[Abyss]

Just finished it... let's take care of some thread/housekeeping first, shall we...?

SPOILERS SPOILERS
SPOILERS
HEREAFTER SPOILERS FOR ALL ALL ALL RICHARD MORGAN BOOKS TODATE
YES SPOILERS FOR ALL
ALL MORGAN BOOKS
THAT INCLUDES
SPOILERS
INCLUDES INCLUDES THE TAKESHI KOVACS BOOKS
SPOILERS
UNBLOCKED
UNCENSORED
UNCUT
UNCLOTHED
UNLIMITTED
UNCONTROLLABLE
UNCLEAN
SPOILERS
UTTER TOTAL
WILL RUIN YOUR FUTURE, PAST AND ALL THAT CRAP IN THE MIDDLE SPOILERS
YOU HAVE BEEN
SPOILERS WARNED
FUCKING SPOILERS MASSIVE ORIFICE VIOLATING PLOT SPOILING
MY LIFE IS RUINED END IT ALL NOW LEVEL
SPOILERS
HEY DID YOU KNOW DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER? SPOILERS
SPOILERS
ALSO JESUS DIES AT THE END SPOILERS
YOUR LIFE IS A LIE SPOILERS
FOR A GOOD TIME CALL APTORIAN AT 1-888-APTFUCK SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS

OK... that should do it...
Needless to say if you keep reading from here on down expect to be spoilered re the entire Takeshi Kovacs series, THE STEEL REMAINS and of course THE COLD COMMANDS.

SO THERE.

[stone monkey]

Okay, the spoiler warning is out of the way thanks to Abyss, so we can get started...

I can't believe I didn't spot the Ahn-Foi thing. *slaps head*

But I did get the needlecast reference - travelling between worlds as a song... And the demons the Salt Lord (Kovacs) brought back from the dark have to be the Martians. And the angels and their fire almost certainly refer to the orbiting weapons platform around Harlan's World.

After that, I think I'm lost....

[Abyss]

Right then...



JUST FINISHED IT!

This book was frikkin DARK.

I mean fuck... Ringil was never a nice person, but from the authorized gang rape to defending Egar essentially killing cops to going full blown assassin-killing-bystanders mode, this was a whole other level of nasty.

Let's get the most controversial/interesting development out front...

WHO WAS THAT SALTY MAN? ...what, me? double-entendre wut? But... Dakovash... Takashi Kovacs... oooo.... that's just loaded with possibilities there, isn't it? On the other hand, it's easily handwaved as the LAND FIT FOR HEROES series being the far distant future of the Kovacs universe and Dak' simply being a name to godthing derived from it's own past. But on some little fanboy level the notion that Kovacs survived all the way forward to become more or less a god is pretty attractive, notwithstanding that the Devokash character is actually more or less a complete bastard and far from a 'good guy'.

More complicated is the notion that everything the Dark Court, including Dak', did to 'help' Ringil was all part of a deal with Rilwhatserface to move Ringil into her trap.

Otoh, i have difficulty believing that guiding him to massive power-ups was part of the deal. The three initial ghosts i could almost accept. The massive hord of insane dwenda-created headstump souls, not so much.

THE FUTURE IS FUCKED AWARD - the various helmsmen and bots and pieces of Archeth's plotline realy do establish that this is meant to be a distant futureverse. The reference to humanity dividing into various races suggests the Dwenda and Kiriath, at least, were human once. The Lamprey chicks and the Lizards are a whole other thing, but even so, the groundwork is there.

That said, it's hinted pretty strongly that the Kiriath at least came from another dimension, and not in the sense that the Dwenda came from the Grey Places that parallel the world, but a whole other place that access the world via fireships travelling in volcano borne lava rivers.

Have a mentioned how much i loved this book?

More later...

[Abyss]

I am, however, pissed as fuck that we didn't get the entire Dragonbane story!!!!

- Abyss, will live, somehow.

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 26 October 2011 - 08:47 PM, said:

WHO WAS THAT SALTY MAN? ...what, me? double-entendre wut? But... Dakovash... Takashi Kovacs... oooo.... that's just loaded with possibilities there, isn't it? On the other hand, it's easily handwaved as the LAND FIT FOR HEROES series being the far distant future of the Kovacs universe and Dak' simply being a name to godthing derived from it's own past. But on some little fanboy level the notion that Kovacs survived all the way forward to become more or less a god is pretty attractive, notwithstanding that the Devokash character is actually more or less a complete bastard and far from a 'good guy'.

