About REAL dark endings. Richard Scott Bakker — Second Apocalypse series

For some reason I decided to explore what dark fantasy was all about. I started with Joe Abercrombie, which was charming but simplistic.

Then I decided to look at Richard Scott Bakker’s series of books — and that’s where it hit me: it’s not often that philosophical and neurophysiological themes around consciousness are explored in fantasy (as opposed to science fiction, as in Watts or Herbert).

The first trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, captivated me, mainly thanks to the (anti)hero from a sect of some deterministic manipulators (reminiscent of Gnostics, but with some stuff of Metzinger and Dawkins). Bakker nailed the concept of charming, highly spiritual psychopaths.

However, the following tetralogy, The Aspect-Emperor, quickly became tiresome due to the tons of plot padding (it could have been cut by two thirds), although it’s likely that this build-up of epic-ness and grimdark-ness paves the way for a subsequent catharsis at the end. And the end of the cycle has arrived — very dark with a guaranteed plot twist, as (anti)deus ex machina.

Now I’m tempted to revisit the Gnostic texts to remember who among gnostics had the most pessimistic view of the world, where “everyone who could has long since evacuated, and you and I, dear reader, are now in hell forever”.