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Book Review: The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker
I’ve been looking forward to the sequel to R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing series for a few years now and… it was kind of disappointing, actually. Granted, the first series was a lot to live up to—almost certainly one of the greatest fantasy series ever written IMO, and I didn’t feel like The Judging Eye quite delivered. [Warning: This review contains spoilers not only to the book its reviewing, but also to the series that preceded it.]
In The Prince of Nothing we were introduced to Drusas Achamian, a sorceror of the Mandate, at once the school of sorcery with the most powerful magic, but also one of the least respected because they have devoted themselves to fighting the mysterious Consult (in whom no one still believes) and preventing this enemy from bringing about a Second Apocalypse. As the Holy War, a sort of crusade by the Inrithi religion to recapture its holy lands from the heretical Fanim, begins, Achamian is sent to join it as a spy to seek any hint of the Consult. He finds just that, and also find Anasurimbor Kellhus, who may well be the harbinger of the Second Apocalypse.
Kellhus, the scion of a reclusive sort of monastic sect devoted to the Logos, dedicated to mastering circumstance, they’ve been training themselves to self-driven rather than pushed and pulled by the sort of irrational passions that move most of humanity, and at the same time they’ve been breeding themselves selectively for almost superhuman speed, strength, and senses (training as well). For these Dunyain, humanity is like a collection of children, easily understood and manipulated by their superior intellect. Kellhus was the titular Prince of Nothing, who (though he is apparently descended from ancient kings) went from having nothing but the clothes and sword on his back to being the Aspect-Emperor, uniting most of the known world under his rule. By the end of the first series, he has also learned the Mandate’s Gnostic sorcery from Achamian, and his superior intellect has made him more powerful than even any Gnostic sorcerer in at least a thousand years and probably ever. He is seen as not only the Aspect-Emeror, but a sort of living embodiment of the god.
Among the many other characters we meet in that first series is Esmenet, a whore who is the lover of Achamian, as they are both something of outcasts (sorcerers are understood to be damned for their magic). Their complicated relationship develops over the course of that trilogy, but when at one point Achamian appears to be dead, Esmenet eventually becomes Kellhus’ second wife.
The Judging Eye follows three basic plot-lines. First, there’s court life in Kellhus’s empire, told from the point of view of the Empress Esmenet and her youngest son Kelmomas. All of Kellhus’s children are blessed with some measure of his physical and intellectual abilities, but most are flawed in some fundamental way. Kelmomas is a dangerous child who appears mild, a boy who in testing his physical and mental capabilities and his power to manipulate those around him gets away with murdering his twin brother and another important character later. We also see Esmenet managing the Empire that Kellhus has built as Kellhus manages the decades-long process of uniting almost the entire known world and mobilizing it to march upon the ancient stronghold of the Consult.
On the war’s front, our perspective is mostly centered upon Sorweel, the son of the deposed king of the final country Kellhus’s armies subdue, as he tries to come to grips with the inversion of the world brought by his nation’s defeat and also struggles with his contradictory feelings toward his conqueror. Speaking of the conquered, we also follow the Cult of Yatwer, a goddess who apparently resents the Aspect-Emperor as a false god, largely through its Priestess-Mother Psatma Nannaferi. There seem to be strong indications that this goddess exists in some literal form, but the facts of the matter still aren’t clear.
Finally, we have a plot-line centered around Achamian, who at the end of the last series repudiated Kellhus, repudiated his School, and repudiated his love for Esmenet. He has gone off into extreme isolation as he tries to grapple with two related problems. First, it should be noted that all Mandate sorcerors nightly re-live the dreams of their ancient founder Seswatha, who passed along the highlights of his life-long fight against the Consult during the First Apocalypse in order that they would never forget the stakes for which they fight. Achamian has dedicated himself to sorting through these dreams and, in fact, expanding his perception into Seswatha’s life further than perhaps any Mandate sorcerer has ever done. All this is done, however, in an effort to uncover the secret origins of Anasurimbor Kellhus as Achamian seeks revenge for the way that he feels Kellhus has taken everything important from him. Into this life comes Mimara, the daughter that Esmenet sold into slavery while still a whore. Esmenet used the reach of imperial power to recover this daughter, but Mimara has never forgiven her. She seeks out Achamian, who she believes to be her father (he’s not) because she is one of the Few, those who can learn sorcery, and she wants him, now a renegade wizard, to teach her. He refuses, but throughout the novel the two are entwined, even as Achamian sets off into the dangerous wilderness seeking Kellhus’s secret origins.
Bakker is still an excellent writer, but I couldn’t help feeling that this book fell short of his previous works. In part, this is probably because The Judging Eye is a set-up novel. We need to know the characters and the situation and all that, but it just didn’t seem to go anywhere fast. Bakker seemed to be fighting against epic fantasy sprawl by limiting us to just a handful of perspectives, and it was probably a good choice, for instance, not to see things from the POV of Kellhus—his perspective was used sparingly in the first series and not at all now. At this point, he probably just knows too much. At the same time, the POVs we do get are not, for the most part, as compelling as those we met in the first series. Gone is Cnaiur, the complex barbarian warring with and against Kellhus. Esmenet, when we see her, seems somehow diminished. Mimara offers some compensation here, but neither Sorweel nor Psatma Nannaferi command the sort of interest that the best characters of the last book (and to be honest, some of the minor characters in the first series were more interesting). Even Kelmomas isn’t all that interesting as a sort of villain (he’s more of a disaster waiting to be unleashed). The Prince of Nothing had incredible complexity in its characters, its plot, and its background—down to philosophical and religious systems in addition to everything else. The world of The Judging Eye is still pretty good, still as good as most of the fantasy out there, but not as good as Bakker’s best.
But then, it’s given me enough that I still have high hopes for the sequel. If it doesn’t exactly deliver, it has enough promise that I believe Bakker can still make this second series an amazing work of epic fantasy.