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The Coldfire Trilogy #2
When True Night Falls
Journey into darkness - Determined to seek out and destroy the source of the fae-borne evil that is rapidly strengthening its control over the world called Erna, Damien Vryce, the warrior priest, has renewed his dangerous alliance with Gerald Tarrant, the immortal sorcerer known as the Hunter, and together with Hesseth, a woman of Erna's native species, the rakh, they will dare the treacherous ocean crossing to Erna's eastern continent. But the crossing may well prove the least of their worries. For though the eastern continent appears to be a haven of stability and prosperity, this image of paradise masks an underlying corruption that threatens the very essence of the human spirit. And the three are soon forced to flee south into realms long since abandoned to the dark fae and its creatures.
Lost in a land where those who offer hope of salvation may prove to be the true masters of treachery, and steadily drawn towards a rendezvous which may rob them of that which is even more precious than life, will Damien, Tarrant, and Hesseth find their own fragile alliance shattered by a power out to possess or destroy all of humankind?
Lost in a land where those who offer hope of salvation may prove to be the true masters of treachery, and steadily drawn towards a rendezvous which may rob them of that which is even more precious than life, will Damien, Tarrant, and Hesseth find their own fragile alliance shattered by a power out to possess or destroy all of humankind?
617 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
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3695 people want to read
About the author
C.S. Friedman
49 books1,276 followersCelia S. Friedman is a science fiction and fantasy author. She has also been credited Celia S. Friedman and Celia Friedman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 245 reviews
September 7, 2016
When True Night Falls; Or, How Gerald Vryce Finally Learned to Stop Worrying and Love That Hunky Bombshell & Immortal Vampire Damian Tarrant
I don't have any issues with plus-sized people; several of my friends including people I've dated have been plus-sized and they are all compelling and adorable. same goes for plus-sized books. I like something sturdy to put my arms around, I love getting lost in them, and they are also often compelling although maybe not "adorable" per se. but with this book I've realized that I have a serious issue with a lithe and svelte novel of ideas that for some reason has decided to put on an enormous fatsuit and pretend that it is a big fat adventure and that it has always been this way. it's an insult to genuine plus-sized books!
there is much to applaud in the book. vampire-sorcerer Tarrant remains an entirely intriguing creation. the various fae forces remain fascinating. there is a new city explored in some depth and that is well-done too. and the continual discussion of faith and God and religion is an absorbing topic to me and Friedman brings both emotion and intellect to the table whenever the topic is on hand - which is a lot of the time. best of all are those creepy "children" who capture and torment our band of adventurers mid-way through the book.
but sweet Jesus this book is about 5 times as big as it should be! there is a tiny cast of characters engaged in a pretty straightforward quest (on a less than straightforward world); the novel would have been so much more powerful if the narrative wasn't wrapped in so many layers of flab. this could have been an eerie and disturbing adventure set in a frightening dreamscape while exploring the power of faith. I would have loved that! instead I got fascinating ideas lost in a big fat fatsuit.
the most egregious contributor to all of the bloat is the constant, constant, CONSTANT moaning & mewling of this warrior-priest Vryce over poor sadistic vampire Tarrant. not a page passes without Vryce obsessing over him in every which way. what Tarrant could be thinking, where Tarrant is now, what that expression on Tarrant's face means, why his clothes are always so clean, how Vryce is so very put out by him and how it is such a challenge to be around him and how he puts his morals to the test and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. was Friedman cognizant of how extremely gay she was making this relationship out to be? I think not. at one point I literally couldn't believe my eyes as I read how Vryce was worried about what Tarrant would think about his unclean body and unkempt clothes. dude come out of the fookin closet already! and stop being such a bitch - you know you love that uptight vampire. old school closet types just really drive me up the wall.
I don't have any issues with plus-sized people; several of my friends including people I've dated have been plus-sized and they are all compelling and adorable. same goes for plus-sized books. I like something sturdy to put my arms around, I love getting lost in them, and they are also often compelling although maybe not "adorable" per se. but with this book I've realized that I have a serious issue with a lithe and svelte novel of ideas that for some reason has decided to put on an enormous fatsuit and pretend that it is a big fat adventure and that it has always been this way. it's an insult to genuine plus-sized books!
there is much to applaud in the book. vampire-sorcerer Tarrant remains an entirely intriguing creation. the various fae forces remain fascinating. there is a new city explored in some depth and that is well-done too. and the continual discussion of faith and God and religion is an absorbing topic to me and Friedman brings both emotion and intellect to the table whenever the topic is on hand - which is a lot of the time. best of all are those creepy "children" who capture and torment our band of adventurers mid-way through the book.
but sweet Jesus this book is about 5 times as big as it should be! there is a tiny cast of characters engaged in a pretty straightforward quest (on a less than straightforward world); the novel would have been so much more powerful if the narrative wasn't wrapped in so many layers of flab. this could have been an eerie and disturbing adventure set in a frightening dreamscape while exploring the power of faith. I would have loved that! instead I got fascinating ideas lost in a big fat fatsuit.
the most egregious contributor to all of the bloat is the constant, constant, CONSTANT moaning & mewling of this warrior-priest Vryce over poor sadistic vampire Tarrant. not a page passes without Vryce obsessing over him in every which way. what Tarrant could be thinking, where Tarrant is now, what that expression on Tarrant's face means, why his clothes are always so clean, how Vryce is so very put out by him and how it is such a challenge to be around him and how he puts his morals to the test and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. was Friedman cognizant of how extremely gay she was making this relationship out to be? I think not. at one point I literally couldn't believe my eyes as I read how Vryce was worried about what Tarrant would think about his unclean body and unkempt clothes. dude come out of the fookin closet already! and stop being such a bitch - you know you love that uptight vampire. old school closet types just really drive me up the wall.
January 31, 2017
Again simple plot as priest Damian and undead sorcerer Tarrant continue their uneasy alliance into another hearth of darkness but Erna is everything but a simple place and still one of most interesting fantasy (I see people calling it science fantasy but I disagree with that, this is high fantasy without much science elements) settings I came across.
I found this book more enjoyable than than first one largely because this book doesn't involve Ciani who was annoying throughout most of the first book.
I found this book more enjoyable than than first one largely because this book doesn't involve Ciani who was annoying throughout most of the first book.
July 7, 2024
4.0 Stars
This was a fantastic sequel that expands the world introduced in the first book. One of my favourite aspect was the reliance on a morally gray character that created a wonderful moral dilemma for our protagonist.
This was a fantastic sequel that expands the world introduced in the first book. One of my favourite aspect was the reliance on a morally gray character that created a wonderful moral dilemma for our protagonist.
August 26, 2008
4.5 to 5.0 stars. Excellent sequel to the superb Black Sun Rising and book two of the Coldfire trilogy. I am a big fan of C.S. Friedman and this series is one of the big reasons why. Highly Recommended!!
August 1, 2024
Damian the priest,Tarrant the not exactly dracula and Hesseth the cat lady set off on a long ocean voyage to find the source of the evil causing all that shit in the first book. They get to a whole other continent with different, (more secret )bullshit going on.
The bulk of the book is a long, physically and emotionally exhausting quest through a shitty land where even the trees want to kill them.
The book isn’t bad but it’s got some unrelenting abuse heaped on our heroes, it causes them to question their trust of one another, their morality and how far they are willing to go to accomplish their mission.
It just drags a bit because they endlessly have the physical and emotional shit beaten out of them. By the end I was almost desensitized to the trauma.
Still reading book three though.
January 13, 2013
When True Night Falls
Book 2 of the Coldfire Trilogy
By C.S. Friedman
A Retroview by Eric Allen
I honestly can't believe I've never come across this trilogy before now. I can't believe that no one I know has ever suggested it to me, or mentioned it in conversation. It takes place in one of the best thought out, and vividly created worlds I have ever read. And the story is both epic in scope, and quite entertaining to read. And so, it was not until twenty years after its publication that a copy of this book came to me. I have really been missing out on a good thing in my ignorance.
When True Night Falls picks up a few months after the events of Black Sun Rising, the first book in the trilogy. Though the enemy in the East of the Rakhlands was defeated and the threat she posed in corrupting the Rakh into twisted, shadow versions of themselves was removed, there is still the question of where she came from. Setting out on a voyage that many have undertaken, but none have returned from, Damien, the Rakh woman Hesseth, and Terrant embark upon a trek across the eastern sea.
We begin with their arrival in the lands to the east where a thriving civilization has been established. A civilization that believes so deeply in the religion which Damien serves as a priest and Sorcerer that the Fay, which reacts to the emotions, fears and imaginations of man, has no power over them. Machines work because the people believe that God will protect them from the Fay. Firearms no longer pose a danger to the ones using them, because they have absolute faith that God will not allow the weapons to misfire. Fireworks, something that would have been an utter disaster, resulting in many deaths on the other side of the ocean, go on flawless display because the people as a whole believe that they will.
Damien is both humbled and awed by the power of the faith of the people. This civilization and their utter faith and domination over the powers of the Fay have been things that he has sought to create all his life.
But things are not as they seem. The people are being manipulated by the Immortal Prince far to the south, his pagan people, and the Rakh, which he has corrupted to do his bidding, and to utterly hate all humanity. The church and all its wonders has been infiltrated by the enemy, and the people are being controlled, manipulated slowly, over centuries to face the Rakh in an explosive confrontation that will result in the destruction of their entire civilization.
Seeing the Immortal Prince as the enemy that they crossed the ocean to confront, Damien and company set out to face him, and destroy him, freeing the Rakh from his reins of evil, and averting the war of extermination of all people on the eastern side of the ocean. But can they trust their powerful, undead companion Terrant, or will he betray them for a greater reward in kneeling before the Immortal Prince.
The Good? The worldbuilding that went into this trilogy and this book are spectacular. The world is incredibly interesting and realistic. The powers of the Fay are truly engaging, because there is such a huge downside to the powers that people gain from it. Any fear, stray thought, or emotion can corrupt a person's working of the Fay and result in a nightmare given flesh. Merely thinking, feeling afraid, or having a nightmare in the right place, under the right circumstances, can cause a person's fears to manifest and murder them. It's a very interesting concept. I've always thought that what makes a system of magic the most interesting is not what one can do with it, but what the dangers of using it are, and this magic system has some incredibly interesting dangers in its use.
The first book had some rather vague plot elements where I found myself confused over what was happening and why. This book does not share that problem. Friedman has improved greatly upon the style that she used in the first book, giving a much clearer picture of what is happening this time around, and why it is happening. I enjoy mysteries as much as the next man, but sometimes you just need to sit down and tell your readers what's going on and why, and she did an excellent job of that here. None of the exposition felt forced, and there were no big infodumps either. It was woven seamlessly into the story, making it far more enjoyable than the first book was.
The Bad? This is not something that I, personally, thought was a bad thing. I want to make that clear. It was an aspect of the book that I quite enjoyed. HOWEVER, I am aware of the fact that many people out there do not share my views on religion, and may find themselves either bored, or possibly offended by a great deal of the goings on in this book. A great deal of this book deals with the power of God as an idea, and the faith of the people to make things happen. Like I said, I quite enjoyed this aspect of the story. I spent a year of my life working as a full time preacher between stages of my college education, so to me, the questions of whether the faith of the people is still good, or whether it has been corrupted was a very interesting struggle within Damien. It's one of his major focuses in the book, and I felt that it was done very well. But to people who are turned off by the question of religion, it will likely be rather boring. This is not a Christian religion, though it bears some small resemblance to one, nor does the author go out of her way to preach as some other authors are known to do. However, the nature of the character, a warrior priest, who has sought all his live to find paradise only to find it, and then discover that it is being corrupted is an integral part of the story. His inner turmoil over it is his main focus for a great deal of the book. If this is something you don't care for, it may make this book unbearable to you.
