The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth—it's language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals—the kind of all-embracing universe that has thrilled readers of Stephen R Donaldson and George R.R. Martin.It's a world scarred by an acopalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future, as untold thousands gather for a crusade. Travelling among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasurimbor Kellhus—part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence—from lands long thought dead. The Darkness that Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion.With this stunning debut, R. Scott Bakker is poised to become one of the next great fantasy writers of his generation. The Darkness that Comes Before proves again that epic fantasy can be intelligent, majestic, and terrifying.

Highly recommended to Malazan fans. I am not one of them, though. So, great worldbuilding, complex plot, flat characters and good writing, but really really boring for me. Honestly, I had much higher expectations.

Unsure what my final rating for this will be but it's close to a five star for sure. My “issue” with it, if it can be called that, is that I really don't like the naming conventions/amount of names thrown at you in this book. While that is normally fine, the fact that my brain just refuses to log most of them into long term memory (especially because the audiobook will pronounce the name in ways I didn't anticipate, like with a silent C to begin a name, causing me to at first assume they are a new character) means that I definitely didn't grasp a decent chunk of what the hell was happening in this book. There are entire characters who I know I saw their names many times in the book but I am unsure what role they played. A reread would really clear this up, now that I know what and who to focus on.

Other than that, damn. The prose is so memerizing and Bakker has such thought provoking or evocative word choices. The characters I did latch on to I found really interesting in unconventional ways and Bakker threw me for loops constantly. The set up for what's going on is nuts and some of the scenes were just me going like WTF WTF WTF. I also think he writes good dialogue, although I do think it falls into that Malazan trap of everyone is a bit too philosophical. I can forgive it. There were times where the prose made it very hard for me to picture the scene, like I would reread several times and still have no idea how to picture what was happening, but that could be a skill issue.

I don't think the book was as depraved as people act like it is