Review: The Second Apocalypse, by R. Scott Bakker

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for The Second Apocalypse series from R. Scott Bakker. Read on at your own risk!

Scott Bakker’s The Second Apocalypse is a four-book series set in the Middle Eastern-flavoured fantasy world of Eärwa. The series continues on from the events of Bakker’s original and critically-acclaimed trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, following the same central characters from first series: the Dûnyain Prince, Kellhûs; the Mandate sorcerer, Drusas Achamian; the whore-turned-empress, Esmenet; and a host of other minor characters.

The series was started by Bakker directly after finishing his first trilogy, with the first two books coming out in quick succession. After publishing The Judging Eye in 2009 and The White Luck Warrior in 2011, Bakker had a bit of a dry spell, before returning with the final planned book of the series split into two novels, published as The Great Ordeal and The Unholy Consult in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

I started The Second Apocalypse after starting the original trilogy in 2012, while I was at university. I had to put it aside for a number of years to wait for the final books to be released. This year, I returned to it, re-reading the early books to remember the key plot arcs, before completing the series.

After finishing it, I have to admit that I felt a bit disappointed by Bakker’s conclusion — which I honestly believe has nothing to do with the novel’s unorthodox approach. I wanted to write this review as a frank discussion of the series’ strengths and weaknesses, particularly in comparison to Bakker’s earlier series.

Writing Style & Influences

Source: R. Scott Bakker

There is no doubt to me that Bakker’s work stands as one of the most original works of fantasy fiction that I’ve read in the past decade.

The high calibre of these books is often overshadowed by their dense, philosophical writing, overly descriptive prose, and extremely dark and mature themes — which have prevented his work from receiving much mainstream attention. While others may not like it, I appreciate that Bakker does not try to compromise his style and I think he has attracted a loyal, if smaller, following as a result.

You can tell that Bakker was trained as a philosopher and holds those values close to his heart. His world building and thematic focus are both heavily influenced by various philosophical concepts, which adds a depth to the series that you cannot find in many other fantasy books.

In general, Bakker seems to have focused his narrative on the question of damnation vs. salvation. His world of Eärwa depicts a reality where these eschatological concepts are not merely hypothetical, but certainties that must be navigated by all and where immortality is a legitimate alternative to facing your final judgement.

This is the central question that his characters are attempting to answer — the Consult are trying to avoid damnation by un-making reality, Kellhûs and the Great Ordeal are trying to achieve salvation and redeem themselves by destroying the Consult, and so on.

In terms of influences, Bakker’s work has always primarily paid homage to Tolkien, to the extent that you could almost call it Tolkien-derivative — the Nonmen can be compared to the Elves, his Consult is similar to Sauron, Sranc are like Orcs, etc. Even his map looks similar to Middle Earth in style. However, he has definitely added his own flavour to things.

He also reminds me of Stephen R. Donaldson, in terms of his darker themes and thematic focus on ethics, and he has openly paid homage to GRRM for showing him that a gritty, darker fantasy series could be published. Yet another thing to thank George for doing!

However, I’m going to leave Bakker’s writing style out of the equation in my review. In my mind, it’s something you either like or dislike according to your preferences — and I’m going to focus on the substance of the series instead.

Skip to a section below to read my take:

• The Good
• The Bad
• The Ugly

The Good

Art Credit: Spiralhorizons

There are many things that I really enjoyed about The Second Apocalypse and would recommend to fellow fantasy lovers — especially in the earlier books of the series.

In my mind, The Judging Eye is the most enjoyable read out of the four volumes. While its plot is certainly Tolkien-esque, with a Moria-style journey through an ancient, abandoned underground city (spoilers: now populated by hordes of evil creatures, who unsurprisingly appear at the climactic moment), I found that the new characters and conflicts introduced at this stage of series were interesting, engaging, and compelling.

For starters, there is the interesting (slightly incestuous) father-daughter dynamic between Achamian and Esmenet’s estranged daughter, Mimara, who was sold into slavery by her mother (why does this series cast so many female characters as prostitutes?), and their various interactions with the Skin Eaters. Then there are the tribulations of the young king of Sakarpus, Sorweel, who watches his father die and his city get conquered by the Great Ordeal — before being pseudo-adopted by the Anasûrimbor Family.

Even Kelmomas is enthralling in the early stages, when his peculiar brand of monstrosity is still a novelty, rather than a chore to read through (see The Ugly). Most importantly, the early books create a real sense of tension between the mission of the Kellhûs and what various others (Achamian, Sorweel, Mimara) perceive his mission to be — creating a real drama for the reader.