In conclusion, this book is excellent. I found it to be extraordinarily well written and crafted. Friedman has done a spectacular job of worldbuilding and her grasp of how the inner turmoil of characters should play out is exquisite. I can't believe I had never heard of her before. She is a great author that deserves far more recognition than she has received. This book took everything that was great about the first book and made it better, improving upon the flaws of the first to craft a story that was both bigger and better, leading into what looks like quite a conclusion in the third and final book. I recommend this trilogy to anyone who enjoys the Fantasy Genre, or anyone looking for a spectacular display of worldbuilding and writing at their absolute best.
Check out my other reviews.
Book 2 of the Coldfire Trilogy
By C.S. Friedman
A Retroview by Eric Allen
I honestly can't believe I've never come across this trilogy before now. I can't believe that no one I know has ever suggested it to me, or mentioned it in conversation. It takes place in one of the best thought out, and vividly created worlds I have ever read. And the story is both epic in scope, and quite entertaining to read. And so, it was not until twenty years after its publication that a copy of this book came to me. I have really been missing out on a good thing in my ignorance.
When True Night Falls picks up a few months after the events of Black Sun Rising, the first book in the trilogy. Though the enemy in the East of the Rakhlands was defeated and the threat she posed in corrupting the Rakh into twisted, shadow versions of themselves was removed, there is still the question of where she came from. Setting out on a voyage that many have undertaken, but none have returned from, Damien, the Rakh woman Hesseth, and Terrant embark upon a trek across the eastern sea.
We begin with their arrival in the lands to the east where a thriving civilization has been established. A civilization that believes so deeply in the religion which Damien serves as a priest and Sorcerer that the Fay, which reacts to the emotions, fears and imaginations of man, has no power over them. Machines work because the people believe that God will protect them from the Fay. Firearms no longer pose a danger to the ones using them, because they have absolute faith that God will not allow the weapons to misfire. Fireworks, something that would have been an utter disaster, resulting in many deaths on the other side of the ocean, go on flawless display because the people as a whole believe that they will.
Damien is both humbled and awed by the power of the faith of the people. This civilization and their utter faith and domination over the powers of the Fay have been things that he has sought to create all his life.
But things are not as they seem. The people are being manipulated by the Immortal Prince far to the south, his pagan people, and the Rakh, which he has corrupted to do his bidding, and to utterly hate all humanity. The church and all its wonders has been infiltrated by the enemy, and the people are being controlled, manipulated slowly, over centuries to face the Rakh in an explosive confrontation that will result in the destruction of their entire civilization.
Seeing the Immortal Prince as the enemy that they crossed the ocean to confront, Damien and company set out to face him, and destroy him, freeing the Rakh from his reins of evil, and averting the war of extermination of all people on the eastern side of the ocean. But can they trust their powerful, undead companion Terrant, or will he betray them for a greater reward in kneeling before the Immortal Prince.
The Good? The worldbuilding that went into this trilogy and this book are spectacular. The world is incredibly interesting and realistic. The powers of the Fay are truly engaging, because there is such a huge downside to the powers that people gain from it. Any fear, stray thought, or emotion can corrupt a person's working of the Fay and result in a nightmare given flesh. Merely thinking, feeling afraid, or having a nightmare in the right place, under the right circumstances, can cause a person's fears to manifest and murder them. It's a very interesting concept. I've always thought that what makes a system of magic the most interesting is not what one can do with it, but what the dangers of using it are, and this magic system has some incredibly interesting dangers in its use.
The first book had some rather vague plot elements where I found myself confused over what was happening and why. This book does not share that problem. Friedman has improved greatly upon the style that she used in the first book, giving a much clearer picture of what is happening this time around, and why it is happening. I enjoy mysteries as much as the next man, but sometimes you just need to sit down and tell your readers what's going on and why, and she did an excellent job of that here. None of the exposition felt forced, and there were no big infodumps either. It was woven seamlessly into the story, making it far more enjoyable than the first book was.
The Bad? This is not something that I, personally, thought was a bad thing. I want to make that clear. It was an aspect of the book that I quite enjoyed. HOWEVER, I am aware of the fact that many people out there do not share my views on religion, and may find themselves either bored, or possibly offended by a great deal of the goings on in this book. A great deal of this book deals with the power of God as an idea, and the faith of the people to make things happen. Like I said, I quite enjoyed this aspect of the story. I spent a year of my life working as a full time preacher between stages of my college education, so to me, the questions of whether the faith of the people is still good, or whether it has been corrupted was a very interesting struggle within Damien. It's one of his major focuses in the book, and I felt that it was done very well. But to people who are turned off by the question of religion, it will likely be rather boring. This is not a Christian religion, though it bears some small resemblance to one, nor does the author go out of her way to preach as some other authors are known to do. However, the nature of the character, a warrior priest, who has sought all his live to find paradise only to find it, and then discover that it is being corrupted is an integral part of the story. His inner turmoil over it is his main focus for a great deal of the book. If this is something you don't care for, it may make this book unbearable to you.
In conclusion, this book is excellent. I found it to be extraordinarily well written and crafted. Friedman has done a spectacular job of worldbuilding and her grasp of how the inner turmoil of characters should play out is exquisite. I can't believe I had never heard of her before. She is a great author that deserves far more recognition than she has received. This book took everything that was great about the first book and made it better, improving upon the flaws of the first to craft a story that was both bigger and better, leading into what looks like quite a conclusion in the third and final book. I recommend this trilogy to anyone who enjoys the Fantasy Genre, or anyone looking for a spectacular display of worldbuilding and writing at their absolute best.
Check out my other reviews.
July 10, 2025
I enjoyed this for the most part, but it was way too bloated. There was a pretty basic quest/plotline and the book could have been trimmed down quite a bit to focus on that, but there were a lot of distractions and sidetracks that didn't add a lot to the story. At times I would forget what we were even doing and what the goal was. Once I remembered, I was confused as to why things were taking so long.
My biggest issue with this book is Damian's complete obsession over Tarrant. He was CONSTANTLY thinking about him or talking about him, and it kind of took over the book. At this point they have been travelling together for months and Damian is still struggling with Tarrant's nature? With all due respect, get over it. You know what he is and what he does, so why linger on it? But the obsession ended up coming across as unwanted romantic feelings. If this was a fantasy romance, that would have been fine. In fact, it would have been great!! I would love it if this trilogy was actually meant to be a romance between Damian and Tarrant. They are both obsessed with each other, they share an actual mind link, and Tarrant feeds off of Damian (with Damian's full permission). It is the perfect recipe for an actual enemies to lovers story because Damian has a legit reason to hate Tarrant. But alas, this is not meant to be a romance, so the obsession just got a bit frustrating instead.
The world is still really cool, though. There were a couple of jaw-dropping moments due to the horror, and it could have been even more creepy if she had leaned into that. But those moments were too few and far between. But still, I enjoy how unique the world and the fae is. I will probably read the third book at some point, but not right away.
My biggest issue with this book is Damian's complete obsession over Tarrant. He was CONSTANTLY thinking about him or talking about him, and it kind of took over the book. At this point they have been travelling together for months and Damian is still struggling with Tarrant's nature? With all due respect, get over it. You know what he is and what he does, so why linger on it? But the obsession ended up coming across as unwanted romantic feelings. If this was a fantasy romance, that would have been fine. In fact, it would have been great!! I would love it if this trilogy was actually meant to be a romance between Damian and Tarrant. They are both obsessed with each other, they share an actual mind link, and Tarrant feeds off of Damian (with Damian's full permission). It is the perfect recipe for an actual enemies to lovers story because Damian has a legit reason to hate Tarrant. But alas, this is not meant to be a romance, so the obsession just got a bit frustrating instead.
The world is still really cool, though. There were a couple of jaw-dropping moments due to the horror, and it could have been even more creepy if she had leaned into that. But those moments were too few and far between. But still, I enjoy how unique the world and the fae is. I will probably read the third book at some point, but not right away.
December 20, 2023
The ending picked up, but most of this book was a slog so I don't know if I can justify picking up book 3, especially since it again sounds like the same formula as both books 1 and 2.
The formula: They're travelling. They're being chased. They get attacked/captured. Escape. Tarrant does some magic things. But mostly Damien wonders about Tarrant. He hates him when he is there. He worries about him when he's gone. Rinse. Repeat ad nauseam. Tarrant lives in his head rent free at all times and I'm sick of hearing about it.
When he isn't thinking/wondering/obsessing over Tarrant he is thinking about his religion. I just can't care at this point about anything this dude says or does.
Disappointing because her other series was so good.
The formula: They're travelling. They're being chased. They get attacked/captured. Escape. Tarrant does some magic things. But mostly Damien wonders about Tarrant. He hates him when he is there. He worries about him when he's gone. Rinse. Repeat ad nauseam. Tarrant lives in his head rent free at all times and I'm sick of hearing about it.
When he isn't thinking/wondering/obsessing over Tarrant he is thinking about his religion. I just can't care at this point about anything this dude says or does.
Disappointing because her other series was so good.
March 17, 2015
Damien, Tarrant and Hesseth the Rakh woman (Rakhs are Erna´s native species) dare to cross the ocean to find and destroy their enemy the Dark Prince who has built his palace in the Black Lands on the eastern continent. Arriving there after a long journey they find a wealthy empire but have soon to realize all that glitters isn´t gold. They are forced to flee and embark on a journey to find the crystal palace of their enemy through a hostile wasteland. On their way they rescue the young girl Jenseny a natural adept who joins them on their dangerous mission. As they draw nearer and nearer to the Evil Prince´s home the more hopeless their situation gets: chased by demonic monsters, the disappearance of Tarrant, the death of Hesseth (yes, the autor has no scruples to kill off a main character) and the betrayel of Damien´s most important ally..
This second book seems to be a gap-filler between book 1 and 3 I suspect. Really, there could have been at least 200 pages less in my opinion. 600 pages are too much for our heroes not even coming anywhere near their real demonic antagonist. The length of this book tried my patience and again I was tempted just to cast it aside but.. sigh… I couldn´t stop reading.
Homepage of the author: http://www.csfriedman.com/
This second book seems to be a gap-filler between book 1 and 3 I suspect. Really, there could have been at least 200 pages less in my opinion. 600 pages are too much for our heroes not even coming anywhere near their real demonic antagonist. The length of this book tried my patience and again I was tempted just to cast it aside but.. sigh… I couldn´t stop reading.
Homepage of the author: http://www.csfriedman.com/
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2016
With the rough and lumbering sort of swagger born in a creative storm’s dynamic struggle to express old ideas in new ways, balance theological/humanitarian morals with the excitment of visceral visuals and tremendously perilous exploits, and constantly Work the reader with the indulgence of emotionally loquacious prose designed to stretch any who even think about reading the book to the limit, the second act of C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy, spectrally titled When True Night Falls, succeeds in acheiving its ambitions and perfectly follows Black Sun Rising by deepening characters in an even and natural manner and exponentially raising the stakes to nearly impossible heights for the third and final installment of the trilogy.