I think there's too many coincidences for it to be just some guy with his name. Quellcrist Falconer is there too, for starters, and sure you could apply the same argument, I think it'd be stretching the concept a bit too far. Although where Quellcrist got the ability to either shapeshift or possess animals is one to ponder, as is what the eternally bleeding wound in her head is. But then there's also references Dakovash makes in his little speech, the ones Stone Monkey mentioned already: bringing back the 'bat-winged demons', stealing the fire of the old gods, to bring the old order down - it seems a huge stretch that someone else got himself into the position and with the intent to do that (which is where Kovacs and Falconer were at the end of the three books) and then borrowed his name.
It's also funny how between them him and Ashantal describe the best space opera epic never told in about a page.
The only question I have really is why are they on Earth, and not Harlan's World. But maybe they can jump wherever they want and fuck with everyone, who knows.

Quote

More complicated is the notion that everything the Dark Court, including Dak', did to 'help' Ringil was all part of a deal with Rilwhatserface to move Ringil into her trap.

I got the distinct impression that the Dark Court were enemies of the Dwenda and, if they were deliberately manipulating him into Rilthingy's clutches, it was so that he could fuck her up.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 26 October 2011 - 09:58 PM

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 26 October 2011 - 09:56 PM, said:

... Quellcrist Falconer is there too, for starters, and sure you could apply the same argument, I think it'd be stretching the concept a bit too far. Although where Quellcrist got the ability to either shapeshift or possess animals is one to ponder, as is what the eternally bleeding wound in her head is.

Heh... funny... i kept reading 'Quiellet' and thinking man RM goes for weird Q names...

The shapeshifting thing is a question mark, but the headwound probably goes back to her memory/identity problems in WOKEN FURIES.

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...It's also funny how between them him and Ashantal describe the best space opera epic never told in about a page. ...

i KNOW!

The other really itchy uncomfortable possibility, however, is that given the extent of VR science in the Kovacs series... naaaAAAAaaaah.

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The only question I have really is why are they on Earth, and not Harlan's World. But maybe they can jump wherever they want and fuck with everyone, who knows.

We haven't seen a map. It could be any world.
But otherwise if Kovacs and friends brought back the Martians, they may have scorched the human diaspora back to its foundations.

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More complicated is the notion that everything the Dark Court, including Dak', did to 'help' Ringil was all part of a deal with Rilwhatserface to move Ringil into her trap.

I got the distinct impression that the Dark Court were enemies of the Dwenda and, if they were deliberately manipulating him into Rilthingy's clutches, it was so that he could fuck her up.

I think that the Dark Court are playing a very complex and long game and Ringil and co are their main pawns. The Kovacs revelation suggests the DC intentions are at heart nobel, but that's far from certain.
By example, DaKovash essentially let Gerin die so his soul could protect Ringil.


As a complete aside, reread the Gerin/veteran/blacksmith sequence yesterday. Pretty damn impressive what RM managed with three minor characters who die in the first couple of chapters.

[Tapper]

The "I stole fire from the gods" bit Dakovash spouts sounds an awful lot like Prometheus (and I think there are other religions that have similar myths), giving the impression that Kovacs has alotted himself a bit of a background stolen from already existing myths he ought to be familiar with.

[Abyss]

Tapper, on 27 October 2011 - 01:51 PM, said:

The "I stole fire from the gods" bit Dakovash spouts sounds an awful lot like Prometheus (and I think there are other religions that have similar myths), giving the impression that Kovacs has alotted himself a bit of a background stolen from already existing myths he ought to be familiar with.

Perhaps he's taking artistic liberties with whatever he did, perhaps with Martian knowledge, to become Davokash.

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 27 October 2011 - 01:02 PM, said:

The other really itchy uncomfortable possibility, however, is that given the extent of VR science in the Kovacs series... naaaAAAAaaaah.

I reckon he's too canny a storyteller to not realise that most fans would see that as an enormous cheat. Hopefully, anyways. Unless he springs it in a manner that makes sense, which would have to involve hints being left already. The hints we have got though are more that the war was so great that it broke the laws of physics - Ansharal hints it, and Dakovash outright states that 'the march of time is broken', and then throws in a reference to Schroedinger's cat which suggests that something's changed in the universe on a quantum level.

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We haven't seen a map. It could be any world.
But otherwise if Kovacs and friends brought back the Martians, they may have scorched the human diaspora back to its foundations.

I think given the scale of destruction that occurred in the intervening millenia, it's possible a map wouldn't mean a great deal anyway. But either way, the story Ansharal tells refers to it explicitly as Earth several times, and the moon that the Dark Court destroyed to create the band of rubble now around the planet is called Muhn, capitalised - and when Ringil describes it in his wanderings in the grey spaces, the description pretty much fits our Moon.

