[TheHoundsCall]

Finished another amazing read. Erikson continues to amaze me with his writing and storytelling. I found this book to be a little less dense than MoI which was a nice change. Not that I enjoyed this one more (I enjoyed them equally) but I felt the flow of this one was different and refreshing. So that being said I hope someone can answer some questions I have! If it’s RAFO then just put that please.

1. I’m very confused on what happened with Apsalar and Cotillion. Why did she leave and what was the decision Cotillion wanted her to make? This part was really frustrating cause it was so vague without any clarification ( or maybe I just missed it).

2. I’m concluding that the 2 hounds of darkness were in fact the hounds of shadow that Paran released from Dragnipur, but why were they in Raraku? Who do they serve? Why did they try to kill Karsa

3. Are all the Houses of the Deck vulnerable to usurpation like Shadow? Do they all have physical thrones like shadow and does one just need to simply sit on it to become the King/god of that house?

And finally the most confusing part...
4. What the hell is Raraku lol is it the shattered part of Kurald Emurlahn? Is it just a old city with memories? Is the Nacent related to it somehow? Please help with this!

Starting Midnight Tides soon!

[D'rek]

TheHoundsCall, on 16 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

1. I’m very confused on what happened with Apsalar and Cotillion. Why did she leave and what was the decision Cotillion wanted her to make? This part was really frustrating cause it was so vague without any clarification ( or maybe I just missed it).

Basically, Apsalar feels like - given her situation - she has no other possible path in life than to be an assassin and/or tool of Cotillion. So she's living a pretty bad/violent/cruel life at the moment, and Crokus/Cutter has followed her into said life. But Apsalar feels like Crokus/Cutter can live a better life... but he won't as long as she's around. So she leaves in such a way that Crokus can't follow, hoping he'll stop being in love with her and live a better life.

TheHoundsCall, on 16 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

2. I’m concluding that the 2 hounds of darkness were in fact the hounds of shadow that Paran released from Dragnipur, but why were they in Raraku? Who do they serve? Why did they try to kill Karsa

Well, it certainly seems like there must be some sort of connection between two (out of seven) Hounds of Shadow jumping through the Gate of Darkness and two (out of seven) Deragoth in the Nascent statue being "alive" (and then truly awakened by Trull and Onrack).

BUT. When L'oric journeyed into a memory warren later in HoC, searching for a new familiar/substitute Liosan god, he visited the memory of ancient Seven Cities tens, maybe hundreds of millenia ago. And there he saw Deragoth... not just seven, but widespread species roaming across the whole sub-continent.

So that's weird.

Then again, GotM very briefly mentioned an eighth Hound of Shadow...

No easy answers yet. Keep on reading

TheHoundsCall, on 16 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

3. Are all the Houses of the Deck vulnerable to usurpation like Shadow? Do they all have physical thrones like shadow and does one just need to simply sit on it to become the King/god of that house?

Bear in mind that the Throne of Shadow (and, for that matter, the First Throne of the T'lan Imass, too) was vacant and had been for a long time before Shadowthrone sat on it. Even if, say, the Queen of Dreams has a literal Throne of Light somewhere, it probably wouldn't be just a matter of sneaking into her palace and sitting on it when she's not looking.

Plus, even if the throne is vacant that doesn't mean physically claiming it is in any way simple. Have you read Night of Knives? Kellanved/Shadowthrone didn't necessarily have an easy time accomplishing it.

TheHoundsCall, on 16 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

And finally the most confusing part...
4. What the hell is Raraku lol is it the shattered part of Kurald Emurlahn? Is it just a old city with memories? Is the Nascent related to it somehow? Please help with this!

So, long ago Kurald Emurlahn was shattered into numerous different pieces (and the different pieces aren't necessarily the same style/consistency/anything).

It seems like one of those pieces is The Nascent. The Nascent is a physical world, with two suns, with moons, with seasons, with rain, with its own denizens (e.g. whomever built those giant dog-bear statues or the continent-spanning Great Wall) and creatures (the catfish?).

