Lee Hunts

I just finished reading The Great Ordeal, which is the third book in R. Scott Bakker's Aspect-Emperor series, and the sixth book in the larger Second Apocalypse series. It took me nearly two months to read this book, in part because I burned out on reading after Christmas and had to take a break, but also because this book is so dense that I had to read the fucker much slower than usual. And if we are being honest, these two factors are almost certainly intertwined. Bakker's books keep getting more dense, particularly in terms of the prose. It also gets deeper into philosophical ideas, the subjects nowhere near as simple as they used to be, but this was never really an impediment, given that I find these kinds of things to be intrinsically interesting. Either way, I read this one very slow, and I imagine that the last book will be another slog like this one. But what did I think of it? Let's get into that. No Spoilers Prose Because I mentioned the prose above, I figure I sh...

I just finished reading The White-Luck Warrior, which is the fifth book in The Second Apocalypse series, and the second book in The Aspect-Emperor series. I definitely took my time with this one, and I don't think this trend is going to change any time soon. This book picks up right where the last one left off, continuing all of the storylines that were started in the last one: The march of the Great Ordeal north toward Golgotterath, the slog of slogs led by Achamian as he tries to discover the secrets of Kellhus and the Dûnyain, Esmenet and her trials as the remaining head of the Empire, and the other more peripheral storylines involving Psatma Nannaferi and the titular White-Luck Warrior. And every one of these storylines ends in a cliffhanger to be continued in the next story. This book is a major step up from the last one, with so much of the payoff from the last story coming on hard in this story. There are major battle sequences with the Great Ordeal throughout this entire st...