A Top Ten Something
by rsbakker
So The White-Luck Warrior is on the shelves and shipping in Canada. I checked out Amazon’s fantasy bestseller list and I gotta say it was nice to see the Beast tucked in there with Rothfuss, Martin, and Erikson. It won’t be there for long, I’m sure, but still… And over time, who knows?
It’s nice to be a top ten something, even if just for a few days.
My own contract copies arrived yesterday, and I had a chance to play the ‘Cringe Game,’ where I open random pages here and there and begin reading. Not a single cringe! I’ve realized that my cringing has actually diminished on a curve with each new book I put out. I want to say this is because I’m a better writer than I was, but I have this nagging feeling that it has as much to do with an unconscious unwillingness to acknowledge post-publication problems.
This is also the time of year when I begin my daily Googling ritual, looking for reviews. Nada so far, but I did have occasion to slam head on into my rejection aversion hardwiring. I’m not sure what it is, but I periodically encounter people who really seem to need to take the piss out of my books on the web. I’m not talking about people simply disliking the books – something which I actually find interesting – but individuals who, for whatever reason, decide that I’m nothing more than a sophmoric hack. The prose is ‘clumsy.’ The philosophy is ‘cliche’ or ‘intro.’ These kinds of assertions really make me bristle for some reason – probably because my writing style and my thematics are cornerstones of my professional pride. In this last instance, I actually found myself entertaining a revenge fantasy where I corner the individual at a convention and to have them explain what my philosophical goals are and what makes them so derivative and trite. I wait for them to mention Borges or Carter or Harrison and then I pounce. Imagining these kinds of scenarios always leave me feeling foolish afterward, even though I realize they are simply another irresistible reflex.
I’ve also caught myself marvelling at just how many books I now have out. I still feel like a new author, green as green, and yet I’m anything but. Light, Time, and Gravity brings the count up to eight–eight frickin novels, man. Who would have thunk it.
And this is just a partial snapshot. There’s the apprehensions over what you all will think. The hopes for the building popularity of the series as a whole. The joy of showing my daughter the book, and watching her frown, then turn the book upside down to right the Circumfix on the cover. And so much more.
Having a book released is a complicated time. A mire when things don’t go well, and almost symphonic when they do.
Three Pound Brain 
Well I will definitely be picking it up in the next week or so. I just grabbed Erickson’s The Crippled God this weekend so I need to finish slogging through it first. Then it is this and Disciple of the Dog.
No matter the reception congratulations with the release! Looking forward to taking a couple of days off from everything just to consume this book 🙂
I’m very much looking forward to the White-Luck Warrior and believe in the series gaining a bigger following. I’m certainly working on making it happen! Same goes for Neuropath by the way, this book deserves to be recognised.
Scott, wow, I hadn’t been aware that it was release time. I’ve not heard nor seen any word about any review copies sent out (other than what you sent to Pat), so that might explain the dearth of reviews so far.
Looking forward to this.. got to wait till May I think in the UK so a little while to go.
Hi, I don’t know if/why you might know this, but does “shipping in Canada” include shipping from amazon.ca to America? I would love to get this book in my hands as fast as possible and I wasn’t sure whether I’d accomplish anything by ordering from the Canadian Amazon store.
Also (probably even less related), will this book be including more of your constructed writing system? I’ve tried to work some of it out from Akka’s map and the covers of the Prince of Nothing trilogy, but haven’t had much luck. That’s something I’m personally interested in so I was just curious as to whether I’d be seeing it again. Thanks!
I would presume so, since I got “Disciple of the Dog” shipped to NYC from Amazon.ca last year. It’s a bit more expensive, though, now that the Canadian dollar actually has value.
Also, Bakker, congrats. I really look forward to reading this.
Congratulations Scott! I’m really looking forward to reading the new book. Your prose rocks, by the way, and your “philosophy” is serious and worth paying attention to; it has certainly sent me off on several strange and weird paths…and altered my worldview. Looking forward to TL&G very much — all the best!
(Or maybe I’m just gaming ambiguities…)
Congratulations: both for being recognized as “top ten” in something, and for managing to publish so much or your work.
Congrats, man! I’m hugely looking forward to diving in. I hope, as I turn my attention back to TR over the next few months, that TWLW inspires me instead of crippling me with the oh-so-familiar feelings of pale inadequacy…
You deserve it, Bakker. You’re a very unique, enlightening person. Thanks again for your words. WLW in transit with Canada Post to my house. Fingers crossed that it arrives before the end of the week. Looking forward to LTG and the writing class. Cheers, Bakker, congratulations.
