What did seem to increasingly become the point of the books were large, bland battles and very uncomfortable sexual violence. I won't go into detail on the second one, except to say that this aspect was very gross and frequently seemed excessive. The first one came to completely replace the political intrigue that dominated the first book and existed in the second book. So many battles where flat generals and knights with unmemorable and unpronounceable names die. This is definitely my least favorite aspect of the fantasy genre, so I guess its not surprising I didn’t like this, but I’ve seen Steven Erickson and Joe Abercrombie write excellent battle scenes, so I know it can be done well.
So, yeah, I didn’t like this book and I don’t like where it took the series. I’d even say that if you liked the Prince of Nothing, you probably won’t like this book and shouldn’t finish the trilogy. I certainly won’t be reading the sequel QUADRILOGY which apparently eschews the viewpoint of Kellhus altogether.
margamus's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5