Read
October 2, 2025DNF with no rating because I only listened to the first five chapters. I’m not really feeling this right now unfortunately.
April 19, 2020
This book has a plot that holds up a mirror to the first one, which has some benefits of setting up some beautiful parallels (it also uses this structure to set up expectations about what's really going on with the plot and play it off beautifully) but has some detriments: there is a loooong stretch at the beginning where it feels like the characters don't do anything that parallels the stretch before the protagonists meet in book 1 -- so they go places and see things but it's very passive. And the issue with women is still there .
It's well-written, really fascinating, plays off expectations beautifully, and it's still a great read with some fantastically complicated and interesting characters. But it's the darkest of the three books and between all three of them it's my least favorite -- even if it's still a great read.
As noted in my review of book 1, I'm primarily a queer reviewer of queer fiction, and also as noted -- as the author has said, it was not deliberately intended to read queer. If you want actual representation this isn't the place for it! But I mean, unconsciously or unintentionally, it do read that way tho. I mean, the narration, from Damien's Pov (includes 'thank god' etc in the narrative text etc so it's 'from' his pov) often describes how beautiful Tarrant is, and then there's love is a universal language, [Damien] reminded himself. So is loneliness. With a sigh, he looked for Tarrant. There are hundreds of moments of this throughout the text, where if it was intended it'd be really smartly done and since not...it's always a surprise to me as a queer reader how accidentally you can write a fantastic queer enemies to lovers story by not looking at some of the connotations haha. I mean, again, if you want actual rep for lgbt enemies to lovers, definitely check out some lists to get you started with that. But if you're looking to read some older mainstream sci-fi/fantasy that's well-written and has that vibe anyway check this series out -- just note that this is probably the hardest book to get through of a very good series for the reasons I listed above.
It's well-written, really fascinating, plays off expectations beautifully, and it's still a great read with some fantastically complicated and interesting characters. But it's the darkest of the three books and between all three of them it's my least favorite -- even if it's still a great read.
As noted in my review of book 1, I'm primarily a queer reviewer of queer fiction, and also as noted -- as the author has said, it was not deliberately intended to read queer. If you want actual representation this isn't the place for it! But I mean, unconsciously or unintentionally, it do read that way tho. I mean, the narration, from Damien's Pov (includes 'thank god' etc in the narrative text etc so it's 'from' his pov) often describes how beautiful Tarrant is, and then there's love is a universal language, [Damien] reminded himself. So is loneliness. With a sigh, he looked for Tarrant. There are hundreds of moments of this throughout the text, where if it was intended it'd be really smartly done and since not...it's always a surprise to me as a queer reader how accidentally you can write a fantastic queer enemies to lovers story by not looking at some of the connotations haha. I mean, again, if you want actual rep for lgbt enemies to lovers, definitely check out some lists to get you started with that. But if you're looking to read some older mainstream sci-fi/fantasy that's well-written and has that vibe anyway check this series out -- just note that this is probably the hardest book to get through of a very good series for the reasons I listed above.
March 12, 2019
There was never any doubt that I would read this novel—I enjoyed the first installment a great deal and it is part of my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project. Not only that, but I found all three volumes at the popular used book sale in my city and had them on hand. If all of that wasn’t enough, last year at the When Words Collide writers’ conference, Peter V. Brett recommended it. He was on a panel about female characters in fantasy fiction and I came away quite impressed with his views. (He thinks that male and female characters should reflect reality, i.e. have equal numbers of male & female characters, among other things).
So, I was fired up to read this series and I have been enjoying it. I was somewhat dismayed, however, that Celia Friedman leaves behind one of her main female characters in this volume (Ciani) and I was left with only Hesseth, a female native of Erna, to carry the flag for women. Friedman does offer us the female child, Jenseny, but that doesn’t last all that long. By book’s end, we are left with just the guys.
I can certainly see, however, that Brett gathered some inspiration from this fantasy series. His Demon Cycle seems to owe a debt to the demons of this Coldfire Trilogy. One of my great pleasures in reading my long list of speculative fiction is seeing the various influences between authors, so this correlation pleases me.
Book number 311 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.
So, I was fired up to read this series and I have been enjoying it. I was somewhat dismayed, however, that Celia Friedman leaves behind one of her main female characters in this volume (Ciani) and I was left with only Hesseth, a female native of Erna, to carry the flag for women. Friedman does offer us the female child, Jenseny, but that doesn’t last all that long. By book’s end, we are left with just the guys.
I can certainly see, however, that Brett gathered some inspiration from this fantasy series. His Demon Cycle seems to owe a debt to the demons of this Coldfire Trilogy. One of my great pleasures in reading my long list of speculative fiction is seeing the various influences between authors, so this correlation pleases me.
Book number 311 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.
July 7, 2014
The second book in the series was better than the first. I really liked the writing style in the first book, but here it is even better. While reading, you can see the writing improving. The relationships between the characters are deeper and a new character is introduced, who is very interesting.
The main evil character remains the same, but there is a different secondary one. I liked him better than the woman in the first book, because I found him more believable.
The priest isn't so frustrating in this book (maybe that's because I got used to him...) and the relationship between him and the Hunter is maturing. Nevertheless, he continues to obsess on the Hunter and there were times that I wished he would admit he was in love with him... Generally, this obsession is better when compared to the first book.
The Hunter is still my favorite character. I think it's worth reading the series just to see his story and awesomeness.
I recommend this series. It's interesting and it keeps getting better.
P.S I enjoyed the philosophy expressed in the book through the priest and his relationship with the Hunter. I think Scott Bakker should read this series to learn how to incorporate philosophy in his books. Copy and paste from Philosophy 101 is not enough.....
The main evil character remains the same, but there is a different secondary one. I liked him better than the woman in the first book, because I found him more believable.
The priest isn't so frustrating in this book (maybe that's because I got used to him...) and the relationship between him and the Hunter is maturing. Nevertheless, he continues to obsess on the Hunter and there were times that I wished he would admit he was in love with him... Generally, this obsession is better when compared to the first book.
The Hunter is still my favorite character. I think it's worth reading the series just to see his story and awesomeness.
I recommend this series. It's interesting and it keeps getting better.
P.S I enjoyed the philosophy expressed in the book through the priest and his relationship with the Hunter. I think Scott Bakker should read this series to learn how to incorporate philosophy in his books. Copy and paste from Philosophy 101 is not enough.....
July 29, 2022
Following the events in the Rahklands, the three survivors of the previous book head to the mysterious East to find the power behind their defeated opponent only to discover things are more complicated than they could have imagined. When True Night Falls is the middle installment of C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy as a priest, a native rakh, and an antihero sorcerer find a continent on the verge of a secret war.
After harrowing journey to the East, Damien Vryce, Gerald Tarrant, and Hesseth find the descendants of a few of colonizing expeditions along with the Church that Vryce serves though it’s structure with female leadership that Vryce isn’t bothered with. However, Tarrant and Hesseth ruin Vryce brief bout with happiness when they figure out the truth of the very unchurch like things this eastern version of the Church does as well as the fact that the women in charge are undercover Rakh manipulating humanity. These undercover Rakh are the tip of an invasion that’s second phase is taking on the guises of political leaders, including the father of Jenseny who can use the Rakh magical system thus showing that Erna is beginning to ‘evolve’ humans instead of being evolved by humans. Eventually the four meet up and journey to the south of the eastern continent where the Undying Prince reigns over a realm of humans and Rakh. Yet it turns out that there is a bigger game being played out that is only discovered after the climax of the book and the horrific fallout is witnessed. While the last hundred pages of the book, the climax, were excellent writing but the almost 500 pages to get there got to be a bit tiring with another travelogue though Friedman tried to liven things up by showing the all the undercover Rakh action. Though it’s hard to really write a good child character, but Jenseny came out well on paper and especially given how she figures into the book’s endgame.
When True Night Falls is an interesting middle installment of a trilogy, though by the end it reveals the larger game going on it does suffer from ‘middle book syndrome’ a tad. C.S. Friedman’s blend of science fiction and fantasy continues to be engaging and the ending of the book makes the reader want to see how the trilogy concludes.
After harrowing journey to the East, Damien Vryce, Gerald Tarrant, and Hesseth find the descendants of a few of colonizing expeditions along with the Church that Vryce serves though it’s structure with female leadership that Vryce isn’t bothered with. However, Tarrant and Hesseth ruin Vryce brief bout with happiness when they figure out the truth of the very unchurch like things this eastern version of the Church does as well as the fact that the women in charge are undercover Rakh manipulating humanity. These undercover Rakh are the tip of an invasion that’s second phase is taking on the guises of political leaders, including the father of Jenseny who can use the Rakh magical system thus showing that Erna is beginning to ‘evolve’ humans instead of being evolved by humans. Eventually the four meet up and journey to the south of the eastern continent where the Undying Prince reigns over a realm of humans and Rakh. Yet it turns out that there is a bigger game being played out that is only discovered after the climax of the book and the horrific fallout is witnessed. While the last hundred pages of the book, the climax, were excellent writing but the almost 500 pages to get there got to be a bit tiring with another travelogue though Friedman tried to liven things up by showing the all the undercover Rakh action. Though it’s hard to really write a good child character, but Jenseny came out well on paper and especially given how she figures into the book’s endgame.
When True Night Falls is an interesting middle installment of a trilogy, though by the end it reveals the larger game going on it does suffer from ‘middle book syndrome’ a tad. C.S. Friedman’s blend of science fiction and fantasy continues to be engaging and the ending of the book makes the reader want to see how the trilogy concludes.
December 31, 2021
Do you like power? Do you like things that are drippy? Boy are you in luck!!
Seriously, I’ve never seen so many aquatically modified power descriptions. The power rolled off of him in waves. The power cascaded down his body and streamed out of his fingers like powerful little squirt guns. The power washed over him in waves and splishy splashed down past his powerful bottom before flooding to his magical feet where the power spurted in jets from his big toe.
Okay, it wasn’t that bad. Probably. I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t able to finish. This might be my first ever DNF of an audiobook, I didn’t even know that was possible so I can at least credit this book with *washing away* boundaries.
So what’s it about? Honestly, if I had to guess I would say it’s about two closeted homosexuals (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who hate each other but also lust after each other, but don’t realize it or don’t want to realize it, but also can’t help it even though it never amounts to anything on a road trip to save the world.
I don’t have a lot of scathing criticisms for this book, I’m sure it’s fine for many people, it just didn’t hold my interest at all. It seemed like much of the meat of the story is built around the priest Damian and vampire Tarrant, and they aren’t compelling characters to me. You know how men have been writing unbelievable, hackneyed, cliche female characters for decades? Well, this is the opposite. I had the same feeling when reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that men don’t think or talk like this. They don’t obsess and stress and fuss over each other like this.
Anyway, I hope they get together in the end, that’s how I’m going to tell myself this book finishes, don’t spoil it for me.
Story-4, Language-6, Ideas-5, Characters-5, Enjoyment-3, Overall-4.3
Seriously, I’ve never seen so many aquatically modified power descriptions. The power rolled off of him in waves. The power cascaded down his body and streamed out of his fingers like powerful little squirt guns. The power washed over him in waves and splishy splashed down past his powerful bottom before flooding to his magical feet where the power spurted in jets from his big toe.
Okay, it wasn’t that bad. Probably. I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t able to finish. This might be my first ever DNF of an audiobook, I didn’t even know that was possible so I can at least credit this book with *washing away* boundaries.