Your prose is excellent, reviewers should take note, few fantasy authors write sections as good as this:
“Through the dark spiral of the tower stair, it seemed all he could see were his father’s eyes, loving eyes, judging eyes, regretting a heavy hand, celebrating a tickling laugh, and watching, always watching, to be sure his second heart beat warm and safe. And if he looked close, if he dared peer at those eyes the way he might gems, he knew he would see himself, not as he was, but mirrored across the shining curve of a father’s pride, a father’s hope that he might live with greater grace through the fact of a son.”
Or this, bit of fever dream esque narration during Moria: “She can feel the Chorae between their two hearts… A lick of hair has dropped past her brow, threading the blood from her eyes to her cheek to her lips.” Which I think is significant because it invokes four aspects we’ve seen most closely connect souls to the outside: hearts, blood, eyes, and mouth. This invocation precedes a lengthy gaze of Mimara’s that is very untrustworthy, and damn near supernatural. But rather than show it to us directly, or tell us that Mimara’s gaze is something ‘other’ at this moment, it is done more subtly, by first invoking all the elements by which the soul connects to the outside. So instead of a direct description of bloody supernatural events (and I love how the supernatural really is hard to comprehend sanely throughout the Judging Eye, it’s completely crazy-tinged with incomprehensibility wed to feverish belief), like we get with Psatma’s blood or Sorweel’s blessing, we’re getting a similar moment for Mimara very subtly and indirectly. It’s wonderful writing, imo, even if my interpretation is way off, I still think it’s tremendously well written.
RSB has the best prose among the top ten, IMO. Perhaps not as accessable as GRRM or Rothfuss, but by far the most “literary” and, for my 3 pound brain, evocative.
Congratulations Scott! Just picked this up at Chapters. I’m looking forward to finishing it this weekend and then I’ll have to wait a few more years while you finish the next one. Are you going to be doing any appearances in the Toronto area? I’ll need to get this one signed just like all your other books. Can’t wait to read it.
So we yanks just have to sit and spin ’til the middle of april…. figures. That canadian cover *is* nice, but wouldn’t match my copy of TJE.
“R. Scott Bakker is the recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts Fellowship…”
First line, first page. Thanks Scott, it’s probably good to go into this one laughing like an asshole.
One chapter through and I won’t say much (I don’t imagine my praise and gratitude, at this point, can do much more than bore the author and offend the yet-waiting readers)… but I will let the tree-porn fans know they’ll be getting their fix pretty quickly this time around.
I wanted to also say that your prose rocks, but plenty have already said so, which warms my heart. I can imagine that the nay-sayers and (nonconstructive) critics of your work likely have an agenda aside from reviewing your work, say – proving that they are smarter than an internationally published author. Also, the fact that your philosophy in the books has been called ‘intro’ shouldn’t be considered an insult (despite the context and tone of the label). You talk a lot about reaching the largest crowd possible, and how fantasy is a great vehicle for achieving this, and in that sense ‘intro’ philosophy is ideal.
Of course, I completely disagree that the philosophy is ‘intro’, although I can understand a reader decrying it as such and in part I would attribute this to how far they were willing or wanting to take what they found in your books. I have had lengthy and intense discussions with many other readers of your work that wouldn’t have made a whole lot of sense to ‘intro’ philosophy students . . . or graduate philosophy students either actually. . .
The prose is ‘clumsy.’ The philosophy is ‘cliche’ or ‘intro.’
By what metric do they measure this? Do they say? Or do they think themselves a metric? Something by which the word clumsy or cliche is defined by?
Probably way back when, in small communities of 200 or so, someone who claims to be the metric for a word probably was the case in that community. The notion probably was reciprocated by circumstances, back then. But now?
Anyway, you got a bunch of posters above who praise your work – which probably makes things worse. Unquestioning praise is dangerous stuff (Look at George Lucas and episodes 1-3 of star wars…)
The joy of showing my daughter the book, and watching her frown, then turn the book upside down to right the Circumfix on the cover.
More arrogant assumption! 🙂
Daring to guess the next move in chess! Such arrogance!
I hope this book sheds some light on the meanings/significance of trees and gates. Two motifs in the series I am most intrigued about.