It's stated in the Helmsman's little story that the aliens ended up splitting humanity off into what seem to be pretty much separate species now - the Kiriath, perhaps, are one of them, but either way there is an implication that some kind of humanity is around abroad from where we are.

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I think that the Dark Court are playing a very complex and long game and Ringil and co are their main pawns. The Kovacs revelation suggests the DC intentions are at heart nobel, but that's far from certain.
By example, DaKovash essentially let Gerin die so his soul could protect Ringil.

Difficult to say if Kovacs' involvement means it's a noble cause. He was never a good guy, he was just coming up against worse guys; as Wert pointed out in the Westeros thread on this book where someone said similar, he once killed a building full of people because some people in it did him wrong. Even the cause of overthrowing an oppressive social system was motivated at least partly because he simply doesn't like authority, and he wouldn't be the first person to find he suddenly loses his distaste for authority once he has it. It's notable that an explicit part of his character in the Kovacs books is that he hates how the Meths act like gods, and he sets himself up as a literal one here, right down to expecting supplication and getting angry when he doesn't get it.
On the other hand, he implies that the Dark Court are basically trying to keep reality from coming apart at the seams and doing so by whatever works - who knows if he's lying.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 27 October 2011 - 04:38 PM

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 27 October 2011 - 03:40 PM, said:

... Ansharal hints it, and Dakovash outright states that 'the march of time is broken', and then throws in a reference to Schroedinger's cat which suggests that something's change in the universe on a quantum level.

I liked that S'Cat ref, it was a, 'aha!' moment, altho i took it more as a reference to a level of pessimism, ie: the cat is always dead.

Unlike, say, King's Dark Tower, we're not exactly seeing hints of some masisve breakdown of reality.

That said, while everyone assumes the 'Something Dark is coming' is a ref to the Dwenda, none of the Helmsmen ever actually state that. The Dwenda may be nothing more than opportunistic empire (re)builders who don't know what else is going on.

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...the story Ansharal tells refers to it explicitly as Earth several times, and the moon that the Dark Court destroyed to create the band of rubble now around the planet is called Muhn, capitalised - and when Ringil describes it in his wanderings in the grey spaces, the description pretty much fits our Moon.

He ref's Earth, but doesn't quite close the door on whether this is Earth, tho it seems likely.

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It's stated in the Helmsman's little story that the aliens ended up splitting humanity off into what seem to be pretty much separate species now - the Kiriath, perhaps, are one of them, but either way there is an implication that some kind of humanity is around abroad from where we are.

Agreed. Aside from immortality, the Kiriath do appear to have been very human. Unlike the Dwenda who have the whole lightning/dimension-shifting/shapechanging thing going.

Interersting implication that the Kiriath originally arrived in the world by accident and ended up opposing the Dwenda. In TSR it seemed they arrived to repel the Lizards.

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Difficult to say if Kovacs' involvement means it's a noble cause. He was never a good guy...he implies that the Dark Court are basically trying to keep reality from coming apart at the seams and doing so by whatever works - who knows if he's lying.

Kovacs was always a vengeful bastard, but at heart he was trying to 'do the right thing' most of the time.

I think i'm going to have to do a TSR re-read - anyone recall whether there were two or three immortals behind the scenes? I remember a male who helped Egar, a wolf-possessing one who helped the Shaman who was opposing Egar... others?



ARCHETH didn't really do much this book. Her relationship with the Emperor was expanded on - quite an interesting blend of reliance and friendship and respect and vicious frustration - but otherwise we got mostly whining about the Kiriath, her drug problem, and repressed lesbian slave sexual tension. Her one fight scene in the cell, while neat, was too brief.

I'll say it now: There is virtually no way An-floatingplace turns out to be a lost colony of Kiriath. No. Way.

...but i did like the notion of one race setting up a dimension shifting island and a second race setting up a dimension shifting floating city to keep an eye on it.


EGAR on the other hand, i thought was awesome in this book. His whole 'aging barbarian hero in the city' thing was well played, his constantly getting into trouble by doing the 'right' thing, and his sheer bloody minded stubborness in a fight were great. I especially liked the fight against the Dwenda... Morgan always writes great fight scenes but this was was perfect. The last one in the cell was almost disappointing after that.

Interesting comment from Ringil while he was wandering in the Grey Places that he wishes Egar was less into women, especialy combined with Egar's coment towards the end of the book that he "missed the faggot". There's precisely zero romantic tension there but it added another dimension to their bro-mance friendship.

