I’ve been catching up with R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series in fits and starts over the last year or two. And I have NO idea why.

Because it’s just thousands- thousands! of pages of philosophical pontification, cynicism, universally dislikable characters with stupid names, misogyny, violent sodomy, emphatic repitition- repitition!, the word marmoreal, and prose so chewy that it’s positively Lovecraftian, and not in the cool way.



But like…it also has all the stuff I want in a fantasy story. It’s got a well-realised setting, stirring battles, emotionally realistic characters, ancient caverns, psychedelic wizard duels, a sweeping story that I just know is building to some big close where it’s all going to make sense like the conclusion of some enormously-bloated Masters’ thesis…

And I’ve read a lot of modern fantasy stuff over the years, and really, if it’s this or another orphan-lad-grows-up-in-bucolic-village-but-finds-out-he’s-really-a-cool-wizard-knight-and-fights-a-dark-lord book, I know which I’m picking.



So yeah. More goddamn rape-philosophy books will come out and I’ll probably keep guzzling them down like the swine I am. But I won’t be happy about it.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the art. From the sketchbook- here’s Cnaiur, a Sranc, Achamian, and Esmenet.