Is Kellhûs trying to save the world? Or is he trying to destroy it?

You genuinely don’t know which is the case and this is the powerful thread that pulls you through the series, convincing you to read countless pages of what one Amazon review described (not inaccurately) as “gay snuff porn”, just so you can figure out the answer.

That’s the best part of the series (the mystery, not the gay snuff porn). There is other good material. The whole question of what Achamian and Mimara will find in Ishüal and what will happen when they get to the Coffers drive the first two books very effectively as well. While the later sections of the slog (in The White Luck Warrior) get a bit repetitive, I did love the Skin Eater plot line and the various characters involved.

The jaunt of Sorweel and the Imperial sibling across Kuniüri and their visit to Ishterebinth is also fascinating, in particular their visit to the ancient Nonman mansion. Sorweel’s experiences with the weird Nonmen helm and his journey into the depths of the mansion were favourites of mine in The Great Ordeal.

I felt like these passages really helped to deepen the world of Eärwa and shed more light on the nature of the Ishroi/Nonmen, their culture, and their plight. There is no doubt that Bakker’s worldbuilding is spectacular. When he is doing things that further explore that world, he usually does a great job of keeping you interested and engaged.

Another aspect of the series that I found appealing was the pseudo-military history style that Bakker adopts, particularly when he is writing about the Great Ordeal. This reminded me of Tolkien’s Silmarillion in many ways, another book that is close to my heart, and I think it worked well in creating an epic feelings for various battles across the series — on the Istyuli Plains, at Irsûlor, and at Dagliash.

I love the host of minor characters (lords, schoolmen, etc.) that he name-drops in various scenes, even if it’s only to mention them dying spectacularly or embarrassing themselves in some counsel meeting. One of many little things that I think he does very well. That’s the good.

The Bad

Art Credit: Spiralhorizons

Let’s cut to the chase here — the most obvious flaw with The Second Apocalypse is that it’s too long and super repetitive in the latter books. From The White Luck Warrior and onward, the reader is forced to drudge through countless pages of skirmishes with the Sranc horde, near disasters, squabbles among the lords of the Great Lord, and then all that weirdness with the Meat.

Yeah, we’ll get to the Meat in The Ugly, just you wait…

While I understand that the point of all the build-up is to make the reader really feel like it is a genuine ordeal, I am inclined to believe that there is a better way to convey this without making us suffer through it too. I think that the third and fourth book definitely could’ve been condensed into a single volume — as was originally intended.

However, as much as these sections were repetitive, Bakker never really lost my buy-in. I’ve read through fantasy epics before; I was along for the ride.

No, the real problem arrived in the final pages of the final volume, The Unholy Consult. If you’ve finished the series already, you probably know what I’m going to talk about and that’s probably why you’re reading this.

The ending of The Second Apocalypse is super anti-climactic.

I get it. Ending a fantasy epic in the right way is tricky, and it seems like Bakker intentionally decided to do something a bit unconventional with his series. I love the fact that he went for this unorthodox finale and I really, really wanted to like the whole ‘bad-guys-win’ thing. However, it just didn’t work for me.

For starters, the final events of the series raised far too many questions. If you are going to go for an ending like this, you need to foreshadow it properly, so the reader can at least look back and go: ‘Okay, I should’ve seen that coming. You got me, Bakker.’ Otherwise, it feels like a cheap bait-and-switch, deus ex machina play — which is exactly what I felt after reading it.

Here are my main issues with the conclusion:

The Dûnyain Have Become the Consult

While the Dûnyain replacing the Unholy Consult made sense in a certain light, I still felt like it really diminished the Consult’s status as the Big Bad Evil Guys (BBEGs) in this series. This was the first moment towards the end of The Unholy Consult, where I started to feel like I was being cheated out of a proper conclusion.

The Consult and the Inchoroi have been set up as the arch villain for seven novels, the faceless enemy who have endured countless millennia of conflicts against both Nonmen and Men. While we do get a brief glimpse of them in earlier stages of the books, our promised showdown between them and Kellhûs never happens — because other Dûnyain have already destroyed them.

While I get that the Dûnyain are supposed to be this unstoppable force that is capable of defeating anyone, I feel disappointed that we never get to see the Consult be truly badass and the ultimate manifestation of evil that they’re portrayed as.