So what’s it about? Honestly, if I had to guess I would say it’s about two closeted homosexuals (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who hate each other but also lust after each other, but don’t realize it or don’t want to realize it, but also can’t help it even though it never amounts to anything on a road trip to save the world.
I don’t have a lot of scathing criticisms for this book, I’m sure it’s fine for many people, it just didn’t hold my interest at all. It seemed like much of the meat of the story is built around the priest Damian and vampire Tarrant, and they aren’t compelling characters to me. You know how men have been writing unbelievable, hackneyed, cliche female characters for decades? Well, this is the opposite. I had the same feeling when reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that men don’t think or talk like this. They don’t obsess and stress and fuss over each other like this.
Anyway, I hope they get together in the end, that’s how I’m going to tell myself this book finishes, don’t spoil it for me.
Story-4, Language-6, Ideas-5, Characters-5, Enjoyment-3, Overall-4.3
April 17, 2017
++SPOILERS++
This is a re read. Read back in the early 90's.
3.5 stars
Not going to attempt to summarize this, just going to make a few points.
-Best to read in order.
-Ciani is absent from the book.
-The 1st 40% bored the fuck out of me and could have been eliminated entirely or drastically reduced. I skimmed most of it.
-After the 40% it finally gets better.
-There is no romance
-Very repettitive
-Hesseth dies
-Jennsyne dies
As I said above, the first 40% was painfully boring. The author has a tendency to be far too descriptve than necessasry and must thouroughly enjoy beating the reader over the head with redundancies.
Characters:
The author seems to have given more substance to some of the characters leaving me feeling a little more connected to them. (Excluding Damien and Tarrant who I have always felt strongly connected to). But I just didn't feel as pained as other reviewers at the death of Hesseth. More backround about her might have deeped that for me.
The secondary characters were easily dropped off an forgotten early on until the very end where the author had to tie things up.
It bothers me how the female characters generally come off as either weak, annoying, villians or useless, so I was surprised when Jennsye (spelling?) actually DID something at the end. Finally!
Clearly what draws me to the story and what will make me continue the series is the relationship between Damien and Tarrant. They are such amazing characters..extremely well devloped and three dimensional.
Plot:
Too similar to the first book. Almost a total rehash with a few minor differences.
I knew right away that Tarrant was not backstabbing Damien and was just keeping him ignorant for a reason, but I will admit that a shred of doubt did cross my mind that I was wrong.
The affair with Damien Raysa was pointless. I wouldn't even call it an affair..they were just fuck buddies during the voyage. A whole 3 sentences were dedicated to it. Please oh please if you're gonna have a sex scene, either show it or eliminate it. There was no point in it especially since Raysa was one of the useless characters I mentioned that was dropped off and forgotten untill she was briefly mentioned in the end (she died too). I am however glad that the suthor decided to not attempt another "romance" like the one in the first book which was beyond pitiful. (Being a romance reader I feel I can vouch for that).
The writing:
Excellent in it style, but a bit overdone.
The imagery was fantastic, and the world building phenominal.. but it still felt like a bit of a re hash of the first book.
Latly, the repettitiveness drove me insane.
The pace was ok once you get past the 40% mark and picks up at 85%
Overall:
I liked it and will re read the third.
Safety: Blood, gore, violence, cursing.
This is a re read. Read back in the early 90's.
3.5 stars
Not going to attempt to summarize this, just going to make a few points.
-Best to read in order.
-Ciani is absent from the book.
-The 1st 40% bored the fuck out of me and could have been eliminated entirely or drastically reduced. I skimmed most of it.
-After the 40% it finally gets better.
-There is no romance
-Very repettitive
-Hesseth dies
-Jennsyne dies
As I said above, the first 40% was painfully boring. The author has a tendency to be far too descriptve than necessasry and must thouroughly enjoy beating the reader over the head with redundancies.
Characters:
The author seems to have given more substance to some of the characters leaving me feeling a little more connected to them. (Excluding Damien and Tarrant who I have always felt strongly connected to). But I just didn't feel as pained as other reviewers at the death of Hesseth. More backround about her might have deeped that for me.
The secondary characters were easily dropped off an forgotten early on until the very end where the author had to tie things up.
It bothers me how the female characters generally come off as either weak, annoying, villians or useless, so I was surprised when Jennsye (spelling?) actually DID something at the end. Finally!
Clearly what draws me to the story and what will make me continue the series is the relationship between Damien and Tarrant. They are such amazing characters..extremely well devloped and three dimensional.
Plot:
Too similar to the first book. Almost a total rehash with a few minor differences.
I knew right away that Tarrant was not backstabbing Damien and was just keeping him ignorant for a reason, but I will admit that a shred of doubt did cross my mind that I was wrong.
The affair with Damien Raysa was pointless. I wouldn't even call it an affair..they were just fuck buddies during the voyage. A whole 3 sentences were dedicated to it. Please oh please if you're gonna have a sex scene, either show it or eliminate it. There was no point in it especially since Raysa was one of the useless characters I mentioned that was dropped off and forgotten untill she was briefly mentioned in the end (she died too). I am however glad that the suthor decided to not attempt another "romance" like the one in the first book which was beyond pitiful. (Being a romance reader I feel I can vouch for that).
The writing:
Excellent in it style, but a bit overdone.
The imagery was fantastic, and the world building phenominal.. but it still felt like a bit of a re hash of the first book.
Latly, the repettitiveness drove me insane.
The pace was ok once you get past the 40% mark and picks up at 85%
Overall:
I liked it and will re read the third.
Safety: Blood, gore, violence, cursing.
January 9, 2024
Following a six-month time skip the party arrives at the eastern continent from which no one has ever returned. The last attempt was over 400 years ago. There they face a far greater evil than before. Across this new continent they journey to vanquish The Undying King.
That's the whole plot, from beginning to end, a singular journey to defeat the evil overlord. The plot is again by far the weakest part. As with the first book, this one is a self-contained story. There's a lot of wasted potential here, at least in terms of my personal preferences. Somehow I didn't mind that much that it was almost only travelling. There's even at least a few repeated story beats, yet it doesn't matter because this trilogy is all about the character interactions. That's especially the case with Tarrant. Without him this would be a thoroughly mediocre series. However, without Damien it wouldn't even be a series. Their interplay is easily the best part of the books. That's good, but it really ought to be more than that.
I've seen a lot mention the implicit homoeroticism of the two male leads, but I believe that to be a considerable exaggeration. There are those who see moral corruption, dependency, and much else as inherently sexual or even romantic, but I don't think that they are. Far too much is made of their relationship in sexual and romantic terms. I'm not going to say their relationship isn't unusual, it is, and that's what makes it's so interesting.
There's definitely a lot more religious content in this one compared to the first. It's primarily a comparative sort in how it can go right and how it can go wrong. On a personal level for Damien it's about confronting nihilism and how much necessary evil is allowable. If relying on specific evils leads to far better outcomes than not using them, then is one obligated to use them? It's one of the better arguments for The Greater Good and The Ends Justify The Means that I've seen, though of course in fiction the outcomes can be whatever the author wants them to be for any given action.
It's difficult to for me to say which I've enjoyed more of the two books. The first had both more high and low points while the second is somewhat better than decent the entire time except for the last 20%, which I really enjoyed despite being conflicted about what happened. Also in the latter's favor is that it has Tarrant from the beginning.
Next up is the final book of the trilogy. If the third book is also a simply plotted journey I'll be disappointed. My biggest problem with this book is a meta consideration. If plot twists seem to have been for the author's convenience, does that make them less meaningful? I prefer it when it feels like it wasn't something that had to happen.
Rating: 3.5/5
That's the whole plot, from beginning to end, a singular journey to defeat the evil overlord. The plot is again by far the weakest part. As with the first book, this one is a self-contained story. There's a lot of wasted potential here, at least in terms of my personal preferences. Somehow I didn't mind that much that it was almost only travelling. There's even at least a few repeated story beats, yet it doesn't matter because this trilogy is all about the character interactions. That's especially the case with Tarrant. Without him this would be a thoroughly mediocre series. However, without Damien it wouldn't even be a series. Their interplay is easily the best part of the books. That's good, but it really ought to be more than that.
I've seen a lot mention the implicit homoeroticism of the two male leads, but I believe that to be a considerable exaggeration. There are those who see moral corruption, dependency, and much else as inherently sexual or even romantic, but I don't think that they are. Far too much is made of their relationship in sexual and romantic terms. I'm not going to say their relationship isn't unusual, it is, and that's what makes it's so interesting.
There's definitely a lot more religious content in this one compared to the first. It's primarily a comparative sort in how it can go right and how it can go wrong. On a personal level for Damien it's about confronting nihilism and how much necessary evil is allowable. If relying on specific evils leads to far better outcomes than not using them, then is one obligated to use them? It's one of the better arguments for The Greater Good and The Ends Justify The Means that I've seen, though of course in fiction the outcomes can be whatever the author wants them to be for any given action.
It's difficult to for me to say which I've enjoyed more of the two books. The first had both more high and low points while the second is somewhat better than decent the entire time except for the last 20%, which I really enjoyed despite being conflicted about what happened. Also in the latter's favor is that it has Tarrant from the beginning.
Next up is the final book of the trilogy. If the third book is also a simply plotted journey I'll be disappointed. My biggest problem with this book is a meta consideration. If plot twists seem to have been for the author's convenience, does that make them less meaningful? I prefer it when it feels like it wasn't something that had to happen.
Rating: 3.5/5
September 15, 2018
This book was stronger in writing, but the story was still confusing. Though, since I am writing this review after just finishing book three, I guess everything does make sense in some strange way.
The characters Damien, Hesseth, and Tarrant decide to road trip across the plains. This time they are trying to find out what is on the other-side of this vast ocean. Apparently over the last thousand years or more, three times mankind has tried to cross only to be slaughtered like crazy.
Apparently on the other-side of the ocean, the world has not had any problems with the fae. None at all. This wigs out all three of our group, and they decide to see if that is the truth.
Now, again, since I finished book three, I notice that a lot of plot elements and character development was cast aside. Take for instance Hesseth's people. Since she is some strange part of the fae, she wants to clear her people of the problems mankind has dubbed them with. She wants to prove that they are not to blame for the death of people as of late, and she wishes to help her people out. Apparently Hesseth bites in this book, so she never gets to really reconcile with people again. Nor do they pop up in book 3.
The fae is a very strange element of this book and is one of those big bads that has become [insert fae here] as a reason for this, this, and that. Like, the schematics of the 'fae' and what it does isn't very drawn out and at times, you think it makes sense but it clearly doesn't. The fae doesn't have rules or reason, it just is there to link one thing of incredulity to the next.
My notes for this book seem to be bitching more or less about Tarrant and Vryce's obsession with one another and the 'will they, won't they' bone (more or less on Damien's side of thinking). It never happens but there are times you think it could have.
The characters Damien, Hesseth, and Tarrant decide to road trip across the plains. This time they are trying to find out what is on the other-side of this vast ocean. Apparently over the last thousand years or more, three times mankind has tried to cross only to be slaughtered like crazy.
Apparently on the other-side of the ocean, the world has not had any problems with the fae. None at all. This wigs out all three of our group, and they decide to see if that is the truth.
Now, again, since I finished book three, I notice that a lot of plot elements and character development was cast aside. Take for instance Hesseth's people. Since she is some strange part of the fae, she wants to clear her people of the problems mankind has dubbed them with. She wants to prove that they are not to blame for the death of people as of late, and she wishes to help her people out. Apparently Hesseth bites in this book, so she never gets to really reconcile with people again. Nor do they pop up in book 3.
