[Sinisdar Toste]

Have you read TtH? Kharkanas and Draconus get a good going over in that book

[Lucky Revenant]

I would like it if this trilogy helped us better understand what went down with Emurlahn. My current rereading of TTH is making me want this trilogy despite what happens in it, though.

I kind of wonder how the Andii were before all the ennui, since I don't think the ennui is an intrinsic trait of the race, and only appeared once Mother Dark turned her face on the Andii

[maro]

I presume (hope) the Tiste Liosan are not going to be comic relief in these books?

[UmbraPhoenix]

Personally, any additional writing centered on Rake and the Tiste Andii is good as far as i am concerned. They have been my favorite race since the begining, and Rake is my absolute favorite character. Having an opportunity to learn more about his, and Andarist's, and Silchas's past is all i could have wished for. Throw in characters like Draconus before his humbling in dragnipur, and some of the other powerful tiste soletaken and this promises to be perhaps the best setting yet!

[Ceda Cicero]

The only thing I'm certain of in regard to this trilogy is that it will surprise us, as this is SEs forte. I am sure we will get a lot of new insight into all the principles (the brothers, MD, probably Draconus, etc...) but almost surely not in the way that we would expect. For example I highly doubt the bulk of the story will be told from POVs we're familiar with - something about that seems wrong to me. And certainly, as another poster has mentioned, we won't be seeing Rake as a welp wandering around pissed at his mom for shacking up with Draconus, going on a Rand al'Thor-esque question to drink the blood of T'iam, anything like that...

I am most interested to see precisely what roles the brothers determined they would take in the war, particularly. In TtH, what we saw through Endest Silann made it seem pretty clear that they had discussed and agreed upon each taking a different route - whatever Andarist's was, recall, it broke Silchas's heart. Also there have been repeated references to Andarist surrendering his power willingly (more than just passing on drinking from T'iam.) In the MT prologue, Scabandari says he did so out of grief, and it was grief delivered by Scabandari's own hand.

All in all, everything we've seen of Kharkanas, MD, and Kurald Galain so far has the feel of THE mythological/ontological foundation for the universe. In less capable hands, I would definitely be wary of an author setting out to explore such a thing in a prequel series, but I am confident that SE will do it well and surprise us.

[champ]

TtH Spoilers...

Quote

Down at the causeway spanning the Citadel's moat, blood leaked out from bodies sprawled along its length, and in the north sky something terrible was happening. Lurid slashes like a rainbow gone mad, spreading in waves that devoured darkness. Was it pain that strangled the very air? Was it something else burgeoning to life, shattering the universe itself?

Endest Silann, a simple acolyte in the Temple of Mother Dark, wove drunkenly round the bodies towards the Outer Gate, skidding on pools of gore. Through the gate's peaked arch he could see the city, the roofs like the gears of countless mechanisms, gears that could lock with the sky itself, with all creation. Such was Kharkanas, First Born of all cities. But the sky had changed. The perfect machine of existence was broken - see the sky!

The city trembled, the roofs now ragged edged. A wind had begun to howl, the voice of the multihued light-storm as it lashed out, flared with thunderous fire.

Forsaken. We are forsaken!

He reached the gate, fell against one pillar and clawed at the tears streaming from his eyes. The High Priestess, cruel poet, was shrieking in the nave of the Temple, shrieking like a woman being raped. Others - women all - were writhing on the marble floor, convulsing in unison, a prostrate dance of macabre sensuality. The priests and male acolytes had sought to still the thrashing limbs, to ease the ravaged cries erupting from tortured throats with empty assurances, but then, one by one, they began to recoil as the tiles grew slick beneath the women, the so-called Nectar of Ecstasy - and no, no man could now pretend otherwise, could not but see this the way it was, the truth of it.

They fled. Crazed with horror, yes, but driven away by something else, and was it not envy?

Civil war had ignited, deadly as that storm in the sky. Families were being torn asunder, from the Citadel itself down to the meanest homes of the commonry. Andii blood painted Kharkanas and there was nowhere to run.

Through the gate, and then, even as despair choked all life from Endest Silann, he saw him approaching. From the city below. His forearms sheathed in black glistening scales, his bared chest made a thing of natural armour, The blood of Tiam ran riot through him, fired to life in the conflation of chaotic sorcery, and his eyes glowed with ferocious will.

Endest tell to his knees in Anomander's path. 'Lord! The world falls!'

'Rise, priest,' he replied. 'The world does not fall. It but changes. I need you. Come,'

And so he walked past, and Endest found himself on his feet, as Lord Anomander's will closed about his heart like an iron gauntlet, pulling him round and into the great warrior's wake.

He wiped at his eyes. 'Lord, where are we going?'

'The Temple.'

'We cannot! They have gone mad - the women! They are—'

'I know what assails them, priest.'

'The High Priestess—'

'Is of no interest to me.' Anomander paused, glanced back at him. 'Tell me your name.'

'Endest Silann, Third Level Acolyte. Lord, please—'

But the warrior continued on, silencing Endest with a gesture from one scaled, taloned hand. 'The crime of this day, Endest Silann, rests with Mother Dark herself.'
And then, at that precise moment, the young acolyte understood what the Lord intended. And yes, Anomander would indeed need him. His very soul - Mother forgive me - to open the way, to lead the Lord on to the Unseen Road.

And he will stand before her, yes. Tall, unyielding, a son who is not afraid. Not of her. Not of his own anger. The storm, oh, the storm is just beginning

Yeh, this novel has huge potential, oooohhhh the possibilities!