Shouldn’t someone be able to stand up against the Dûnyain and not get completely taken over? I just have trouble buying into a narrative that makes them into all-powerful beings. It isn’t as interesting to me as a world where they are in conflict with other forces that can stand against them.

While I was initially intrigued by this plot twist that Bakker threw at his readers — and I think it could’ve worked if it had played out differently — it was followed by too many other weird twists to really leave me feeling satisfied.

He Was Ajokli All Along!

The big reveal about Kellhûs, a few pages later, annoys me quite a bit as well. It felt like such a cheap tactic to just say, ‘Oh, he was possessed by Ajokli all along’, when there was no real indication of this in the previous books. It also doesn’t jive with the narrative that the Dûnyain are all powerful. How did he get defeated? We never find out.

Again, I think that if this had been the only major twist at the end of the book, I could see it working for Bakker. However, combined with the previous revelation about the Dûnyain and the Consult, found it strained the continuity of the narrative too much for me.

If Kellhûs had been possessed since his visit to Hell, I would’ve liked to see more hints earlier in the series. Now, I understand that you could make an argument for the various instances of him doing magic without using sorcery as hints, but I feel like that wasn’t enough.

There were not enough opportunities for the reader to get a sense that he had been replaced. However, I thought that this issue would not have been so problematic for me — if it hadn’t been immediately followed by the sudden appearance of Kelmomas.

Here’s Johnny (Kelmomas)!

Throughout the series, the fact that Kelmomas is invisible to the gods is hinted at, without being explained. It is an interesting plot point that I was expecting to play out in a major way, but I was not happy about its execution here.

Kelmomas’s storyline seems to end when he gets tied up by his father, after saving him from the assassination of Sorweel the narindar — which was a great moment in the final book that I thought Bakker wrote very well.

However, Kelmomas basically disappears after that and we get no hint that he’s going to plan a major role in the conclusion. In fact, it feels more like he’s getting set up for a role in a following series. There is a brief scene of him killing some Scylvendi and then he suddenly reappears in the Golden Room, in time to get his father killed, fed into the sarcophagus/meat grinder, and turned into the No-God 2.0.

So many questions! How did he get to the Golden Room? Did no one see a small boy crossing a battlefield and Sranc horde, let alone infiltrating the reaches of the Ark? I feel like Bakker could’ve at least hinted at one of these — which I didn’t spot, if he did…

This was the moment at the end of the book where Bakker lost my buy-in. It just felt like such a rabbit-out-of-a-hat moment that wasn’t set up properly at all and, combined with the other twists, it lost the continuity of the narrative for me entirely.

What Happens to Serwa?

This is a side point, but after her super epic battle with the Wracu at the Intrinsic Gate, I was honestly pissed to have nothing said about Serwa’s sacrifice (I assume that she died, but I have no real idea). There is no mention of Kayûtas either.

I guess that this was done intentionally by Bakker to go all-in on his unorthodox ending to the series. Despite being a fairly major character in the series, Serwa is simply another tragic victim of the whole conflict, who gets swallowed by the Whirlwind as the No-God rises again.

Overall, I felt that Bakker should’ve set up his twist ending a bit more carefully because it felt jarring to me as a reader. I also think he should’ve done a better job of closing up important plotlines like Serwa’s, if he wanted the reader to feel satisfied after finishing The Second Apocalypse.

The weird Serwa-Sorweel romance was honestly the storyline that I was most interested in by the end of The Unholy Consult, which I’m not sure was intentional. I was just so annoyed or disgusted by the rest of the characters, it was the only thing that I was really hoping for — despite knowing it would probably end tragically, as it did.

There are other things that annoyed me, but I’ll stop here and move onto the Ugly.

The Ugly

Art Credit: Spiralhorizons

The Second Apocalypse can sometimes be really hard to read and this has nothing to do with it being good or bad. It just contains a lot of fucked up descriptions of really disgusting, depraved, and awful things — and it can get a bit over the top at times.

Obviously, this is a matter of preference for every reader, but it wasn’t my cup of tea and it went further than I was expecting, even after reading his previous series. The Prince of Nothing definitely does not pull any punches when it comes to brutal depictions of battles, forced marches, or the rape and plunder of cities. However, The Second Apocalypse takes it to another level.

Here’s what I found myself struggling to read the most:

Kelmomas

The first thing that I found challenging to read in this series were the long sections from Kelmomas’ point of view. For those who didn’t read the series, Kelmomas is a child psychopath, who is obsessed with earning his mother’s love and making sure that she doesn’t love anyone else except for him.