The fae is a very strange element of this book and is one of those big bads that has become [insert fae here] as a reason for this, this, and that. Like, the schematics of the 'fae' and what it does isn't very drawn out and at times, you think it makes sense but it clearly doesn't. The fae doesn't have rules or reason, it just is there to link one thing of incredulity to the next.
My notes for this book seem to be bitching more or less about Tarrant and Vryce's obsession with one another and the 'will they, won't they' bone (more or less on Damien's side of thinking). It never happens but there are times you think it could have.
April 11, 2025
Priesteris Deimians Vraiss līdz šim savu dzīvi pavadījis vairāk vai mazāk pieturoties pie melni-baltas pārliecības par to, kas iedalāms labajos un kas sliktajos spēkos, bet Coldfire triloģija mazpamazām liks tam mainīt domas. Interesantā kārtā un šķietami pat pretrunīgi vismaz pirmās grāmatas ietvaros pretstata ļaundaris skaitās tēls, kurš licis pamatus uz planētas valdošajai Baznīcai, sauktai par Church of Human Unification, – pirms aptuveni desmit gadsimties dzīvojošais Morentas grāfs Gerald Tarrant. Tarants, kura pastrādātais pirms oficiālās nāves iegājis planētas Ernas vēsturē ar bēdīgi slavenu atzīmi, bet tas nav liedzis vēsturiski kļūt par Pravieti, pat ja šībrīža viņa versija, devēta par Hunter drīzāk tiek teju stādīts vienlīdzīgā rindā ar dēmoniem.
https://poseidons99.com/2025/04/11/c-...
https://poseidons99.com/2025/04/11/c-...
January 5, 2016
Okay, so I enjoyed this book much more than the first, but it becomes complicated.
I actually think this is a much better book in just about every way. The characters have grown more and grown together more. The world becomes infinitely more developed, and developed in some of the most interesting ways they could have.
It still feels like a JRPG, which isn't a bad thing, but this also brings me to my issue with the book.
SPOILERS
The end to the novel's conflict is a seriously unpleasant manipulation. It's actually structured exactly the same as the first book with regard to this, but I was able to buy into the first book's because I bought into the idea that there's a bigger bad out there doing bigger and badder things.
After the Undying Prince dies here, which comes abruptly, we're told that the real bad guy is still out there and has been secretly manipulating this bad guy, and...I sort of don't care. The book has pushed this too far, I think, for me to gladly jump into another 600 page novel of the characters going on another journey where they're in continuous and ever escalating peril.
END SPOILERS
Despite that, I like everything that comes after the conflict's resolution. I think it's super interesting, seeing what happens to the world when that which controlled it us no longer controlling it. I like how it's leading into a bigger conflict, even though I'm not sure I'll read the next book.
It really is a solid novel for about 98% of the time, which is what makes that 2% so much more crushing. Easily would have been a five star had things been ever so slightly different.
Anyrate, when I was 75% through the novel I was pretty certain I'd be picking up the next book immediately. Now I probably won't pick it up for a few months, once I get some other things out of the way.
I actually think this is a much better book in just about every way. The characters have grown more and grown together more. The world becomes infinitely more developed, and developed in some of the most interesting ways they could have.
It still feels like a JRPG, which isn't a bad thing, but this also brings me to my issue with the book.
SPOILERS
The end to the novel's conflict is a seriously unpleasant manipulation. It's actually structured exactly the same as the first book with regard to this, but I was able to buy into the first book's because I bought into the idea that there's a bigger bad out there doing bigger and badder things.
After the Undying Prince dies here, which comes abruptly, we're told that the real bad guy is still out there and has been secretly manipulating this bad guy, and...I sort of don't care. The book has pushed this too far, I think, for me to gladly jump into another 600 page novel of the characters going on another journey where they're in continuous and ever escalating peril.
END SPOILERS
Despite that, I like everything that comes after the conflict's resolution. I think it's super interesting, seeing what happens to the world when that which controlled it us no longer controlling it. I like how it's leading into a bigger conflict, even though I'm not sure I'll read the next book.
It really is a solid novel for about 98% of the time, which is what makes that 2% so much more crushing. Easily would have been a five star had things been ever so slightly different.
Anyrate, when I was 75% through the novel I was pretty certain I'd be picking up the next book immediately. Now I probably won't pick it up for a few months, once I get some other things out of the way.
November 22, 2014
When True Night Falls is just as good as its predecessor, if not more so. Unfortunately, it took me an extremely long time to finish mostly because I had less personal time to spend reading. This book is not much different from its predecessor. It is a fairly straightforward adventure novel with a very small cast of characters spanning over 600 pages.
Something that I admire about this series is that it manages to always hold my attention even after 500 pages in. This is something that many books could not do even with 300 pages. The book is long, but it does not feel rather excessive. I’m sure that there are many scenes here and there that could be trimmed, but it never feels redundant.
When True Night Falls is also just as dark, if not more so, than the previous novel. The author is not afraid to kill off characters. Tarrant is just as dark and brooding as ever and the relationship between him and Damien is one of the most important central themes to the novel. Damien spends a lot of time deciding whether or not to trust Tarrant, which makes sense because Damien vowed to kill Tarrant by the end of book one.
As with Black Sun Rising, the villain did not seem to be particularly well-developed. By the end of Black Sun Rising, I never really felt like I got a chance to know much about the villain, who she was, and what her motivations were. I had similar feelings during this novel, but the Prince was far better developed and more interesting.
The book also has an excellent cliffhanger ending. I feel like it perfectly sets up the stage for the finale in the trilogy. This is one of the best fantasy series I’ve read so far.
Something that I admire about this series is that it manages to always hold my attention even after 500 pages in. This is something that many books could not do even with 300 pages. The book is long, but it does not feel rather excessive. I’m sure that there are many scenes here and there that could be trimmed, but it never feels redundant.
When True Night Falls is also just as dark, if not more so, than the previous novel. The author is not afraid to kill off characters. Tarrant is just as dark and brooding as ever and the relationship between him and Damien is one of the most important central themes to the novel. Damien spends a lot of time deciding whether or not to trust Tarrant, which makes sense because Damien vowed to kill Tarrant by the end of book one.
As with Black Sun Rising, the villain did not seem to be particularly well-developed. By the end of Black Sun Rising, I never really felt like I got a chance to know much about the villain, who she was, and what her motivations were. I had similar feelings during this novel, but the Prince was far better developed and more interesting.
The book also has an excellent cliffhanger ending. I feel like it perfectly sets up the stage for the finale in the trilogy. This is one of the best fantasy series I’ve read so far.
April 4, 2008
This is by far the best series I have ever read. From the start I was a little mixed about the idea of mixing Sci-Fi with my fantasy -although they are my two favorite genre’s and Sci-Fi usually has fantasy mixed in I prefer it to be a one way street.
By the time Damian was in town and the Hunter was introduced I was completely convinced this lady has skills. I enjoyed everything from the basic background elements and the implied and actual politics, down to the actual physics of the magic. In the end she explains why the magic works the way it does and again splits off on a road that I would have discouraged, but with such plausibility it comes out very well. I would suggest these books to any one who enjoys fantasy literature.
She follows this up by actually bringing the books to an end, something fantasy authors have forgotten how to do. All three of these books are five stars.
By the time Damian was in town and the Hunter was introduced I was completely convinced this lady has skills. I enjoyed everything from the basic background elements and the implied and actual politics, down to the actual physics of the magic. In the end she explains why the magic works the way it does and again splits off on a road that I would have discouraged, but with such plausibility it comes out very well. I would suggest these books to any one who enjoys fantasy literature.
She follows this up by actually bringing the books to an end, something fantasy authors have forgotten how to do. All three of these books are five stars.
October 2, 2013
It's not too often that I give up on a book but this was one of those times.
After getting about 3/4 of the way through this book I had to stop.
My biggest complaint about this book is about the characters. Tarrant and Vryce were fleshed out and I got to know them inside and out.
The other charters? Hesseth is a cat woman and there was a girl. That, honestly, is about as much as I can, or care, to remember about them.
My next complaint is with the moral conflict that Vryce is experiencing. Every decision that Vryce makes is punctuated by him whining about the moral implications of said decision. It became frustratingly monotonous.
My third complaint is the pacing of the novel. There were far too many lulls in between any kind of action. Near the end I found myself skipping and skimming over way too many paragraphs.
I can not recommend this book on the sole basis that I was unable to finish it.
After getting about 3/4 of the way through this book I had to stop.
My biggest complaint about this book is about the characters. Tarrant and Vryce were fleshed out and I got to know them inside and out.
The other charters? Hesseth is a cat woman and there was a girl. That, honestly, is about as much as I can, or care, to remember about them.
My next complaint is with the moral conflict that Vryce is experiencing. Every decision that Vryce makes is punctuated by him whining about the moral implications of said decision. It became frustratingly monotonous.
My third complaint is the pacing of the novel. There were far too many lulls in between any kind of action. Near the end I found myself skipping and skimming over way too many paragraphs.
I can not recommend this book on the sole basis that I was unable to finish it.
August 4, 2010
***SPOILER WARNING***
I was expecting it to be somewhat tedious, even though I remember it as being good when I first read it 10-15 years ago. However, I was pleasantly surprised, and it was difficult to put it down each day and pace myself through a week of lunch breaks & train rides.
That being said, Hesseth's death, while serving and obvious point, just seems silly and weak, and further emphasized to me, the weakness and lack of definition of the female "leads" in this book & Black Sun Rising. Not to be stereotypical or anything, but I was somewhat surprised to find that the author is female, given her treatment of females (not treatment in the sense of treating them poorly, but treatment in the sense of a script treatment) in the books. They just never felt like solid characters. I did like Hesseth though, and wished for more for her. At least Ciani made it out alive.
I was expecting it to be somewhat tedious, even though I remember it as being good when I first read it 10-15 years ago. However, I was pleasantly surprised, and it was difficult to put it down each day and pace myself through a week of lunch breaks & train rides.
That being said, Hesseth's death, while serving and obvious point, just seems silly and weak, and further emphasized to me, the weakness and lack of definition of the female "leads" in this book & Black Sun Rising. Not to be stereotypical or anything, but I was somewhat surprised to find that the author is female, given her treatment of females (not treatment in the sense of treating them poorly, but treatment in the sense of a script treatment) in the books. They just never felt like solid characters. I did like Hesseth though, and wished for more for her. At least Ciani made it out alive.
March 20, 2015
3.5 stars
When True Night Falls is the second book in C.S. Friedman’s COLDFIRE trilogy. You’ll want to read the first book, Black Sun Rising, first. This review may spoil some of that first book’s plot.
At the end of Black Sun Rising, Reverend Damien Vryce, the devout warrior priest, discovered the source of the evil that is infecting his country — it lies across the ocean where there exists another continent that humans are aware of but know nothing about. In the past, several expeditions have been sent to explore it, but none has returned. Damien knows he should report to his church’s patriarch, but he’s afraid the patriarch will forbid him to go, so Damien ignores the man and instead boards a ship to cross the ocean. He is again reluctantly teaming up with Gerald Tarrant, the evil undead sorcer... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
When True Night Falls is the second book in C.S. Friedman’s COLDFIRE trilogy. You’ll want to read the first book, Black Sun Rising, first. This review may spoil some of that first book’s plot.
