Much Ado about "Nothing"

TITLE: "Prince of Nothing" Trilogy
Book 1 "The Darkness that Comes Before"
Book 2 "The Warrior Prophet"
Book 3 "The Thousandfold Thought"
AUTHOR: R Scott Bakker
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RATING
5/5 "Princess Bride"; 4/5 "Count of Monte Cristo"; 3/5 "James Earl Jones"; 2/5 "Dukes of Hazzard"; 1/5 "Dollar King"
SCORE: 3/5

High fantasy is the Rodney Dangerfield of literary genres, where tentative stabs at seriousness tend to result in self-inflicted wounds. Such, alas, is the case with Canadian author R Scott Bakker. The quest for artistic respectability through moral ambiguity and "realistic" writing reaches its zenith (or nadir) in his "Prince of Nothing" trilogy. Part alternate history, party weighty meditation on the nature of free will, the book's airy ideas are nearly asphyxiated by a setting not merely "gritty", but downright squalid.

The book's realism is mostly borrowed, having been lifted directly from the annals of medieval history. The main story arc reads like a palimpsest of a text on the First Crusade: The Shriah (Pope) declares a Holy War (Crusade) against the herectical Fanim (Muslims) who occupy the holy city of Shimeh (Jerusalem). Even minor events like the People's Crusade find their parallel in the book.

In a nod to the cliches of the genre, there is also a shadowy bunch of black hats with the unlikely corporatist name of "the Consult" (I picture them not slaughtering innocents, but boring them to death with business buzzwords and endless PowerPoint presentations), out to destroy the world by resurrecting their "No-God".

If that ambition sounds like something out of Nietzsche, it's no mistake. Mr Bakker holds a Ph D in philosophy, and the central figure in his tale is the Nietzschean super-man Anasurimbor Kellhus, who plans to control the Holy War for his own ends. Kellhus possesses a kind of Spock-like emotional detachment and intellect, and in Mr Bakker's worldview, this enables him to manipulate those around him, since their actions are guided not by free will, but by ingrained habit, culture and emotion.

To his credit, Mr Bakker is able to insert these ideas into the plot without reducing the novel to a Socratic dialogue. Sadly, Mr Bakker's writing style detracts from this complex message. He brings the trend towards greater realism full circle, presenting us a world that is so relentlessly bleak, it is utterly unbelievable. Battle scenes wallow in gore, like a Frank Miller comic without the distracting pictures. There is also a distasteful obession with sexual degradation -- the two major female characters are both prostitutes, and the agents of the evil Consult are fixated on the subject. The other main characters are almost uniformly unsympathetic; Kellhus is repellently cold, calculating and manipulative; his barbarian companion Cnaiur, savage, bestial and nihilistic, a pseudo-Scythian with Gnostic tendencies ("The world is a lie," he claims, and you know, he's right--it's a complete fiction).

Another distraction is Mr Bakker's indulgence in that worst of high-fantasy vices -- silly names. I've never seen an author quite so in love with the dieresis. He confettis the page with dotted vowels, pausing only to slap a cricumflex on the odd "u" or two.

"The Darkness that Comes Before" and the rest of the series deserve respect, if only for the depth of research and the complexity of its theme. However, the presentation is so unpleasant, it is unlikely to get it.