To this end, he drives away his half-sister Mimara (prior to the events of the series), secretly murders his imbecilic twin Samarmas, indirectly causes the murder of his insane brother Inrilitas, contrives a falling-out with his uncle Maithanet (which almost causes the collapse of the Empire), and much more.

He is an absolute monster, willing to kill and torture others for pure pleasure, but hides his true nature from his mother and others around her in the Imperial palace. There are various scenes of him murdering or eating people, while he lives like a feral child in the palace, juxtaposed with him innocently cuddling with his mother. Okay.

The novelty of Kelmomas’ character was pretty interesting at first. I can’t remember ever reading a character who was so explicitly a psychopath before, but I have to admit that I got kinda sick of it. You finished certain Kelmomas POV chapters with a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach — and it got to the point where every time I found another one, I was just like, “Oh god, not this again.”

The Meat

The biggest challenge to read in The Second Apocalypse, as I’ve already alluded to, were the sections about the Meat. At the end of The White Luck Warrior, Kellhûs makes the dramatic proclamation that the Great Ordeal will have to eat Sranc meat, in order to complete their journey to Golgotterath across the barren northern plains.

The Meat, as it comes to be known, drives most of the men of the Great Ordeal entirely insane, transforming them into mindless animals that are barely above the Sranc themselves. This transformation features prominently throughout most of The Great Ordeal, as well as large sections of The Unholy Consult.

This whole storyline reaches its worst after the battle at Dagliash, when the Consult unleashes a weird atomic bomb-type device on their own Sranc horde and the Great Ordeal, leaving huge numbers of men infected with what seems like radiation sickness.

The healthier survivors then turn on the Scalded (as the infected are called) to consume them, since there is no Sranc meat left as they cross the plains to Golgotterath. All this is done at the behest of Nersei Proyas, Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal, who has been manipulated by Kellhûs (a scene which features some weird, barely-consensual gay sex) into believing that these depths of depravation are necessary to survive.

The descriptions of the Meat-maddened men of the Great Ordeal falling on their sickened comrades, eating them and doing other weird, debased things to them is done in Bakker’s typical no-holds-barred style — and I commend him for his commitment to this. But honestly, it’s something I could’ve done without reading.

General Ugliness

There are a number of other things in the series that you might find hard to read or disturbing:

• The weird sex scenes featured Psatma Nannaferi
• The Slog across the wilderness to Sagliash
• The depictions of the whale-mothers of the Dûnyain
• The behaviour of the insane Nonmen
• And much more

To be honest, none of the ugliness was a make-or-break for me — I thought the whale-mothers were horrific, but we didn’t get too much of them. In general, I don’t object to a book with a bit of ugliness. However, it was the sheer volume of material on the Meat and the Sranc that really got to me by the end of The Second Apocalypse.

Conclusion

All in all, I found that The Second Apocalypse was an interesting read, with enough good parts to balance out the ugly ones and keep me engaged. However, the huge number of twists that Bakker threw at his readers during the conclusion lost me in the process.

I think it was a bold attempt to finish a fantasy series in an ambitious, unorthodox way — and I believe that he could’ve made it work, if he’d changed how the climactic events of the series played out. Unfortunately, I though he missed the mark on final execution and that was disappointing.

Would I recommend Bakker’s The Second Apocalypse to someone else?

Honestly, I’m super torn about this. On the one hand, there are so many interesting things about the series; in particular, its world building and its thematic treatment of the question of damnation vs. salvation. So if I thought someone would appreciate those elements, I would probably recommend it to them. On the other hand, I disliked the series’s conclusion and I’d want to be upfront about it before suggesting The Second Apocalypse to anyone.

There are also many people who I would actively steer away from Bakker because I know that they wouldn’t be able to stomach his writing — or because they would be bored by it. From my perspective, Bakker will always occupy a particular fantasy niche that will appeal to a small numbers of people and that’s okay.

Will I read another Bakker series after this?

Maybe — if I hear good things about it. I certainly won’t be eagerly awaiting it or leaping on the opportunity to read it. Given the ugliness of The Second Apocalypse, I’ll have to wait until I’m in the right mindset to tackle it — and I may decide that other things are more worthwhile.

In the end, I can’t help feeling like The Second Apocalypse was an ambitious attempt to do something new with the fantasy genre — but whose final execution was flawed. Bakker has a ton of talent and I hope he does something crazy to impress people with his next book.

If he does, I’d certainly be happy to read it.