Боже, колко мъка има на този свят боже. Разбирам да не харесваш някоя книга просто защото не ти харесва, но е тъпо да не я харесваш заради твои полюции и мисинтерпретации. Като чета "ревютата" в гудрийдс искам да си тегля куршума понякога.
I'm going to quote some awful graphic rape scene. You are warned. You are very very very warned.
(view spoiler - последната сцена от The Warrior Prophet с изнасилването)
Yep, that's right: in one fell stroke we have the rape of a woman, a guy, and then a kid who's like... three or something. Mmm, sacks of penetrated flesh. Now this scene? Isn't really about dealing with misogyny or the effects rape has on anybody: it's thrown in there with the desperate fervor of a teenager trying to be edgy.
Note how the descriptions differ between the rape of the male point-of-view character, Aengelas, and the rape of his wife. The latter is described with greater details, almost titillating--lithe curves, nipples, climax. Whereas the one done to the man is described very briefly, one sentence long: "And when the Sranc made a womb of Aengelas himself, it asked—with each raper’s thrust, it asked . . ."
The rape is also done, naturally, to inflict pain and horror on the man: it's not about the woman, or about dealing with the horror of it. It's there because, er, R. Scott Bakker thinks rape is gritty and mature? The man has a high opinion of himself at any rate, and seems to believe he is a feminist. One must, I suppose, ignore this whole scene and the fact that part of it reads like rape porn. This is feminism, friends. A man's feminism.
Но има и още, под формата на коментар!
- Spoiler: show
- It's a testament to how much grimdark rape-y-ness hovers around in this book, that I don't actually recall the quoted spoiler section above. But I also read half ages ago, put it down in disappointment, and only now picked it back up. I might have missed it, but either way, have no interest in going back and finding this particular gem.
This is the one Bakker book I accidently own. A itty bitty hardback copy, picked up for a pound at a cheap book shop. Ugly cover, silly title, but I'd heard of the author ages ago and thought in for a penny, well how about a pound.
Started it ages ago, never finished it. Finally picked it up again tonight and plunged through the last half. Definitely rape-y. Whore, whore, rape, rape, Sarnac or whatever, with its quivering member out far too often - which even if that's only once, this maxim remains true.
The whole bit with the daughter-whore and the rapists, er, Skin Bangers or something, very disturbing. Lots of grimdark fratboy leering, digs about women, and then of course, the daughter-whore falls in love with them all.
Well, one of them, but she's of course shown them in a new light, despite no real change in their inherent grimdark rapeyness that I can see save for having a bunch of Sarpacs and Nomnommen want to do vile things to her and then I guess, eat her. Which I don't really see how this is much different from the Skin Eaters, but she is certainly Taught A Valuable Lesson, so haha.
But... take all this away, push up your tolerance for some really dubious worldcrap and worldplaining, and the whole whore/rape thing, and it's just as bad really.
Terribly overwrought, over written, labourious and boring. And often for me at least, filled with unintended bathos. How anyone writes something like "quaffs (or something, I can't really be bothered to look it up right now) a chalice of apple mead" and all the word salad of descriptors when he could just say, the Mines of Moria, er Chil-August or whatever, was dark, smelled of rotten eggs, and lots of rape-y Orcs, er Sarmacs, came running out of the tunnels, becomes worse than tedious.