Review of The White Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker

If you’re reading this review, then there’s no need to go into any rigamarole intro about The Prince of Nothing or Aspect Emperor series by R. Scott Bakker.  Point blank: The White Luck Warrior superbly escalates the story begun in The Judging Eye.  It leaves the reader on the doorstep, panting for more.  The Unholy Consult is going to be as epic as epic fantasy gets, and likely set a new bar for how sublty heavy grimdark can be without losing its thematic soul.

Where The Judging Eye spent most of its energy re-setting the pieces after The Thousandfold Thought then putting them in motion, The White Luck Warrior opens with the pieces moving—and in some cases exhausted from the rousing conclusion to The Judging Eye.  There are lulls and eddies, but The White Luck Warrior slowly puts these pieces' stories into full-steam.  The Great Ordeal, still marching its way northward toward Golgotterath, encounters unheard swarms of sranc; Akka and his daughter still head toward the Coffers of to find the map to Ishual; and things in Momemm become politically unsettled, to put it diplomatically, as Kelhus’ family continues to implode. To say the book is non-stop action is one step too far.  But whether it's tense scenes involving Kelhus’s mad children or Sorweel discovering his role in the great ordeal, learning the Non-man’s history or what dragon’s bones mean, Bakker ramps up the action at a steady engaging pace that leads directly into the concluding volume, The Unholy Consult.  But where goals were clear at the outset of The White-Luck Warrior, The Unholy Consult has a couple massive question marks hanging over it.  There are unexpected endings, which leads to unexpected beginnings.

For me personally, The White-Luck Warrior made me appreciative of Bakker's ability to simultaneously deconstruct and construct an epic fantasy narrative.  Readers are uncomfortable cheering for Achamian, for example.  They may love when wizard's Gnosis fires up, but the purpose to which he puts these otherworldy powers is rarely morally undoubtable.  The Great Ordeal, despite its seemingly honorable intentions of saving humanity from ultimate evil, undermines it's own purposes one league of sranc at a time.  And Esmi, the Empress of Moemm, does all she can to be a good mother and love the abominations she spawned.  Faced with externals threats to the empire, she does what many people would, but at the expense of what?  The road ahead is dark.  So where Joe Abercrombie would seem to wear the crown of grimdark, his scribblings are child's play compared to Bakker's writing.  There is a philosophical heaviness, a dramatic grimness, a palpaable weight to the story that no other writer out there has been able to capture in such subtlety.  

In terms of style, there is a slight shift from all four previous novels.  Bakker moves a bit away from brooding yet descriptive diction.  He more often looks toward prose proper to set and develop scenes.  I can't always say the oscillation between transparency and opacity is successful.  That being said, it doesn't detract from the story, just occasionally slows it down as the reader sorts through the fragments.  I can only hope this is a bridge book syndrome, i.e. Bakker looking to get from A to B.  The alternative is scary: exploring a new style in the middle of a series/established style...

If I have a proper bone to pick, it would be the title.  I'm not opposed to The White Luck Warrior.  But a better title is out there.  It's not because the warrior spends little time on screen.  That doesn't bother me.  It's possible for a character to influence a narrative by existing or symbolically.  I assume Bakker intended him to occupy the symbolic role for title purposes, but looking over events, I'm not sure how the role fate, destiny, luck, whatever you want to call it, plays.  Some, to be sure.  But by the same logic, every story has some degree of fate to it.  If life were properly deterministic there would be no reason to live.   

Regardless my quibbles about title or technique, if you like what you’ve read so far in Earwa then The White Luck Warrior does nothing to disrupt the 'good times'.  It's just as good.  Digging ever deeper into the implications of the Great Ordeal, the roots of Kellhus, and the Consult, the plot evolves, revolves, and devolves, depending on character point of view.  Avoiding most bridge book failures, it heightens the stakes rather than leaving them out to dry, and leaves readers wanting to know what happens next.  A harsh, brooding mood continues to address Bakker’s dark agenda in philosophical as much as character-centric fashion.  If The Unholy Consult is as good as The White Luck Warrior, and Martin continues to be unable to focus the storyline of A Song of Ice and Fire, Bakker may be able to say he has written the best epic fantasy series of the modern era.  (Perhaps anti-fantasy series?)