A Few Honest Questions

>>9592925
i've read it, the 2nd one, and part of the 3rd.

interesting world, one character is an insufferable mary sue and one is an old neckbeard. main plotline is a fantasy retelling of the first crusade.

bakker poured a lot of his philosophy into the fictional world, which makes for some interesting stuff. bakker also spends more than enough time with 1) homoeroticism 2) rapey monsters and 3) females as subhuman cumdumpsters.

so overall, worth a read if you like fantasy, but i would not recommend it if you're not into GRI fantasy

>>9592925
It's garbage

>>9592925
I've read the first three. They're kind of a fantasy retelling of the first crusade. The most interesting part of it for me was Bakker's take on the blank-slate protagonist, as his protagonist literally has no personality, he's just the figure that drives all the events and that the events hinge on, which is surprisingly effective. In the same way that Bakker 'fantasizes' history, he also 'fantasizes' philosophy, which allows him to incorporate some cool elements into the world, just so long as you're not expecting fully fleshed-out philosophy. It's tone is too serious to be considered 'fun' in the way that Rothfuss might be, but there are still plenty of "that was awesome" moments. Most of the characters are three-dimensional, with the exception of the protagonist (but there's a good reason for that) and the Emperor. Akka (an alternate protagonist) is deeply endearing, and he was the primary character that kept me invested in the books.
What draws you to the book?

>>9592987

I ended up getting this recomended to me by a friend of mine. And I can only ask /lit/ about this because he mentioned two aliens that from what I'm told rape everything with an orifice, just wanted to confirm if this was just a novelization of FATAL or not. So thanks, I'll see if my library has it.

He also mentioned something that caused miscarriages for years in the world.

>>9593052
It isn't nearly so edgy. A lot of what Bakker tries to show in the novel are the myriad intrinsic motivations that drive human action, so the monsters that rape everything with an orifice are just exaggerations of rote hedonic forces. They show how one might be controlled by one's sexual impulses, and how those impulses can be, well, perverted.

>>9593077

Hm, interesting. So I assume that each character/group being related to a certain philosophy has what could be the positive effects and negative effects of taking up the philosophy?

>>9593081
Loosely, yeah. But again, don't expect anything really insightful on the philosophy front, it's more a source of inspiration for world-building than the focus of the book.

>>9593089

Got it, so any characters that you'd be kind to list anon?

>>9593095

Whoops, didn't mean to namefag

>>9592948
>>9592987
The philosophical fantasy raises it to a 6/10, not even as good as Tolkien or Herbert. I do wish it had been deeper, as the fantasy genre desperately needs a reboot. An interesting experiment, but Bakker should have left it to someone more honestly brilliant.

>>9592925

Have you ever wondered if a book can be readable if the main character is literally without personality? Ever wonder if you took the best/worst That Guy threads from /tg/ and cobbled them into a series that is 6 (almost 7) books long? I actually love it for its completely unironic That Guying.

Imagine, if you will, a game of *your favourite fantasy RPG* with your mates and this new dude roles a monk who has literally no fucking idea AT ALL about the world he's in. I mean at all. He has literally been living in the mountains in a monastery trying to not hear anything about the outside world and anyone that does kills themselves. Not only is he a monk, he is actually able to outfight the absolute hardest and toughest barbarian of an entire race of hard and tough barbarians, who are known for thousands of years by every culture and considered unconquerable. He is also able to master any language from hearing it and every single woman he looks at instantly knows through his soulful expressions that they must bang him, then do. This is, of course, before he becomes the most powerful sorcerer ever.

That's not even getting into the mystical realm of the rape aliens that fuck people to death or, in later books, the Yatwerians who are literally a cult of radical feminists. I genuinely believe that the main character is so absolutely beyond a Mary Sue that it just...works. I can genuinely believe someone playing Kellhus in a party and saying "I learn this language instantly because I can read the looks on their faces" to "also, I learn the most impossibly powerful magic in this setting almost instantly, I innovate it in a way nobody has for thousands of years, immediately upon learning the first spell I get". He then even changes his class from monk to shaman because he is too powerful to be the best monk, priest, monk and sorcerer in the game that he needs to make a new class for how awesome he is. I am not making this up. This just can't accidentally be this perfect of a That Guy.

>>9592925
Do you smoke weed?

>>9592925
It's the most disgusting thing /lit/ has made me read in years.

And I'm not joking around. There are people here who un-ironically praise this shit.