Chris Gousopoulos’s Reviews > The Darkness That Comes Before > Status Update

People saying Bakker is humorless are so conditioned to modern bantering and witticisms.
Every passage involving any of the imperial family of the Ikureis has me smirking constantly. They are hilarious in their bizarre ways, ironies and narcissism. I cant get enough of them

"...Every time, without exception, he would already be watching her when she saw him. He would wave hesitantly, try to smile, and a pang of sorrow would strike her, sometimes so hard she would gasp aloud."

Akka and Esmi. The most painful, bittersweet, realistic relationship I have read in the genre. Its heartbreaking to read about them again.

Maithanet carried a plague whose primary symptom was certainty. How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was something Achamian had never understood. After all, what was the G od but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling within this mystery?

But every act could be condemned. The same as all bloodlines could be traced to some long-dead king, all deeds could be chased to some potential catastrophe. One need only follow the forks far enough...

...He would betray Inrau for the reason innocents were always betrayed: fear.

"The trees thundered about him. The sky tugged with its emptiness. Then an arrow jutted through his shoulder and he fell to his knees, stared at the red tip protruding from his breast."

Bakker is so good at making the atmosphere of a scene palpable with his unique word choices

This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.

Between the tyranny of many and the tyranny of one, Pirasha used to say, harlots chose the many. “That’s why we’re more,” she would spit. “More than concubines, more than priestesses, more than wives, more even than some queens. We may be oppressed, Esmi, but remember, always remember, sweet girl, we’re never owned.”

She grimaced, experienced the horror of staring into eyes that looked directly into her own and yet were utterly oblivious to her fury or fear.

What did not become Kimish, Xerius had decided, was his penchant for drama. Like a storyteller, he spoke in gaps, as though the world was his chorus. The heart of the matter was something Kimish jealously guarded, something provided according to the rules of narrative suspense, not necessity. “Finding answers is your trade, Kimish,” Xerius snapped. “Why must I interrogate the Interrogator?”

The Emperor, the consensus seems to be, was an excessively suspicious man. Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty.