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The Darkness That Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing, Book 1) Hardcover – June 3, 2004
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- Print length608 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe Overlook Press
- Publication dateJune 3, 2004
- Dimensions5 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101585675598
- ISBN-13978-1585675593
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The Darkness that Comes Before is a strong, impressive, deeply imagined debut novel. However, this first book of an epic fantasy series is not accessible; it reads like a later volume of a complicated ongoing series. Author R. Scott Bakker has created a world that is very different from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, yet in depth of development comes closer than most high-fantasy worlds. In addition to providing five appendices, Bakker attempts to make his complex world clear to readers by filling the prologue and opening chapters with the names of characters, gods, cities, tribes, nations, religions, factions, and sorcerous schools. For many readers, this approach will have the opposite effect of clarity. It's like demonstrating snowflake structure with a blizzard. --Cynthia Ward
From Publishers Weekly
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About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : The Overlook Press (June 3, 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 608 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1585675598
- ISBN-13 : 978-1585675593
- Item Weight : 2.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,297,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #62,518 in American Literature (Books)
- #103,897 in Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

My books are the sum of four decades spent wandering fantastic worlds and philosophical worldviews. In an age where algorithms sort everything, I belong nowhere. Some days I write in a three-piece suit, and others, in my underwear.
These are the characters closest to my heart, those trapped between warring tribes. I despise easy answers. I write of ancient wars and long-dead philosophers, extinct races and poets whose words crack walls as readily as hearts. I mourn the worlds I once believed in, and I fear the planet we have become. The themes in my books teeter on the radical edge of the most pressing issues of our day. Among other venues, my philosophical critiques have been featured on CBC Ideas and in The Journal of Consciousness Studies.
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Top reviews
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At first, I was a little bored and confused by it. Bakker seemed to be treading into that realm of taking way to long to say things that didn't need to take so long to say. The story seemed to drag. There was too little explanation of all the different factions and who was trying to do what, and who belonged to which nation; basically, it was confusing. I don't have much patience for this, and I was honestly about to give up.
But then Bakker seemed to "find his groove", and boy did he find it. Eventually, after that rough start, he reached a balance that is hard to reach in writing; beautiful, engaging prose, but not at the expense of keeping the story interesting and moving along. He almost did a 180 from the beginning of the book; descriptions of things and thoughts of characters are worded in a way that is so unique, so visceral, that you can feel it in your gut.But he didn't beat around the bush with this. He described things and thoughts beautifully but efficiently; just enough to make you feel it, and then move on with the story.
The story is epic. Grand things are happening on a grand scale, but you see it through the eyes of every character in their very flawed ways. It is written in a "changing perspective" format; from character to character, which can be hard to pull off. Too often with this format, you get invested in one characters story, it reaches some cliffhanger, and then you are left hanging while it switches to another character. This annoys me when authors do this, but Bakker doesn't. He sees each minor plot all the way out until a relatively satisfying stopping point, and then and only then does he switch. And he doesn't slowly build the new plot, he takes you right into it. It keeps you engaged the whole way without feeling like you are starting all over every time a perspective is switched.
Honestly, after reading Bakker's work, I'm feeling a bit spoiled; kind of like I felt after reading "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. Other fantasy I read now seems clumsy, poorly worded, and "obvious". The other fantasy books I was reading have slowly fallen by the wayside while Bakker's work is in my reading list.
Bakker's world is dark, gritty, and there isn't one single character that isn't horribly flawed. I think this is where a lot of the negative reviews come from. It can be hard to relate to and like some of these characters, but he provides us with an "anchor" in Achamian. This is the one character that seems to resonate the most with what we like to consider as a "good man", a person that we can relate to. To help anchor us with this, he spends a great deal of time telling the story from his eyes. It provides a sense of humanity in the cruel, dark world that he has created.
This is an incredibly hard setting and story to write, and to write it in a way that in profound, beautiful, and entertaining all at the same time is a task that only an incredibly talented author can do.
I am devouring the second book now, and it is just as good, if not better, because the slow start is non-existent.