At the end of Black Sun Rising, Reverend Damien Vryce, the devout warrior priest, discovered the source of the evil that is infecting his country — it lies across the ocean where there exists another continent that humans are aware of but know nothing about. In the past, several expeditions have been sent to explore it, but none has returned. Damien knows he should report to his church’s patriarch, but he’s afraid the patriarch will forbid him to go, so Damien ignores the man and instead boards a ship to cross the ocean. He is again reluctantly teaming up with Gerald Tarrant, the evil undead sorcer... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
June 20, 2014
Most of my gripes about this series can be found in my review of the first book, but I will say that the strongest part by far of this novel is the prologue, where we get more of the backstory of Friedman's world...and the worldbuilding is by far the strongest part of this series. In this novel, the "map" gets enlarged and we get to discover new lands, new cultures, new threats...and that is all that kept me turning pages.
The characters remain 2d and one trick, and even The Hunter is losing some of his mystique. Still, this was a tighter plotted book than the first one, and hence the higher rating.
The characters remain 2d and one trick, and even The Hunter is losing some of his mystique. Still, this was a tighter plotted book than the first one, and hence the higher rating.
July 3, 2022
This is the kind of book that makes me want to change my whole rating system so I can lower the ratings of other books and give this one the prestige it deserves. My favorites shelf will have to serve as an alternative.
January 16, 2009
Short Summation
A priest and an evil undead dude team up with a rakh, which is a species indigenous to this planet we’re all on. They’re off to this land across the sea that’s nigh impossible to get to because they’ve heard of the demon that’s there, breeding evil. They find out a couple of the expeditions made centuries before did make it, and there is civilization. We all know there’s going to be something dark about it because it seems so perfect at first.
Why this book?
I read the first book in the trilogy, Black Sun Rising, and wanted to watch Damien and Gerald get under one another’s skin some more.
How’d it go?
Technical Problems:
That’s right; I’m going to have a technical section. I remember typos in the first book, but this one was freaking ridiculous. There was one page that contained almost no periods. I’m not talking about the last couple of pages, where I think the lack of periods might have been intentional (though even those are hard to forgive because some of those one- or two-word ‘thoughts’ were punctuated with question marks and exclamation points.) No, this was a regular page, with regular narration. I was able to beat out where sentences began by noting capital letters, but it was rough. It’s weird, how rough it was.
I’ve never seen so many quotation mark errors in a book before. Freaking ridiculous.
Friedman has also forced me into that/which research. I’ve never had a problem with it before. I mean, it’s always just been a "what sounds right" kind of choice. I know there’s some cute little ironic rule that’s supposed to help, but who needs it? As it turns out, I can’t really gripe about all her uses of "which" where I thought it should have been "that" because I can’t find damning evidence that it’s a strict rule. I hate that. In any case, it makes the reading sound like ass.
A friend pointed out that there were a lot of then/than mistakes in the first book, but I don’t catch the difference between e’s and a’s when the rest of the letters are the same like that. If it happened in this book, I missed it, which is very likely. Actually, it’s likely I missed a lot of the mistakes, because what I’ve pointed out was the ones I couldn’t ignore. And ignoring them was how I had conceded to enjoy the book. That’s how bad the mistakes were.
And the typos! I mean, just your everyday typos, all over the place. There’s even a typo on the page in the back advertisements, in a blurb for the whole trilogy. Freaking. Ridiculous.
Last thing, then I swear I’ll move on. On the last page, there is a paragraph that comes between italicized thoughts, and it is italicized. The paragraph doesn’t differ from the other narration around it, in any way. What I’m saying is, it should not be italicized. It’s like someone forgot the end tag in coding on the thought before the paragraph. It’s just a ridiculous mistake to make in a published novel.
Yes. I know. I’m overusing the word ridiculous, but I can’t help it.
Content Difficulties:
Earth fae is the main stuff these people use to Work (capital letter, see?), which is essentially magic. Okay. So. Earth fae runs in currents along the surface of the planet Erna, which is where the story is set. Now, when there’s an earthquake, earth fae pours out en masse to the point that if anyone tries to Work it, they get “fried to a crisp.” (I shit you not -- every time the narration or a character points out what Working during or soon after an earthquake does to them, the phrase is always “fried to a crisp.”)
Anyhow, earth fae pours out of the earth during earthquakes and with volcanoes. However, you dig a hole deep enough and the earth fae is sparse. And becomes sparser the deeper you go. Does that make sense to any of you people? It bothered me in the last book, but I managed to forget to mention it.
Getting off the subject of the fae before it fries me to a crisp, there were so many little things that irritated me. For instance, they’re getting ready at one point to cross this ominous land called the Wasting. The ground is all cooled lava flow. And this girl who’s with them tells them that the only living things out there are the trees and “one animal that eats them.”
Now, if you were up against a seemingly unbeatable enemy, crossing his land that he sorcerously manipulated into being a barrier, mightn’t you ask this girl, “So, girl, who so conveniently had a father who told you of his journey to this place, and who so conveniently remembered all this crap he told you, what the hell eats the trees?”
I would. None of these people did. And you know what else? I still don’t know what eats the damn trees. I mean, there was a group of critters sent after them, but we all agreed that those things don’t eat trees.
What I Liked:
Ha! Bet you might have been thinking there wouldn’t be any of this. Well, I finished the book, didn’t I? (Yes.)
The first thing that comes to mind actually has more to do with my ego than anything else. Remember my parting words in my review of the first book? Here, let me remind you [partially because I think I might have omitted it from the Goodreads version of the review]:
Well, guess what? I was right. Ha. I even think it’s cool that we learned no more than the fact that he chose his slaughter on a night his oldest son was away. It doesn’t actually come into play until the third book. I know this because I flipped through its beginning pages when I was halfway through this one. I wanted to know if certain characters in this one appeared there -- namely one rakh lady we picked up last book and the Little Girl Who Knows An Awful Lot we picked up in this one. I just didn’t see any way they were going to have a place to go, a life, taking their circumstances into effect.
That’s another thing. When a writer has characters who will have no place to go once the plot is through, that have altered themselves so that their own people won’t accept them, or who have led lives that make them utterly necessary to the plot, but who will fulfill their life purposes within it, one of two things happens. Either the characters die, or they throw in some neat little solution for a place for them to go on living that we smile at, but don’t really believe. Almost always, they die, since it evokes a more powerful emotional response.
To tell the truth, I don’t give a damn, because I think it sucks to have characters like that. I don’t want to know who’s going to die just by seeing the plot unfold and knowing who’s going to have a life to lead after it’s all been laid out. Kill somebody important, a death makes us cry out, “God, why? We needed that one!” Yeah, I get a little broken up when the other characters get broken up about the death of someone they care about, but even then I’m muttering to them about how they should have seen that coming.
It was almost cool, because we almost did need the rakh. If I had thought we were going to need her, like Damien thought, it would have been fine. But I had Gerald’s plan figured out along about the time he made it. Figuring out things like that is not something I do, people. I’m not one of those people who sit back and try to figure things out just so I can sit up later and yell, “I knew that was going to happen!”
Challenge to writers: Go ahead and make your plot device character, but don’t kill them. And don’t give them some neat place to go. Do something creative with them that doesn’t take away from the plot. Something evocative. Impossible? You damn straight, it’s impossible. Because if you put that sort of thing in and wind it with the plot, they're not just plot devices anymore.
And please, don’t piss me off by taking a cool character from a previous book and turning them into a plot device in another.
Okay, hold on. I was supposed to be talking about the things I liked. Crap.
Oh, c’mon, folks. You must know. It’s what gets me every time, no matter the book. I’m talking about character relationships. My favorite was the evolution of the relationship between the main characters, Damien the priest and Gerald the evil undead dude. (I said in my last review to think of Friedman’s priests as D&D priests, but maybe I should have said paladins.) I daresay, by the end of it all, I think these two might be able to call one another “friend” with a straight face. But it’s a long, winding road. And sometimes, yes, I get tired of Damien’s whining about his inner turmoil at having decided to work with Gerald, and at saving Gerald’s life more than once or twice.
This is the book where Damien goes from his simple plan of killing Gerald once he’s served his purpose in this quest against demons, to the thought that maybe -- just maybe -- he can be saved. I root for that tract mainly because it’s the most challenging thing a person could do. I do love watching people decide to do something challenging in that way, something that should be impossible and depends on the other person for success. That holds the potential for some wide-ranging human failings, hopelessness, frustration, and overcoming those things for the slim chance of success. Against all odds. I’m much more into soul quests than physical ones.
That’s why I’ll read the third book. To see the road Damien and Gerald take, and see if it leads to salvation, or if Friedman slaps me with something half-assed along the road or at the end of it. That, and I want to see what sort of descendants Gerald has, after nine hundred years of unlife. It’d be funny as hell if his son’s horse tripped on its way home that night and crushed him to death. But I know that’s not what happened, and I’m glad because I do want to see how the line’s gone on.
But it would be funny.
The Plot:
Oh yeah, there was a plot. And it wasn’t bad. The reason I don’t recap it is because it wasn’t the reason I read the book. At all. Damien and Gerald are why I read it. The plot just gives them something to do, and it did that quite well. I just hope, in the next book, Friedman can come up with a climax that doesn’t take place in a freaking citadel, that just has to be made of some substance or another that’s all awe-inspiring. (This time it was huge crystals formed into towers and such.) That’s getting stale.
The perversion of Damien’s faith was cool. It seemed that this land they came to had fulfilled his faith to the letter. But then you find out that it’s just not right at all. I enjoyed that. And Friedman did lay some good groundwork for hope and belief in Damien’s One God. This is the One God idea Gerald put forth when he was alive, and the reason Gerald chose unlife. He wanted to watch the evolution of the faith he created (and yes, fashioned after the Christian God), at the cost of never being able to have its salvation. (Irony in characterization is another thing that hooks a Chy every time.) I know this faith is what’s supposed to save everyone from the working of the fae on the human consciousness, so it’s cool that she’s laying it out well. It’s just that I find much more entertainment in how it affects the two main characters than how it affects the plot.
Nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, I’m reading all three of the books because of it.
A priest and an evil undead dude team up with a rakh, which is a species indigenous to this planet we’re all on. They’re off to this land across the sea that’s nigh impossible to get to because they’ve heard of the demon that’s there, breeding evil. They find out a couple of the expeditions made centuries before did make it, and there is civilization. We all know there’s going to be something dark about it because it seems so perfect at first.
Why this book?
I read the first book in the trilogy, Black Sun Rising, and wanted to watch Damien and Gerald get under one another’s skin some more.
How’d it go?
Technical Problems:
That’s right; I’m going to have a technical section. I remember typos in the first book, but this one was freaking ridiculous. There was one page that contained almost no periods. I’m not talking about the last couple of pages, where I think the lack of periods might have been intentional (though even those are hard to forgive because some of those one- or two-word ‘thoughts’ were punctuated with question marks and exclamation points.) No, this was a regular page, with regular narration. I was able to beat out where sentences began by noting capital letters, but it was rough. It’s weird, how rough it was.
I’ve never seen so many quotation mark errors in a book before. Freaking ridiculous.
Friedman has also forced me into that/which research. I’ve never had a problem with it before. I mean, it’s always just been a "what sounds right" kind of choice. I know there’s some cute little ironic rule that’s supposed to help, but who needs it? As it turns out, I can’t really gripe about all her uses of "which" where I thought it should have been "that" because I can’t find damning evidence that it’s a strict rule. I hate that. In any case, it makes the reading sound like ass.
