Though the countless generations of humanity that have lived across the centuries have little of custom or culture in common, they do each share one disturbing characteristic. Each generation produces, at one point or another, a few tortured souls who believe that the apocalypse is nigh, that the world they know so well is ending, and that only they are capable of warning the poor, ignorant masses of their collective fate. We may, at some point, discover the source of the strange, existential impulse that empowers this eschatology, but such knowledge is almost secondary to a deeper truth, that, on some profound level, we must simultaneously want and fear the end of the world and whatever that may herald for ourselves and those we love. We must want, in short, to live in interesting times, to play our parts in an epic drama that dwarfs all else that has come before.
In all this desire, though, in all this fervor for the end times, do the doomsdayers truly comprehend what they are anticipating? Can they grasp the bloodshed, the chaos, and the darkness that would arise from an actual apocalypse? And if so, would they rue what they were so eager to declare? This apocalyptic novel from Mr. Bakker leaves little doubt that heralds of end times are but children playing with shadows, that true darkness is far more profound and fearsome than any of us can imagine.
On a world riven by magic and faith, destiny and prophecy, sorcerers, priests and emperors vie for control of Eaerwa, a diverse continent home to both urban cities and rural steps, self-indulgent nobles and war-hardened tribesmen. Of course, Eaerwa wasn't always so ripe for power-plays. Not 2,000 years earlier, it was all-but-depopulated by the First Apocalypse, a continental conflict that turned both the people and their culture to ashes. But the passing of two millennia has not only restored imperial government and mercantile trade to the land, it has allowed the lessons of the past to slip into shadow, forgotten by competing forces whose yearning for power and dominance compel them to violent action.
The result is the Holy War, a conflict that pits two deeply divergent sects of the same faith against one another in hopes of reclaiming a city holy to both sides. But though this conflict is bound to claim the lives of countless souls, selling their families and the continent at large into economic and social chaos, it is almost secondary to deeper forces at play, forces that are awakening after centuries of being thought banished or dead. And for all of the terrors war can summon, they are as nothing to the nightmares this new darkness heralds. A second apocalypse is imminent, ready to return this still wounded world to rubble.
The first instalment of an ambitious trilogy, The Darkness That Comes Before is a fascinating piece of fantasy fiction that arguably has more in common with epic poems and Greek tragedies than it does with its genre's customary fare. Rife with philosophy and violence, it is both sacred and profane, as drenched in the fanaticism of zealots as it is the opportunism of tyrants attempting to capitalize on such faith. In this, it is an deeply political novel that boldly sets out to suck the reader down into a world as intensely drawn as it is utterly foreign, a world of godlike magicians and beleaguered whores, spoiled emperors and holy prophets. These opposing and competing forces occupy the heart of this blood-soaked work, fighting for dominance over a sprawling and, at times, bewildering tale.
But as much as Mr. Bakker succeeds in injecting his fiction with the philosophy of high literature, as much as he manages to bring Eaerwa to light in all its complex depravity, The Darkness That Comes Before is nonetheless a decidedly unlikeable novel. Its characters are all-but-universally hateful. Yes, there are moments when Mr. Bakker's protagonists manage to elevate themselves from the mire, but even these moments are characterized by despair, confusion, and an overriding sense of doom. There is not a spark of joy to be found anywhere within these 700 unpleasant pages.
Mr. Bakker should be commended for his achievements here. It is a rare talent who can conceive of such a rich world and animate it with such violent flair. But his characters are mere two-dimensional puppets, pieces to be moved on the cosmic chessboard. The author never allows his readers to empathize with them, let alone love or admire them. All such emotion is lost in the everpresent sense of gloom and repulsiveness that clings to each of his actors who are, for all their sweat and toil, uncompelling.
For me, the journey ends here. For what Mr. Bakker forgot, in the creation of his nuanced world, was to imprint upon his story something like a reason for the reader to keep turning the page. For all its art, distasteful and disappointing... (2/5 Stars)
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