[Pig Iron]

Nice how Morgan really does fantasy in a distinctly different way. It's even a bit disturbing how the narrative does not follow epic fantasy standards. For the first half of the book I was abit stressed about that (wheres this going?) but then it clicked and I fully enjoyed what he was doing. Like the first book I keep thinking about it afterwards.

What is the Dark Gate? I thought "quantum bomb/catstrophe/parallell worlds/possibilities" too. Envoys might even have been sent into some singularity to try to unravel it from the inside, taking a couple of thousands of years in that bubble of spacetime. Dark Gate might be the way out. And lets not think about the VR scenario please please.

[amphibian]

Read it. Loved it. I'm usually not one for the Terry Brooks-style "supremely important quest set-up" books, but Morgan brings a freshness to it that's well honed through The Steel Remains and through his own unique writing style.

Harlan's World has some crazy tides, so it might actually have more than one moon. I seem to remember three, but that could be a false artifact my brain is kicking up for whatever reasons.

It has to be Earth. I suspect that Takeshi and Quellcrist went to Earth specifically to target the United Nations and the congeries of Methuselahs that ran Earth and by extension, the general will of human space. There's a certain sort of irony here that Dakovash and Kwalgris have lasted at least 7,000 years themselves. If Quellcrist had a sense of humor, she might say something like "You become that which you fight," in better poetry.

Given that we have Dakovash and Kwalgris, I wonder what happened to Vidaura and/or any of the Meths that Kovacs ran into during Altered Carbon. Rei might have escaped Real Death somehow.

The breaking of the fundamental underpinnings of reality are likely derived from Martian technology and/or from the bat-winged thing the Martian ship from Broken Angels was fighting. The two races entered into another dimension and the humans that followed turned into the Kiriath, while the few who stayed behind could have turned into Dwenda and regular humans somehow.

The crossroads gift-giver has to be some kind of crazy AI. The Hendrix mutated?

[Abyss]

amphibian, on 03 November 2011 - 03:47 AM, said:

...The Hendrix mutated?

Unlikely but now i'm going to be assessing every single supernatural character for that much wanted possibility thanks!

Have been rereading the Helmsmen and Dakovash bits and it all becomes more clear and more fucked up. It does appear that the Dark Court are fighting some sort of holding action against... something... maybe whatever they unleashed when they called back the Martians. After all we know they were engaged in their own war when they dissappeared.

[Pig Iron]

There's a good chance Morgan will leave the background ambiguous. The way it's really about the characters anyway makes that perfectly OK. Would not be surprised at a grim ending with lots of unresolved stuff. That said, I reread TSR for this one, after your posts above I now I have to go reread the Kovacs novels too.

[Coco with marshmallows]

Pig Iron, on 03 November 2011 - 06:09 AM, said:

There's a good chance Morgan will leave the background ambiguous. The way it's really about the characters anyway makes that perfectly OK. Would not be surprised at a grim ending with lots of unresolved stuff. That said, I reread TSR for this one, after your posts above I now I have to go reread the Kovacs novels too.

I'm rereading them too.

And Amphibian is right, Harlan's World had 3 moons.

[Obdigore]

I don't know why it couldn't be any of the hundreds? of worlds humanity had settled by the time Quilly and Kovacs decided to have a wedding party full of martians?

[Tapper]

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I think i'm going to have to do a TSR re-read - anyone recall whether there were two or three immortals behind the scenes? I remember a male who helped Egar, a wolf-possessing one who helped the Shaman who was opposing Egar... others?

The shaman mentioned a couple. Takakavach, who aided Egar, is Dakovash, is Kovacs. The wolf-woman is Kelgris, thus Quelcrist. The others he named were not active in the story so far.

iirc, the three moons of Harlan's World are the three artificial constructs, although I do think they influenced HW's tides. The factt hat only one 'muhn' was mentioned and only the dwenda knew of it, points towards this being Earth.

It makes me think that somewhere between the cataclysmic event leading to the split between races and the breakdown of the earth, regular humanity stayed on earth in a linear timeline, the dwenda had escape routes to elsewhere, where time was botched, and the Kiriath were complete outsiders from elsewhere in the galaxy (aka a couple of centuries ahead of Kovacs future) with new and improved AIs.

This whole 'humanity brought back the martians' thing is very interesting, but do we have any proof of it?
All martians we encounter are dead for centuries, all their colonies were lost, and that was several centuries (in AC, probably later for the other books) past the colonization of Mars.
Personally, I think it is far more likely that humanity overextended and destroyed itself with all kinds of weird sci-fi weapons they themselves understood for only fifty percent. If that.