HoC is explicit about the Nascent being the place that Torvald/Karsa and the slavers got pulled into in HoC:Book 1, and that it is the same place that Trull/Onrack journey through later in HoC. Furthermore, by the end of HoC you can reasonably conclude that it is also the same world that Gesler/Stormy/Truth/Kulp/Baudin/Felisin/Heboric journeyed through in Deadhouse Gates. And going by the T'lan Imass' comments to Gesler and co. back in DG (as well as various HoC comments, too), we can figure out that the giant sea butting up against the wall is not a natural one, and this area of the Nascent has been recently catastrophically flooded somehow.

Trull Sengar confirms/agrees with most of this. When the suns rise in The Nascent, he calls them the "twin hearts of Kurald Emurlahn", noting that the Tiste Edur who came here hadn't initially recognized that The Nascent was a shard of Kurald Emurlahn but later did in fact realize it. Furthermore, from the way he phrases it, he might even be implying that it was the Edur themselves who caused the catastrophic flood.

He also notes that the flood destroyed a human (or human-like) civilization, though who knows if that was the entirety of the peoples living in The Nascent or not... it's a big place.

Amongst all the characters that we've seen move in/out of The Nascent, we've seen it done using the power of Meanas and/or Rashan, The Crippled God, Tellan, and possibly Starvald Demelain. We've seen these characters move between the Nascent and Wu (the main world), Meanas, or Kurald Liosan. So from that, we can also conclude that regular magic sources are overall pretty accessible from The Nascent, and The Nascent can connect to a lot of places (even with some fixed gates to other realms, like the one the Tiste Liosan used).

What is The Nascent? Well, as far as we know it started as just a shard of broken Emurlahn. But NOW it's a whole world... an old world with old things and connections to other old places.

The Nascent has some old stuff, and it is old. But that's not where the memories come from. Those are coming from Raraku.

Raraku is a big ol' desert, formerly a sea, and they say Raraku... remembers.

As much as Raraku has a hidden oasis (where Sha'ik's army holed up), has the magical Whirlwind barrier raised by the Whirlwind Goddess, has ancient roads from Dessimbelackis' First Empire, ruins and ritual sites from the T'lan Imass First Empire, and more, the real heart of Raraku is Tremorlor an enormous and presumably very old Azath House.

The Azath are powerful, and they're all about grabbing onto and holding down big (and usually old) powers. And linked with Tremorlor and with Raraku is another shard of Emurlahn (not the same one as the Nascent).

Who knows what the cause and effect here is. Maybe Tremorlor rooted the Emurlahn fragment, and then Raraku grew to use it? Maybe Raraku was always a special place, and Tremorlor+the shard just made it more so? Maybe Tremorlor was first created/grew because of the broken shard itself?

Mappo even remarks that there is a legend that Raraku might be the place where Icarium first became the broken, unstoppable warrior he is now.

In any case Raraku is a Holy and occasionally-magical desert with an aspect of memory, where on very rare occasions the winds blow the sands off of ancient causeways and you can see the ghosts of long-dead First Empire soldiers marching off to a war won or lost millenia ago.

Both the Whirldwind Goddess and the Crippled God saw an opportunity to try and take control of the shard of Emurlahn itself. They might even have succeeded if it were not for all the interference and their important minions getting slaughtered. But in any case, their actions triggered the ultimate memory-reaction-manifestation... thing... from Raraku, and voila magic memory sea (and a ton of soldiers) return!

[TheHoundsCall]

[Have you read Night of Knives? Kellanved/Shadowthrone didn't necessarily have an easy time accomplishing it.

Thanks for replying! I haven’t read any of Esslemonts work yet. I was told to wait until I finish the main ten... do you disagree?

I’m surprised my hounds theory isn’t full proof lol. I have been wondering about those 2 HoS since it happened in GotM (one of my favorite mysteries so far) and was hoping I had it answered here. Oh well..
On the Nacent explanation I remembered everything you brought up and I guess I am trying to make connections. One thing I need to keep in mind is Erikson is more abstract than any fantasy author I have read. But when I think about the memories that Itkovian took from the T’lan Imass in MoI and gave life to the Myhbes dream it makes more sense to me. Raraku must be a similar type situation. Memories can inhabit places and “give life” to places.
On the Azath houses I feel I mostly understand them. Correct me if I’m wrong here but from what I gathered they are lodestones of power that hold the fabric of the warrens together and seal them off from chaos. Which is why they always are taking creatures and beings of great power to maintain the seal.

