worrywort, on 28 November 2012 - 12:34 AM, said:
That's up for debate. My thoughts: Was he lashing out to spread what he himself felt? Yah. Was he doing it cuz he was "criminally" insane like The Joker? Yah. Did he want revenge? Yah. Was he also desperate for help? Did he want positive attention from someone, anyone? Did he have hope for something better? Yah, eventually. Healing moments: Shadowthrone's conversations with him and eventual (if layered in motive) support. His own "alien" worshipers approaching in mass. The Bonehunters -- along with people at various new temples across the globe -- entering the House of Chains, and the effect/power we know worshipers can have on the worshiped. For a long long time he wasn't himself. For a short time there near the end, he was coming back to himself. It's how gradual this process was, when the tipping point was reached, that we'll never know for sure. But IMO, pain was his game for most of MBOTF, even as it overlapped with ST's other plan to get gods to start taking responsibility for their worshipers. That's where the rest of the "sympathetic" elements of the pantheon come in.
Yeah, Gradual process of redemption, nay,
Salvation! I like that.
D, on 28 November 2012 - 03:05 AM, said:
While he evidently wanted Karsa to take the sword, I still think conquering Lether was the first step in a plan to hopefully head eastwards and defeat the Forkrul Assail at his Heart. Both the Edur empire and the Pannion Domin had a big expand-outwards-and-conquer-everything vibe - I think the CG was trying to use the nations he could influence to build up forces and re-conquer the major parts of his own self, of which The Heart would be the most important.
That's kind of what I was driving at with the Edur, but didn't actually think of that with the Pannion or the Apocalyptica. The frenzied mindless Tenescowri might have been enough to overcome FA's jedi mind tricks, and the 7C rebellion was rich in mages, assassins, and they had L'Oric for a while.
Xerxes, on 28 November 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:
Thanks guys.
Your right with Bugg and Tehol it would not have been the same experience without them. They rock as characters.
On Hannan Mosag iirc didn't he say he never intended to invade Lether, just to raise a barrier against them so they would leave the Eidur alone?
I get it on the Karsa thing, but I'm still not sure what he would achieve with that sword making the wielder go mental and all. Karsa as a character was pretty well developed away from the Lether storyline. His temptation and rejection (because the rejection was central to his character) could have been engineered at any point, in Darujhistan say.
I kind of also take the spreading pain bit. But it still seems to me that this whole story line was a way over engineered way to do something that could have been done in an easier way. I don't buy, or understand now you point it out, the whole Panion dominion bit as well. They would have been useless as a force for the Crippled God as by their very nature they were unsustainable (the whole devastation of the countryside and eating each other bit) and were lead by a madman.
Lether could have been introduced by Tavore sending ahead a scouting party, for example.
I did enjoy Midnight Tides as a book in and of itself. It was very lyrical and worked well as a story of brothers. But it does all feel kind of pointless to the whole now I'm finished. Don't get me wrong I'm not presumptions enough to tell SE how to write and I can cope with unresolved story lines. But one that lasts at least a book and a half. Its more confusing me than anything else.
Kaminsod switched to Rhulad was exactly because Hannan Mosag did not want to play ball with him, i.e. Mosag wanted the chaotic power, solidify the Edur territories but he was not going to be expansionist about it.
As for gathering armies, Kaminsod had to work with what he had. Pannion and the K'ell matron, Dryjhna, the Edur, all people broken, oppressed, or in case of Edur - a deadly mix of savage and apathetic.
As for spreading pain, I think he did a fantastic job at that.
I agree with the Karsa point, but the thing is that Kaminsod wanted Karsa to help him, to break
his chains, perhaps. And Karsa told him to sod off.
But to be fair, one can lose the entirety of Chain of Dogs from the narrative and just put in the background. Pretty much all of the books had self-contained stories in them, with the grand overarching series of teasers and revelations inter-spread between them.
I don't have time to consider things I have to consider.