Is there a place online any more to discuss the books? The Three Seas forum seems pretty dead…
Brian – The AOIAF forums have much love (and much contention) about Bakker’s work. There’s currently three-four (!) threads on TJE and WLW on the Literature page at this very moment. Plus, Bakker himself has posted there–incognito, at least briefly 😉
woops = “ASOIAF” – westeros.org
Congrats on the release, RSB. I have been eagerly awaiting this book, and I know I’m not alone.
Any idea on when we’ll see WLW in Aus? Otherwise, I’m copping the shipping from ca.
I know this is going to be a godawful come-down from the Scott/Rothfuss/Martin/Abercrombie onslaught that 2011 is turning into, but like the junkie I am I can’t stop.
The reason you’re popular, at all, is due to the fact that your writing is far and away better than all but a couple fantasy writers, in my mind, ever.
There are people who are, not stupid, but bad analysts, and who say stupid things. The guy who said your prose is clumsy is one of these people
Okay, I’m one of the people who hates the philosophy in these books.
I have not studied any philosophy at all in my time. I pretty much know the names of the more famous philosophers, and could probably rattle off a few lesser known ones if I was humming the tune to Monty Python’s philosopher song.
But the philosophy in these books is either a) too subtle for a layman like me to penetrate, or b) a bunch of platitudes. If (a), then I can’t tell, so I assume (b).
Now, I read all six (real) Dune books and loved them when I was a teenager. At the time, they were consciousness raising. Particularly the later books. Now, maybe the revelations within those books wouldn’t have been revelations had I been older when I read them, but back then they were astounding. The brutality of Leto’s long term view of civilisation; the way a dialogue would progress in a way that was only one step from being incomprehensible, because both characters were extrapolating enormous amounts of information from each thing the other said, and yet I could follow along at home, because Frank Herbert was brilliant enough to imply their entire thought processes without using anything but the spoken dialogue.
So, part of my assumption of (b) is that I can clearly remember finding value and meaning in what I saw in the Dune books, so I’m also assuming that I’m smart enough to have understood Dune.
So either you’re a) writing a work that is more complex and subtle than Dune, or b) not.
Of secondary importance is the in-world source of this philosophy. Kelhus, I can buy. Achamain too. Both come from backgrounds that imply deep introspection and relatively great education. The prostitute-philosopher, though? Or the barbarian-philosopher? That broke my suspension of disbelief.
My assumption here is that as an educated, obviously intelligent person who is very well versed in philosophy, you’ve assumed things about the way the insides of other people’s heads work that ring false to someone like me, who doesn’t think like that. I can buy the philosophical outlook from characters who are your world’s equivalent of pHD students. I can’t buy it from those with no education whatsoever.
The caveat I need to add here is that I’ve become a big fan of the books. I became a huge fan when I got to the Glossary in TTT, which was packed full of some of the coolest fantasy ideas and worldbuilding I’ve ever come across. But it left me wondering why that stuff wasn’t worked into the main body of the text.
TJE was a huge leap forward, and I absolutely loved it. A lot of those cool ideas were worked into the text. The Nonmen in particular are a fantastically horrific/tragic concept. I can’t wait to get my hands on WLW, whenever that happens to be here in Australia.
I just thought I’d point at that despite my distaste for the philosophy within the books, I am a fan who very much enjoys your work.
What sort of philosophy did Esme or Cnaiur say that prompted your responce, Sam?
I do remember a bit in the books where the reason for the Scylvendi swazons (I spelt it wrong, no doubt – googling for right spelling…).
When the hear the reason, some characters themselves say it is too sublime a belief for barbarians!
What is it when the characters themselves share you broken suspension of disbelief?
I think the very fact you “can buy the philosophical outlook from characters who are [Bakker’s] world’s equivalent of pHD students” shows you’ve already intuitively grasped the major philosophical issues being explored in these books. Your frustration may be stemming more from lacking the formal vocabulary to clearly frame these issues for yourself, rather than from getting beat down by some super difficult philosophy test designed to keep out the layman.
I wouldn’t call what I feel when reading these books “frustration”. More like annoyance. I find it annoying when characters such as Cnaiur and Esme wax philosophic, because, basically, I don’t do that. I’m a well educated guy, and my experiences have led me to believe that I’m of above average intelligence (though I’m definitely not some genius outlier), but I don’t think like that.