A friend pointed out that there were a lot of then/than mistakes in the first book, but I don’t catch the difference between e’s and a’s when the rest of the letters are the same like that. If it happened in this book, I missed it, which is very likely. Actually, it’s likely I missed a lot of the mistakes, because what I’ve pointed out was the ones I couldn’t ignore. And ignoring them was how I had conceded to enjoy the book. That’s how bad the mistakes were.
And the typos! I mean, just your everyday typos, all over the place. There’s even a typo on the page in the back advertisements, in a blurb for the whole trilogy. Freaking. Ridiculous.
Last thing, then I swear I’ll move on. On the last page, there is a paragraph that comes between italicized thoughts, and it is italicized. The paragraph doesn’t differ from the other narration around it, in any way. What I’m saying is, it should not be italicized. It’s like someone forgot the end tag in coding on the thought before the paragraph. It’s just a ridiculous mistake to make in a published novel.
Yes. I know. I’m overusing the word ridiculous, but I can’t help it.
Content Difficulties:
Earth fae is the main stuff these people use to Work (capital letter, see?), which is essentially magic. Okay. So. Earth fae runs in currents along the surface of the planet Erna, which is where the story is set. Now, when there’s an earthquake, earth fae pours out en masse to the point that if anyone tries to Work it, they get “fried to a crisp.” (I shit you not -- every time the narration or a character points out what Working during or soon after an earthquake does to them, the phrase is always “fried to a crisp.”)
Anyhow, earth fae pours out of the earth during earthquakes and with volcanoes. However, you dig a hole deep enough and the earth fae is sparse. And becomes sparser the deeper you go. Does that make sense to any of you people? It bothered me in the last book, but I managed to forget to mention it.
Getting off the subject of the fae before it fries me to a crisp, there were so many little things that irritated me. For instance, they’re getting ready at one point to cross this ominous land called the Wasting. The ground is all cooled lava flow. And this girl who’s with them tells them that the only living things out there are the trees and “one animal that eats them.”
Now, if you were up against a seemingly unbeatable enemy, crossing his land that he sorcerously manipulated into being a barrier, mightn’t you ask this girl, “So, girl, who so conveniently had a father who told you of his journey to this place, and who so conveniently remembered all this crap he told you, what the hell eats the trees?”
I would. None of these people did. And you know what else? I still don’t know what eats the damn trees. I mean, there was a group of critters sent after them, but we all agreed that those things don’t eat trees.
What I Liked:
Ha! Bet you might have been thinking there wouldn’t be any of this. Well, I finished the book, didn’t I? (Yes.)
The first thing that comes to mind actually has more to do with my ego than anything else. Remember my parting words in my review of the first book? Here, let me remind you [partially because I think I might have omitted it from the Goodreads version of the review]:
I’ve got to see if I read this prologue right. Because, to me, it seems that Gerald missed one of his sons when he was going on his familial killing spree.
Well, guess what? I was right. Ha. I even think it’s cool that we learned no more than the fact that he chose his slaughter on a night his oldest son was away. It doesn’t actually come into play until the third book. I know this because I flipped through its beginning pages when I was halfway through this one. I wanted to know if certain characters in this one appeared there -- namely one rakh lady we picked up last book and the Little Girl Who Knows An Awful Lot we picked up in this one. I just didn’t see any way they were going to have a place to go, a life, taking their circumstances into effect.
That’s another thing. When a writer has characters who will have no place to go once the plot is through, that have altered themselves so that their own people won’t accept them, or who have led lives that make them utterly necessary to the plot, but who will fulfill their life purposes within it, one of two things happens. Either the characters die, or they throw in some neat little solution for a place for them to go on living that we smile at, but don’t really believe. Almost always, they die, since it evokes a more powerful emotional response.
To tell the truth, I don’t give a damn, because I think it sucks to have characters like that. I don’t want to know who’s going to die just by seeing the plot unfold and knowing who’s going to have a life to lead after it’s all been laid out. Kill somebody important, a death makes us cry out, “God, why? We needed that one!” Yeah, I get a little broken up when the other characters get broken up about the death of someone they care about, but even then I’m muttering to them about how they should have seen that coming.
It was almost cool, because we almost did need the rakh. If I had thought we were going to need her, like Damien thought, it would have been fine. But I had Gerald’s plan figured out along about the time he made it. Figuring out things like that is not something I do, people. I’m not one of those people who sit back and try to figure things out just so I can sit up later and yell, “I knew that was going to happen!”
Challenge to writers: Go ahead and make your plot device character, but don’t kill them. And don’t give them some neat place to go. Do something creative with them that doesn’t take away from the plot. Something evocative. Impossible? You damn straight, it’s impossible. Because if you put that sort of thing in and wind it with the plot, they're not just plot devices anymore.
And please, don’t piss me off by taking a cool character from a previous book and turning them into a plot device in another.
Okay, hold on. I was supposed to be talking about the things I liked. Crap.
Oh, c’mon, folks. You must know. It’s what gets me every time, no matter the book. I’m talking about character relationships. My favorite was the evolution of the relationship between the main characters, Damien the priest and Gerald the evil undead dude. (I said in my last review to think of Friedman’s priests as D&D priests, but maybe I should have said paladins.) I daresay, by the end of it all, I think these two might be able to call one another “friend” with a straight face. But it’s a long, winding road. And sometimes, yes, I get tired of Damien’s whining about his inner turmoil at having decided to work with Gerald, and at saving Gerald’s life more than once or twice.
This is the book where Damien goes from his simple plan of killing Gerald once he’s served his purpose in this quest against demons, to the thought that maybe -- just maybe -- he can be saved. I root for that tract mainly because it’s the most challenging thing a person could do. I do love watching people decide to do something challenging in that way, something that should be impossible and depends on the other person for success. That holds the potential for some wide-ranging human failings, hopelessness, frustration, and overcoming those things for the slim chance of success. Against all odds. I’m much more into soul quests than physical ones.
That’s why I’ll read the third book. To see the road Damien and Gerald take, and see if it leads to salvation, or if Friedman slaps me with something half-assed along the road or at the end of it. That, and I want to see what sort of descendants Gerald has, after nine hundred years of unlife. It’d be funny as hell if his son’s horse tripped on its way home that night and crushed him to death. But I know that’s not what happened, and I’m glad because I do want to see how the line’s gone on.
But it would be funny.
The Plot:
Oh yeah, there was a plot. And it wasn’t bad. The reason I don’t recap it is because it wasn’t the reason I read the book. At all. Damien and Gerald are why I read it. The plot just gives them something to do, and it did that quite well. I just hope, in the next book, Friedman can come up with a climax that doesn’t take place in a freaking citadel, that just has to be made of some substance or another that’s all awe-inspiring. (This time it was huge crystals formed into towers and such.) That’s getting stale.
The perversion of Damien’s faith was cool. It seemed that this land they came to had fulfilled his faith to the letter. But then you find out that it’s just not right at all. I enjoyed that. And Friedman did lay some good groundwork for hope and belief in Damien’s One God. This is the One God idea Gerald put forth when he was alive, and the reason Gerald chose unlife. He wanted to watch the evolution of the faith he created (and yes, fashioned after the Christian God), at the cost of never being able to have its salvation. (Irony in characterization is another thing that hooks a Chy every time.) I know this faith is what’s supposed to save everyone from the working of the fae on the human consciousness, so it’s cool that she’s laying it out well. It’s just that I find much more entertainment in how it affects the two main characters than how it affects the plot.
Nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, I’m reading all three of the books because of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 26, 2025
The first book of this fantasy trilogy was good but not great; this sequel still falls slightly short of 'great', but it is definitely better. I wasn't nearly so conscious of technical issues with the writing, and this volume turns out to focus directly on one of the things that had bothered me about its predecessor -- the fact that Damien supposedly serves a Church that bans the use of the fae to affect the planet, yet proceeded to spend the entire story doing just that, while the whole Church business, having been introduced at the start for local colour, was basically ignored as soon as it became inconvenient.
The entirety of "Black Sun Rising" was in effect a side-quest undertaken for motives that don't seem wholly adequate (and with various elements, like Tarrant starting to teach Ciani 'mechanical' sorcery to replace her lost inborn abilities, that don't seem to come to anything); in "True Night Falls" Damien the paladin is dealing with an actual threat to the Church he serves, even if he is doing so without the authority or permission of his superiors. And we get an insight into *why* the Church opposes the use of 'sorcery', not out of blind religious prejudice but for very practical reasons, and are given a vision of what can be achieved thereby... before Damien discovers at what cost.
As an atheist, this was one element I liked a lot about these books: the author hasn't gone for the all-but-standard modern fantasy trope of "evil patriarchy oppressing the (female) magic-users", but explores the potential effects of organised religion -- a religion which we are more or less told was calmly and intellectually *designed*, in large part by Tarrant of all people, to serve a purpose, rather than being a Divine Revelation --in a world where belief genuinely does affect the environment. The Church of the "One True God" (ironic, in a world where godlings are seemingly created in their myriads simply by people believing in them) bases its ritual in large part on Christianity, because that was the archetype on which its designers drew, but it clearly *isn't* Christian, with no concept of Trinity, Christ the Saviour and so on... and the intriguing idea is that on a world like Erna humans could theoretically be the creators of a God in their own image, rather than vice versa. (And the fact that this God never produces any actual miracles is neatly explained by the religion being designed to avert any such manifestations of human desires upon their surroundings, as opposed to the horrors spawned by the unfettered subconscious!)
I was taken aback but not jolted into incredulity by the relevation at one point in this book that Damien's non-interventionist One God apparently does exist as an entity external to human rituals -- on this planet, after all, if enough people believe in something it can be brought about.
It would have been very easy to make Damien simply an annoying paladin-stereotype and the Church a rip-off of mediaeval European prejudice. What the book does is much more intellectually interesting, in constructing a world where aiming for this sort of thing serves an arguably valid purpose... and yet is still vulnerable to all the normal weaknesses and abuses of organised religion. The Church is neither good nor bad. It is opposed to most of what Damien is actually doing, it is a genuine threat, it has been known to perpetrate horrors, and yet it is also a creative force for survival in the face of a planet hostile to the human psyche, and a visionary project of which even --crucially-- the self-damned Tarrant can be proud.
"When True Night Falls" takes the classic path of the fantasy sequel in sending the protagonists off into a new location, and the author has created a promisingly nuanced set-up: a continent settled by pioneering expeditions, none of which ever managed to send word back (which makes me wonder just why anyone would believe that there was a successful civilization there -- but the expedition is funded by merchants prepared to risk anything for profit), and where humans under the unifying power of Damien's Church, functioning among these isolated people as it was designed to do, have managed to suppress their vulnerability to the surrounding fae power sufficiently to regain access to technology such as firearms. The dark side of this is that this immunity is maintained by slaughtering in infancy any one of their children suspected of being born an adept, with the natural ability to see and control the fae... and that, in order to guard the sanctity of their society, they attempted to kill the members of subsequent expeditions, the surviving members of which ended up founding a new colony to the south, with which they are now at undying war.