I would have to say, out of the two trilogies, I got to be looking forward to this more than the Toblakai...

[Fid]

Update from SE at last night's TCG signing in Manchester is that he is well into volume 1 of Kharkana trilogy - apparently an 18 month cycle. He also suggested that trilogy will cover up to the point of Mother Dark's fall

[Blueiron]

Y'know, sometimes the "back to the beginning" things can be done wrong, but really, Kharkanas is so far back that there's really no chance of it having been anything we've seen before, except perhapse Endest Silann's little flashbacks in TtH. And I kinda liked those.

On the whole immaculate conceptrion thing, it makes a sorta sense with Rake and co, but how does that work for Liossercal? How can you be born with a father but no mother?

[Harvester]

From clay :3

[champ]

Put it this way... after reading tCG I am even more excited for this now!

[miriya]

champ, on 19 December 2010 - 10:24 PM, said:

TtH Spoilers...

Quote

Through the gate, and then, even as despair choked all life from Endest Silann, he saw him approaching. From the city below. His forearms sheathed in black glistening scales, his bared chest made a thing of natural armour, The blood of Tiam ran riot through him, fired to life in the conflation of chaotic sorcery, and his eyes glowed with ferocious will.

Endest tell to his knees in Anomander's path. 'Lord! The world falls!'

'Rise, priest,' he replied. 'The world does not fall. It but changes. I need you. Come,'

And so he walked past, and Endest found himself on his feet, as Lord Anomander's will closed about his heart like an iron gauntlet, pulling him round and into the great warrior's wake.

--

And he will stand before her, yes. Tall, unyielding, a son who is not afraid. Not of her. Not of his own anger. The storm, oh, the storm is just beginning

God, the way things are worded; how the storm had no particular meaning until TCG, and then WHAM! Have some, all ye faithful!

The Andii are amazing; Annie Mandy was my favorite through the series, save for Fid, and all those snippets of history reeeeeeally had me craving further details of just wtf happened there. In any sense, I am looking forward to this book -- pre-fall Kharkanas would be superior, and even if it's not something I'm expecting I know SE will make me love it in short time.

[Daeghrefn]

I was ambivalent about this new series before TCG, but no longer.
Hust Legions. That is all.

[Sty]

Yup, I'm surprised no one's mentioned it yet.. but there's bound to be some Shake in there, ain't it? I just hope the Watch of old can stand up to Yedan Derryg. Tall order, that!

[rannald]

silly question... if the three brothers are Mother Darks sons possibly from the union with father light... but all of the andii are MD's children
what makes Anomander, Andarist and Silchas so special...

[Cyphon]

rannald, on 28 March 2011 - 07:51 PM, said:

silly question... if the three brothers are Mother Darks sons possibly from the union with father light... but all of the andii are MD's children
what makes Anomander, Andarist and Silchas so special...

They survived. And in fact we don't know that's the case. Wu hasn't been completely mapped, and there's enough to suggest other Andii might have gone elsewhere.

I suspect the PoVs for this will be other prominent Andii outside these three, looking across the whole of the issue. If the three are the set in the lead up to MD's fall, there seems no reason to suggest that they will be the primary antagonists. For all we know, at this point, they only really stepped into their own post MD's fall.

[IgnatiusKruppe]

" In the MT prologue, Scabandari says he did so out of grief, and it was grief delivered by Scabandari's own hand."

This kind of ties in with my wild theory, which is that the Edur were actually the OG Tiste & The Andii & Liosan came later. Obviously, everyone wants to point out to the Edur how their history is based on lies... but who doesn't want to believe their own version of history?
""The Dark Times had come with the rivening of the Tiste Edur, the assault of sorceries and strange armies and the disappearence of Father Shadow himself"
-MT pg 22

I'm just glad we're going to see some of these characters before they've seen history cycle through on itself a dozen times already.

In a perfect world, SE would take advantage of the long life span's of the characters and somehow manage to skip the plot through a couple hundred years and work through the Tiste Invasion & subsequent fight vs dinobots which could tie in so nicely with Gothos, Icarium's technology and the sundering of KE.
Basically, I wouldn't at all mind if this was "The past half million years for dummies" . F the Kharkanas trilogy, lets just call it "Gothos' Folly" and somehow work the Just Wars and the death of the FA god and everything else awesome.
Hell, if nothing else he could just use the chapter lead-ins for historical infodumps from more ancient historians with slightly less foggy memories. Poetrys great and all, but no poem could ever top 500 words explaining some minute detail of why the KCCM needed a parking lot as big as the Ukraine. Do we repeat this cycle? Will we eventually have the Omni-Mart & Sky-Keeps to ferry us in to our one stop shopping center?
On the real though..considering the length of these characters lives (and the massive amount of backstory that could be filled in), it seems like having the plot-twists spread out over 500,000 years & tying into everything else would be a more ambitious and interesting way to go about it than plotted out the way a human-centric story would be.

[Inkiper]

Unfortunately the Baruk were wrong with this family tree I think...
Tiam was mother of eleints, Osserc was Anomander ,silchas and andarist brother???, and Draconus was Mother's Dark husband (after CG I can think that somehow there are some similarities between Anomander and Draconus-don't you think??? And all these persons had eleints blood...

[Gothos]

Yeah after FoD this family tree is looking somewhat... terribly wrong.

[Archsorceror]

And am I wrong that Olar Ethil is Envy & Spite's mother?

[Mrs Savagely Wishy Washy]

I'm taking bets on the name of the last volume in the Kharkanas Trilogy:

The Birth of Shadow or The Rise of Shadow.