by R. Scott Bakker (1967)
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Picture this: you’re huddled in a filthy tent amid the endless dunes of the Kianene frontier, the air thick with the stench of unwashed men and smoldering camel dung, as Anasûrimbor Kellhus—face like carved marble, eyes drilling into your skull—unravels the barbarian chieftain Cnaiür urs Skiötha with nothing but words. Cnaiür, that scarred Scylvendi beast who scalps his enemies and weeps for his slaughtered sons, breaks like dry reed under Kellhus’s gaze. Your heart hammers because you know it’s happening to you too—this monk from the mountains isn’t conquering armies yet; he’s conquering souls.
From there, R. Scott Bakker drags you into a world that feels like the Crusades if God were a liar and hell leaked through every prayer. You march with the Holy War, twenty thousand fanatics summoned by Maithanet’s fiery sermons from the Thousand Temples, trampling toward Shimeh to reclaim the holy city from the heathen Fanim. But Bakker doesn’t hand you heroes. Drusas Achamian, the tormented Mandate sorcerer, wakes screaming from dreams of the Apocalypse, his Gnostic sorceries painting the sky with apocalyptic fire while he grapples with visions of faceless horrors—the Consult, ancient aliens scheming the end of all things. Esmenet, the literate whore with ink-stained fingers, sells her body by day and wrestles forbidden love by night, her heart twisting as Kellhus’s shadow falls over her. Proyas, the pious prince, watches his ideals curdle into atrocity.
Reading it feels like plunging into icy black water—dread coils in your gut as Bakker, philosopher turned storyteller, vivisects free will itself. Kellhus embodies the terror: a Dunyain perfect in logic, emotionless, reading faces like open books, bending men without lifting a sword. Every conversation is a trap, every vow a chain. Battles erupt in sprays of gore, like the sack of a Fanim city where zealots rape and pillage under Crusade banners, but the real war rages inside skulls, where certainty dissolves into manipulation.
What sets this apart? Fantasy usually gives you magic swords or farmboys-with-destiny. Bakker gives you consciousness as weapon, evil as evolutionary inevitability, a grimdark epic where even the “good” are damned puppets. It echoes in later grim tales—think Joe Abercrombie’s cynicism laced with metaphysical dread—but nothing matches this raw ambition.
If you loved Dune’s prescients twisting empires or Malazan’s labyrinthine cruelties but hunger for philosophy that claws your brain, this is your unholy grail.
Crack it open tonight, and watch the darkness claim you first.
Author portrait: Photo: Roberta F. | License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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