[Abyss]

TheHoundsCall, on 17 October 2017 - 01:37 PM, said:

[Have you read Night of Knives? Kellanved/Shadowthrone didn't necessarily have an easy time accomplishing it.

Thanks for replying! I haven't read any of Esslemonts work yet. I was told to wait until I finish the main ten... do you disagree?

Check the various reading order threads.... ICE and SE's books interweave... you can leave Esslemont til you're done MBF, but you may not want to.

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I'm surprised my hounds theory isn't full proof lol. I have been wondering about those 2 HoS since it happened in GotM (one of my favorite mysteries so far) and was hoping I had it answered here. Oh well..

RAFO. Let's just say it was a big hint.

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On the Nacent explanation I remembered everything you brought up and I guess I am trying to make connections.

And the connections are there, but they are complex and not every piece of information the reader gets is reliable or consistent.

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One thing I need to keep in mind is Erikson is more abstract than any fantasy author I have read.

He's also an anthropologist and archeologist who enjoys playing with timelines, unreliable narrators, and the changes that happen to a story told over millenia.

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But when I think about the memories that Itkovian took from the T'lan Imass in MoI and gave life to the Myhbes dream it makes more sense to me. Raraku must be a similar type situation. Memories can inhabit places and "give life" to places.

Yep, and since memory can be unreliable, so can the accuracy of what they give life to.

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On the Azath houses I feel I mostly understand them.

Heh.

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Correct me if I'm wrong here but from what I gathered they are lodestones of power that hold the fabric of the warrens together and seal them off from chaos. Which is why they always are taking creatures and beings of great power to maintain the seal.

RAFO.

SO MUCH RAFO.

[Gorefest]

TheHoundsCall, on 17 October 2017 - 01:37 PM, said:

Thanks for replying! I haven't read any of Esslemonts work yet. I was told to wait until I finish the main ten... do you disagree?

You can leave the ICE books until afterwards, but for a better understanding of the main plot it does help to at least read 'Night of Knives' inbetween Midnight Tides and the Bonehunters, and 'Return of the Crimson Guard' inbetween Reapers Gale and Toll the Hounds. This is because both of these books contain events and characters that are referred to, but not necessarily expanded upon, in the main MBotF story arc.

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I'm surprised my hounds theory isn't full proof lol. I have been wondering about those 2 HoS since it happened in GotM (one of my favorite mysteries so far) and was hoping I had it answered here. Oh well..

Prepare for a lot more of such disappointments!

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On the Azath houses I feel I mostly understand them.

Like there.

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Correct me if I'm wrong here but from what I gathered they are lodestones of power that hold the fabric of the warrens together and seal them off from chaos. Which is why they always are taking creatures and beings of great power to maintain the seal.

Yeah, that's a pretty good summation. Lot more on that to come, though...

[D'rek]

Yeah, I agree - you should definitely read Return of the Crimson Guard between Reaper's Gale and Toll the Hounds. And it's a good idea to read Night of Knives some time before RotCG. The rest of the Esslemont I think you can wait until after finishing the Erikson ones, if you want.

[CoconutBackwards]

D, on 17 October 2017 - 02:54 AM, said:

TheHoundsCall, on 16 October 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

1. I'm very confused on what happened with Apsalar and Cotillion. Why did she leave and what was the decision Cotillion wanted her to make? This part was really frustrating cause it was so vague without any clarification ( or maybe I just missed it).

Basically, Apsalar feels like - given her situation - she has no other possible path in life than to be an assassin and/or tool of Cotillion. So she's living a pretty bad/violent/cruel life at the moment, and Crokus/Cutter has followed her into said life. But Apsalar feels like Crokus/Cutter can live a better life... but he won't as long as she's around. So she leaves in such a way that Crokus can't follow, hoping he'll stop being in love with her and live a better life.

I just finished the book and I had the exact same frustrating confusion with what happened with these two. I read the part where Crokus says something about balance to Cotillion then alludes to what happened with him and Apsalar and Cotillion basically agreed with him without actually saying out loud what he was referring to. I don't think Erikson does a good job with scenes like these. Honestly, I think he does a terrible job because I read this section multiple times and eventually just gave up and assumed I knew what he was talking about.

I appreciate this explanation. It makes sense after hearing it, but I was unable to infer any of this from what I read.