It has to be said, however, that the author doesn't actually do very much with the moral conflicts of this set-up. Pretty much all we see of the southern continent is a barren desert and a standard Citadel of Evil, and the plotline where the Undying Prince's subjects are potentially in rebellion against him and the one explaining what Jenseny's father was actually doing in the early chapters of the book are dealt with in such a cursory fashion as to be practically glossed over. Like the first novel, this is in effect simply a quest-journey story, in which the protagonists must travel through a succession of dangerous locations in order to defeat a figurehead of evil, only to find a further threat beyond.
But it's an effective one, in which more and more is revealed in the course of their travels, with each new discovery being convincingly horrible. Unfortunately what I think was intended to be the main twist of the story had been inadvertently 'spoiled' for me, through no fault of the author's own, as a result of my reading reviews of the first book in the series -- and not even the reviews, but the comments on the reviews, in which one disgruntled reader ended up complaining about the author's attitude to a character in the third book in a way that told me nothing at the time, but turned out to rob the misdirection in the second book of its impact when I reached that point :-( So I can't say how that would have come across otherwise; with considerably greater force, I imagine...
The main element that irked me about this book was the author's insistence on using multiple epithets for the character of Gerald Tarrant; Damien Vryce is variously 'the priest' and 'Damien', which is unobtrusive enough, and where the text is content to alternate between 'Tarrant' and 'the Hunter' I don't find it a problem. But there are places where Tarrant is referred to by three or four different epithets on the same page, with none of them having any relevance to anything he is doing or saying at that moment -- at one point he is "Tarrant", then "the tall man", then "the Hunter", then "the Neocount", with "the adept" subsequently added in, and as a stylistic mannerism it really starts to jar.
I got a bit tired of Damien's constant thoughts about how stubbled and sweaty and bad-smelling he himself must be, too. I understand that the author is trying to make a distinction between the burly and very human priest and the abnormally clean and elegant Tarrant, who uses his powers to keep himself well-groomed under all circumstances, but I feel that realistically a seasoned traveller like Damien would simply have become oblivious to the conditions, like the Polar explorers who lived in the same set of clothes for six months at a time!
I was left confused by exactly how old Jenseny is intended to be. Damien explicitly describes her as "thirteen or fourteen at the most, probably younger" at their first meeting, but the text constantly goes on about how small she is and the grip of her "tiny fingers", refers to her as "the little girl" and describes her generally acting and thinking in a way that makes me picture her as more like six to eight years old: (Sometimes he was sad, and she could see the sadness, too, a thick gray stuff that clung to him like muck. Or black, like when her mother died/ One of the men had picked Jenseny up and was carrying her to a boat[...] she wriggled free of him and splashed down into ankle-deep water.) Compared to the self-reliant schoolchildren -- constantly having adventures without the intervention of adults -- with whom I was familiar from early 20th century novels, she is depicted as very babyish indeed, even though the text emphasises her courage and endurance, and I can't help feeling that the author probably had only a generic idea of how to write 'children' without any clear idea of age differences :-(
I was also struck by what seemed like one definite inconsistency with the previous book; when we first know him, Tarrant's power is said to come from the 'dark fae' that exist in the world where neither the moons nor the galaxy's hub cast any light after sunset, and he requires darkness to heal himself. But in this book he is using the same 'earth fae' as Damien himself, making him equally vulnerable to seismic activity, and apparently unable to heal himself if he goes too far underground, however dark it may be -- we hear no more about the dark fae, and the special beauty of the night. And the author gives us what felt like a ret-con where the powers of the Iezu from the original novel are concerned: they are now super-special demons that are immune to all compulsion and summoning by human sorcerers, and the fact that they were previously shown submitting to summoning and threats gets handwaved away as being mere pretence because the demon happened to feel like it...
But it's still a fascinating magic system, based on the idea of an alien planet whose ecosystem is balanced around the needs of its native organisms -- and which gets messed up by the human settlers' capacity to hold multiple contradictory desires and beliefs, creating demons that physically embody their weaknesses and feed upon them to sustain their existence. And the quest is genuinely gripping, with the stakes suitably ramped up from those of the first novel; it is no longer an ever-escalating attempt to restore one woman's magic powers, but a matter of trying to save an entire continent not just from conquest but from the corrupting effects of vengeance and hate, with the characters prepared to sacrifice their own lives if necessary.
The entirety of "Black Sun Rising" was in effect a side-quest undertaken for motives that don't seem wholly adequate (and with various elements, like Tarrant starting to teach Ciani 'mechanical' sorcery to replace her lost inborn abilities, that don't seem to come to anything); in "True Night Falls" Damien the paladin is dealing with an actual threat to the Church he serves, even if he is doing so without the authority or permission of his superiors. And we get an insight into *why* the Church opposes the use of 'sorcery', not out of blind religious prejudice but for very practical reasons, and are given a vision of what can be achieved thereby... before Damien discovers at what cost.
As an atheist, this was one element I liked a lot about these books: the author hasn't gone for the all-but-standard modern fantasy trope of "evil patriarchy oppressing the (female) magic-users", but explores the potential effects of organised religion -- a religion which we are more or less told was calmly and intellectually *designed*, in large part by Tarrant of all people, to serve a purpose, rather than being a Divine Revelation --in a world where belief genuinely does affect the environment. The Church of the "One True God" (ironic, in a world where godlings are seemingly created in their myriads simply by people believing in them) bases its ritual in large part on Christianity, because that was the archetype on which its designers drew, but it clearly *isn't* Christian, with no concept of Trinity, Christ the Saviour and so on... and the intriguing idea is that on a world like Erna humans could theoretically be the creators of a God in their own image, rather than vice versa. (And the fact that this God never produces any actual miracles is neatly explained by the religion being designed to avert any such manifestations of human desires upon their surroundings, as opposed to the horrors spawned by the unfettered subconscious!)
I was taken aback but not jolted into incredulity by the relevation at one point in this book that Damien's non-interventionist One God apparently does exist as an entity external to human rituals -- on this planet, after all, if enough people believe in something it can be brought about.
It would have been very easy to make Damien simply an annoying paladin-stereotype and the Church a rip-off of mediaeval European prejudice. What the book does is much more intellectually interesting, in constructing a world where aiming for this sort of thing serves an arguably valid purpose... and yet is still vulnerable to all the normal weaknesses and abuses of organised religion. The Church is neither good nor bad. It is opposed to most of what Damien is actually doing, it is a genuine threat, it has been known to perpetrate horrors, and yet it is also a creative force for survival in the face of a planet hostile to the human psyche, and a visionary project of which even --crucially-- the self-damned Tarrant can be proud.
"When True Night Falls" takes the classic path of the fantasy sequel in sending the protagonists off into a new location, and the author has created a promisingly nuanced set-up: a continent settled by pioneering expeditions, none of which ever managed to send word back (which makes me wonder just why anyone would believe that there was a successful civilization there -- but the expedition is funded by merchants prepared to risk anything for profit), and where humans under the unifying power of Damien's Church, functioning among these isolated people as it was designed to do, have managed to suppress their vulnerability to the surrounding fae power sufficiently to regain access to technology such as firearms. The dark side of this is that this immunity is maintained by slaughtering in infancy any one of their children suspected of being born an adept, with the natural ability to see and control the fae... and that, in order to guard the sanctity of their society, they attempted to kill the members of subsequent expeditions, the surviving members of which ended up founding a new colony to the south, with which they are now at undying war.
It has to be said, however, that the author doesn't actually do very much with the moral conflicts of this set-up. Pretty much all we see of the southern continent is a barren desert and a standard Citadel of Evil, and the plotline where the Undying Prince's subjects are potentially in rebellion against him and the one explaining what Jenseny's father was actually doing in the early chapters of the book are dealt with in such a cursory fashion as to be practically glossed over. Like the first novel, this is in effect simply a quest-journey story, in which the protagonists must travel through a succession of dangerous locations in order to defeat a figurehead of evil, only to find a further threat beyond.
But it's an effective one, in which more and more is revealed in the course of their travels, with each new discovery being convincingly horrible. Unfortunately what I think was intended to be the main twist of the story had been inadvertently 'spoiled' for me, through no fault of the author's own, as a result of my reading reviews of the first book in the series -- and not even the reviews, but the comments on the reviews, in which one disgruntled reader ended up complaining about the author's attitude to a character in the third book in a way that told me nothing at the time, but turned out to rob the misdirection in the second book of its impact when I reached that point :-( So I can't say how that would have come across otherwise; with considerably greater force, I imagine...
The main element that irked me about this book was the author's insistence on using multiple epithets for the character of Gerald Tarrant; Damien Vryce is variously 'the priest' and 'Damien', which is unobtrusive enough, and where the text is content to alternate between 'Tarrant' and 'the Hunter' I don't find it a problem. But there are places where Tarrant is referred to by three or four different epithets on the same page, with none of them having any relevance to anything he is doing or saying at that moment -- at one point he is "Tarrant", then "the tall man", then "the Hunter", then "the Neocount", with "the adept" subsequently added in, and as a stylistic mannerism it really starts to jar.
I got a bit tired of Damien's constant thoughts about how stubbled and sweaty and bad-smelling he himself must be, too. I understand that the author is trying to make a distinction between the burly and very human priest and the abnormally clean and elegant Tarrant, who uses his powers to keep himself well-groomed under all circumstances, but I feel that realistically a seasoned traveller like Damien would simply have become oblivious to the conditions, like the Polar explorers who lived in the same set of clothes for six months at a time!
I was left confused by exactly how old Jenseny is intended to be. Damien explicitly describes her as "thirteen or fourteen at the most, probably younger" at their first meeting, but the text constantly goes on about how small she is and the grip of her "tiny fingers", refers to her as "the little girl" and describes her generally acting and thinking in a way that makes me picture her as more like six to eight years old: (Sometimes he was sad, and she could see the sadness, too, a thick gray stuff that clung to him like muck. Or black, like when her mother died/ One of the men had picked Jenseny up and was carrying her to a boat[...] she wriggled free of him and splashed down into ankle-deep water.) Compared to the self-reliant schoolchildren -- constantly having adventures without the intervention of adults -- with whom I was familiar from early 20th century novels, she is depicted as very babyish indeed, even though the text emphasises her courage and endurance, and I can't help feeling that the author probably had only a generic idea of how to write 'children' without any clear idea of age differences :-(
I was also struck by what seemed like one definite inconsistency with the previous book; when we first know him, Tarrant's power is said to come from the 'dark fae' that exist in the world where neither the moons nor the galaxy's hub cast any light after sunset, and he requires darkness to heal himself. But in this book he is using the same 'earth fae' as Damien himself, making him equally vulnerable to seismic activity, and apparently unable to heal himself if he goes too far underground, however dark it may be -- we hear no more about the dark fae, and the special beauty of the night. And the author gives us what felt like a ret-con where the powers of the Iezu from the original novel are concerned: they are now super-special demons that are immune to all compulsion and summoning by human sorcerers, and the fact that they were previously shown submitting to summoning and threats gets handwaved away as being mere pretence because the demon happened to feel like it...
But it's still a fascinating magic system, based on the idea of an alien planet whose ecosystem is balanced around the needs of its native organisms -- and which gets messed up by the human settlers' capacity to hold multiple contradictory desires and beliefs, creating demons that physically embody their weaknesses and feed upon them to sustain their existence. And the quest is genuinely gripping, with the stakes suitably ramped up from those of the first novel; it is no longer an ever-escalating attempt to restore one woman's magic powers, but a matter of trying to save an entire continent not just from conquest but from the corrupting effects of vengeance and hate, with the characters prepared to sacrifice their own lives if necessary.
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