Black Sun Rising: The Coldfire Trilogy: Book One

Executive Summary: I have mixed feelings on this book. Sometimes it was a 2 star, sometimes 4, and in the end I settled on 2.5 rounded up. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.Audiobook: One of the things that attracted me to doing this book was how much I enjoyed [a:R.C. Bray 6478373 R.C. Bray https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424045813p2/6478373.jpg] as the narrator of [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1413706054s/18007564.jpg 21825181]. He's quite good here, but at some points he's “too good”. What do I mean by that? Well his voices for some of the characters are so spot on the description as to be jarring, and I'd spend most of the time focused on my irritation at the voice over what was being said. Thankfully those characters didn't talk very much.The rest of the time he was quite enjoyable as a narrator. I don't think those voices were enough to detract from his narration as a whole. I think audio's a good option here. Hopefully you won't find those same voices as grating to your concentration as I did. Full ReviewThis one wasn't on my radar at all before a friend suggested it for a buddy read. It sounded like an interesting mix of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I was thinking maybe something along the lines of Star Wars.This book may as well have been straight fantasy however. There is very little science to speak of. Apparently humans have settled another planet and found a way to harness it and some of the creatures who live there as a form of magic. Technology as we know it seems pretty non-existent.After a pretty intense and interesting prologue, I found the early parts of this book quite slow. Things did pick up later, but then I'd find myself growing distracted/uninterested in what was going on. This made for a very uneven pace to the story. That may be in part due to my general dislike of most of the characters. The book describes Damian as a warrior, but in truth he's a paladin. When paladins aren't off heroically saving people in need, they seem to spend their time judging everyone else who can't live up to their lofty standards. Damian isn't quite this bad, but he does have his moments.I initially was the most interested in Cianni, but her character development throughout this book was not to my liking. Her assistant mostly got on my nerves.The most interesting character was the Hunter, but he's was very hard to like for many of the same reasons that made him interesting.I'm very much a fan of character-driven story, so when I don't connect well with the characters, it almost always hurts my enjoyment of the book.The world building, and the magic systems were both pretty interesting. They felt pretty unique from most fantasy I've read, and that's always hard to do.Overall I felt like the pacing issues and my general dislike of the characters cost this book at least a star, possibly more. A strong ending and interesting world building helped to make up for things.I'm still unsure if I'll continue on with the series. The ending has peaked my interest to know what comes next, but for now I'm not going to be rushing out to pick up the second book.

Short version: richly-imagined world, historically important in modern fantasy, and mostly skilled prose, though mixed and sometimes hard to follow.

Black Sun Rising is a book I have looked forward to reading for years, as it's often found on library shelves and lists of influential or favorite books. The tipping point came when I found the third book of a different trilogy at a local thrift store. C.S. Friedman's skill was evident from the first word and I found myself stuck, ignoring my kids. Black Sun Rising, likewise, is engaging and drew me in with its inventive and original world. The author is not tentative about revealing the nature of the world: this is a future world colonized by spacefaring humans, and the relationship to earth is clear from the very beginning, in the prologue. You're clearly dealing with earth cultures and remnants from Earth on a world that works differently, right on page 1.

The world of Erna was the last ditch point for the colonists and despite extensive testing, they had to settle the habitable, but quite un-earthlike planet. An unseen elemental force called fae alters the laws of physics and feeds off human psychic energy (careful there: this is not faerie, fairy, faery, fair-folk, etc; it's a completely different sort of thing). Dealing with the fae has led to not just difficulty settling, but a host of magical beings: demons, adepts, and sorcerors. It has also kicked the evolution of the rakh, the planetary natives into high gear, since invasion of humans seeded their evolution into an intelligent life form.

Our hero is warrior-sorceror-priest Damien Vryce, who comes to town to crack down on unorthodoxy in his church, and befriends Ciani, an adept and loremaster. Damien gets to know the local situation well, especially the lore of The Hunter, a rogue adept who tortures women, chasing them through a local forest. Everything goes haywire when Ciani is attacked and loses her adept powers and much of her memory. Damien, Ciani's friend Senzei, and Ciani herself set off after her attacker, in the hope that killing the assailant will restore Ciani's identity. They meet Gerald Tarrant, a cold-skinned adept with extraordinary powers, and there is rivalry between Damien and Tarrant for the rest of the book.

That's the setup, in about 120 pages, and it was almost inadequate to maintain reading this nearly 600 page book. I read the whole thing, and I enjoyed it, but it was hard to get to sometimes.
The motivation seemed poor and I was often puzzled by the intensity the author told me the characters had. I was often thinking “They're bleeding and starving and killing all these people for revenge? To do something that might not work? Or is it something else?” The prose was mostly good, but was vague in some parts, to the point where I sometimes just couldn't tell what was happening. The inventiveness of the world outweighs this, but makes it harder to keep momentum than with Melanie Rawn or Robert Jordan. Behind it all, Friedman is a sincere, honest author who doesn't resort to cheesiness, take shortcuts, or lapse into sentimentality. There are genuine well-built feelings here with genuine, believable adult characters, even if they are not clearly motivated.

Overall, this is an inventive and interesting book, even if the writing is not entirely consistent. I really look forward to reading the Magister Trilogy.