So when characters who have no formal education have internal monologues that are completely incongruous with their backgrounds, it doesn’t ring true to my experiences. The realism disappears.
I read a review somewhere that called the PoN trilogy “like watching a great movie for the first time with the director’s commentary turned on”. This seemed exactly right. It is a great story. I’ve bought every book so far, and intend to buy WLW as soon as it is available here.
But that story is obscured behind a bunch of philosophical rambling that strikes me as either being a fancy way of saying something that was self-evident anyway, or platitudinous.
The core of the books may be grounded in deep philosophical ideas, which is what makes them so unique and interesting, but the exploration of these ideas should be a natural function of the narrative. Interpretation of the ideas presented should be left up to the reader.
It is possible to do it the other way. Frank Herbert did it (at least, my teenaged self thought he did, I haven’t reread the Dune series as an adult). Neal Stephenson breaks just about every rule I have for what makes good writing, but he does it with such astounding skill that his books are actually the better for it. But to do stuff like that, you have do have to be a genius outlier.
Ahk, the reply function here is unwieldy – hopefully this post ends up roughly where I intended it.
Sam,
The core of the books may be grounded in deep philosophical ideas, which is what makes them so unique and interesting, but the exploration of these ideas should be a natural function of the narrative.
Yeah, but your doing the classic “Take what is actually your own perception of natural and treat it as definitional for ‘natural’ in the real world”
I mean, pitch it this way, say Scott was actually, through the book, suggesting the people like this can and do exist, even in the real world (and further, in an epic novel they are all inexplicably drawn into one thread…but lets forgive epic for a moment…).
In such a case where he’s saying they can and do exist in real life – to just say ‘That doesn’t work as a book’ is to plug the ears and not listen to that message.
However, if Scott aimed to forfil the, lets call it a convention of barbarians and whores not being philosophical, I’d pay your concerns that he didn’t meat the convention.
Which is Scott doing? I can only fucking guess, lol!
But I will say Serwe never got philosophical. I think she was depicted as stupid (or uneducated or whatever) but without becoming two dimensional. And Kellhus did pick up Esme for her native intellect. And Moenghus possibly picked up Cnaur for his intellect.
Can’t wait to get it’! Surgery was a success, and WLW should be here from CA by the time I’m home! Proud of you, Scott!
I have a feeling you read too many Amazon reviews. Not a very good source to accurately gauge the reaction of your readers. Bunch of dumbasses on there.
Congratulations on your success as a writer man, it’s well deserved. I can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail.
Any indication of when we’ll be receiving copies in Australia? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I think regardless of merit, criticism from people who have an axe to grind always sound like personal insults against one’s intellect. That’s just the kind of signal that sends the lizard brain into a frenzy. However, since those people have a philosophical axe to grind, your instinctual reassert dominance reflex ends up grasping for a dozen white hot hammers of head bashing logic.
Anyway, congrats on the release. I’m looking forward to both this and LTG. I’m glad you decided to go ahead and publish it after all.
Ignore these people who hate your books, dude. Your writing is excellent. I find myself just going back and re-reading sentences (like: the shadows gathered ’round like children around a violent father). The philosophy behind the novels is deep and interesting. The plot is unpredictable and constantly keeps me on my toes. Just keep writing. I don’t read any fantasy today (I’m 39)because I feel like I’ve “outgrown” it, except yours! It reminds me how I felt when I first read Dune: holy shit, you can do this with this type of fiction? Damn!!! Cut this out and paste it to your wall: Don’t Stop Writing!
Ah, you read my mind Ken!
I also, so very often, just can’t bear to bring myself to start a new fantasy book. Reluctance born of expectation of the tedium to get to know the characters and world, and then realize (yet again), how shallow and cliche the whole thing turned out to be. Then i usually clench my teeth and grind through it, just to be “on the safe side”, the masochist i am.
I’ve high expectations for your books. I remember picking up Neuropath, all excited and joyful. Then i flip the book over and read the back cover text. Palm-forehead smack and an agonizing groan of “nooooo”, don’t let it be crime chase modern stuff. Here’s my point – even if i dislike just about any book that involves anything in past 50 years, there’s different aspects to enjoy in your books. I loved Neuropath for the current trends trajectory ideas, futile resistance to nihilism and occasional artful ageless writing, even while skipping over a bunch of things that didn’t appeal to me.
That’s the major attraction for me in your works, the multitude of reflections it casts.
Looking forward to devouring DotD and WLW!