Oh, and I took the something 'dark is coming' bit as a reference to Ringil. He has a tendency to become what everyone warns against... first the menace is a lightning crackling dwenda, end of the book, Ringil crackles with energy and can (erratically) plane-shift. Now we had the Changeling, and lo and behold, Ringil commands an army of what-might-have-been-dead-people.

[polishgenius]

Tapper, on 03 November 2011 - 08:30 AM, said:

This whole 'humanity brought back the martians' thing is very interesting, but do we have any proof of it?
All martians we encounter are dead for centuries, all their colonies were lost, and that was several centuries (in AC, probably later for the other books) past the colonization of Mars.

Proof? No. But Dakavash himself mentions 'bringing back bat-winged demons' and the little story/exposition Ashantal provides to Archeth and co about the history repeatedly references an alien war. No reason to disbelieve them at this point.

[Abyss]

Cocoreturns, on 03 November 2011 - 07:58 AM, said:

Pig Iron, on 03 November 2011 - 06:09 AM, said:

There's a good chance Morgan will leave the background ambiguous. The way it's really about the characters anyway makes that perfectly OK. Would not be surprised at a grim ending with lots of unresolved stuff. That said, I reread TSR for this one, after your posts above I now I have to go reread the Kovacs novels too.

I'm rereading them too.

And Amphibian is right, Harlan's World had 3 moons.

If Kovacs and whomever were going after 'The System', there would be a certain logic to taking the fight directly to Earth. Harlan's World got a lot of focus due to Kovacs origins, but the various worlds were always ref'd as being colonies of sorts, with Earth at the center.

Tapper, on 03 November 2011 - 08:30 AM, said:

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I think i'm going to have to do a TSR re-read - anyone recall whether there were two or three immortals behind the scenes? I remember a male who helped Egar, a wolf-possessing one who helped the Shaman who was opposing Egar... others?

The shaman mentioned a couple. Takakavach, who aided Egar, is Dakovash, is Kovacs. The wolf-woman is Kelgris, thus Quelcrist. The others he named were not active in the story so far.

When either Egar or ringil enter the temple, they notice one of the gods' statues seems to be missing, and it isn't Dakovash.... Hoiran maybe?

And are you saying that the 'god' in TSR who took wolf form and did gross wolf form sex with the anti-Egar Shaman was Quelcrist? because she seemed to be working against Egar then.

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This whole 'humanity brought back the martians' thing is very interesting, but do we have any proof of it?
All martians we encounter are dead for centuries, all their colonies were lost, and that was several centuries (in AC, probably later for the other books) past the colonization of Mars.
Personally, I think it is far more likely that humanity overextended and destroyed itself with all kinds of weird sci-fi weapons they themselves understood for only fifty percent. If that.

No proof at all, but the Kovacs trilogy establishes that humanity reached the stars on the Martian's leftovers, and in Broken Angels he finds some dead ones while their tech is still working. We assume they're dead, but really they could have just retreated from earth and thereabouts. The ship he finds in ANGELS was actually on the other side of a portal to who knows where.

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Oh, and I took the something 'dark is coming' bit as a reference to Ringil. He has a tendency to become what everyone warns against... first the menace is a lightning crackling dwenda, end of the book, Ringil crackles with energy and can (erratically) plane-shift. Now we had the Changeling, and lo and behold, Ringil commands an army of what-might-have-been-dead-people.

Totally possible, but then why would Dakovash and company be investing in keeping him alive?

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 03 November 2011 - 03:21 PM, said:

When either Egar or ringil enter the temple, they notice one of the gods' statues seems to be missing, and it isn't Dakovash.... Hoiran maybe?

Is it possible that Hoiran = Harlan? I remember the Protocol, but if a Dark Court member or enemy is a Harlan, that's one hell of a twist. It doesn't really matter and this Land Fit For Heroes is certainly strong enough to stand on its own legs, but the connections to the Kovacs books is really awesome and something I hadn't anticipated. I thought he would do a book explaining what happened after Quellcrist started figuring out Martian technology, but to jump ahead 10,000 some years and start over with Kovacs being a minor character is delicious.

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Totally possible, but then why would Dakovash and company be investing in keeping him alive?

Dakovash wants the Ilwrack Changeling alive and altering the world back to having a working "march of time" again.

The Helmsman could be an AI that does not want the march of time to work again. Ringil is somehow going to foul Archeth's expedition and save the world.