What follows is a Fatnasy series unlike any I had read. Its roots are firmly in the heroic fantasy that developed over the twentieth century, including Tolkein. There are many illusions and parallels to the Lord of the Rings, but make no mistake, Bakker isn't copying, he's twisting, bending, creating a world that is grimy, filthy, myriad in the perversity of human lust, greed, envy, and religious fervor.
When a young man name Kellhus, who unknowingly carries the blood of ancient kings sets out on a quest inot the greater world, it is a familiar story. But Kellhus is a product of two thousand years of breeding by his secretive group the Dûnyain. His intellect is beyond normal men. He has been trained to understand the source of men's passions. To us world-born, we are but children before him. With cold logic, Kellhus will do anything to accomplish his mission—even dominating an entire Holy War.
In the average Fantasy, Kellhus would be our protagonist. But he's not. That is Achamian, the middle-aged sorcerer and spy, an overweight man prone to drink, drugs, and prostitutes. A man whose decades working as a spy has made him cynical of the world. He has drunk with kings and beggars and realizes not much separates them. He is on another mission for the Mandate, his order of sorcerers, to discover if the Consult has any role in the Holy War called by the new Shriah (Pope). Achamian will return to the holy city of Sumna, and to Esmenet the Whore, perhaps the only person who truly knows him.
Politics and maneuvering dominate this book. While there is warfare and action, much of the book is a contest between men seeking to dominate their circumstances, from Emperor Ikurie Xerius who plans to harness the Holy War to restore the glory of his waning Empire to Cnaiür urs Skiötha who seeks to prove himself the best of his nomadic people. And at the heart, Kellhus, the Prince of Nothing and harbinger of the Apocalypse, arriving out of the wastelands. He is one of the conditioned and all will yield before him.
Intrigue, politics, cryptic prophecies declaring the end of the world, philosophy, faith, sin, sorcererous battles, warfare and the battered souls who strive to make sense of their world. The Darkness that Comes Before is both sweeping and historical at the same time is it deeply personal as R. Scott Bakker delves into human nature in all its vagaries, the good and the ill. This series has a rich cast of flawed characters.
Top reviews from other countries
A few years ago it was “Dune” of Frank Herbert that made me respect the intellect and craftsmanship required to present a world in a chapter and a universe in a volume. Now it is the Prince of Nothing that takes me on a series of mesmerising beauty. The same way iron is folded and beaten again and again into itself until all impurities come off in flakes, all scabs clear and shining perfection remains, so have these pages been scrutinised and cleansed and bled of all the unnecessary and unimportant and left only as the true and entrancing gate towards suffering, glory, joy, understanding and the start of a search within the book and within yourself.
To be a good actor you have to be schizophrenic, to mumble the words as Anthony Hopkins does ahead of any role, to FEEL the anger of John Hurt in “I, Claudius” when the ingrates COULD NOT SEE the grandness of being presented with the spoils of Old Neptune. To be a good writer you have to be in full all your characters and at the same time none; to be just the wind that brushes clouds, places, faces, but possesses none, merely passing through, merely giving a gentle nudge, chipping the sand of a wall, persistently pushing aside clothes and hair to slowly reveal curves, colour and minds.
The plot follows a handful of characters as their threads become entwined in an overall arc. If you were to break this down to its very core you'd find standard fantasy elements - a sorceror, a barbarian, a forgotten prince etc, all joining a war with the ever present (but not really believed by most) threat of an ancient demon-god coming back to threaten the world with darkness. However, as average as that sounds, the writing is of such an incredibly high standard that Bakker could throw in any type of character and you'd still read it. Each character is overwhelmingly deep in substance, and this is an almost constant exploration of the various aspects of humanity; there are phrases and passages in here that you read several times, then shut the book and contemplate for a time.
I won't attempt to summarise the characters or the story, as even a summary would take too long and not do this justice. Sufficed to say that if you love high/epic fantasy, this is for you. It is a little tricky to start with, but nothing too difficult, and my main (and only) slight niggle is that some of the character and place names are very complicated. I often find myself simply recognising the shapes of the words rather than attempting to pronounce them. But that really is the only criticism I can offer, and it's a very subjective one. This is the start of what will surely be one of the best fantasy novels I've read in a long time.










