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Black Sun Rising

(The Coldfire Trilogy #1)

C.S. Friedman

3.93 · Rating details · 17,486 ratings · 648 reviews

On the distant world of Erna, four people--Priest, Adept, Sorcerer, and Apprentice--are drawn together to battle the forces of evil, led by the demonic fae, a soul-destroying force that preys on the human mind.

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Paperback, 496 pages

Published September 6th 2005 by Daw Books (first published 1991)

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Start your review of Black Sun Rising (The Coldfire Trilogy, #1)

Apr 16, 2011 mark monday rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy-modern, scifi-modern

Black Sun Rising; Or, How Ciani Got Her Groove Back.

two major things to note in this sometimes absorbing, sometimes ridiculous science fantasy novel: a fascinatingly developed magic system and a head-smackingly stupid quest.

regarding the stupidity, let's first clear the air with some extended ranting, so we can later speak on more pleasant things and end on an agreeably positive note. C.S. Friedman seems like an endearing author; her writing style can be lazy but it can also be interestingly qui Black Sun Rising; Or, How Ciani Got Her Groove Back.

two major things to note in this sometimes absorbing, sometimes ridiculous science fantasy novel: a fascinatingly developed magic system and a head-smackingly stupid quest.

regarding the stupidity, let's first clear the air with some extended ranting, so we can later speak on more pleasant things and end on an agreeably positive note. C.S. Friedman seems like an endearing author; her writing style can be lazy but it can also be interestingly quirky. so i feel we should spare the rod and spoil the child, a little bit at least. but only after a firm discussion!

SLIGHT SPOILER: in the very beginning of the book, some creatures attack the lovely and saucy sorceress supreme Ciani and mind-suck her powers away. various characters assemble to journey into a sinister, uncharted land in order to find the nasty & subhuman culprits, deliver some payback, and so release Ciani's powers. okay, let's just get it out there: it is absolutely unacceptable that a bunch of random non-characters (including a father and his 2 daughters) and 1 major character have to die pretty horrific deaths, all so that some sexy enchantress can get her powers back. for chrissakes, her life was no longer in jeopardy! and PTSD that changes sex appeal into mousy forgetfulness just isn't a problem worthy of a body count. even worse, apparently the primary members of the party are automatically willing to just toss everything to the wayside and go on a deadly quest. things like a fiancée, religious orders, and a magical Forest... all because:

(1) an Awesome Sorceress should never be parted from her Awesome Powers.

(2) a couple evenings of flirty banter can really impress a warrior-priest. oh come on! it was just some nights of convo and fine dining. they didn't even bone. he just "has a feeling about her... could this feeling turn to love?" UGH! hey asshole, is your spiritual calling so fragile that you'd give up everything so some wizard you barely know can continue to remain extra-powerful? who cares? both the egalitarian and the God-lover in me freaked out about this whole rationale.

(3) apparently some piddly promise to protect said sorceress, made by an immortal vampire-sorcerer to a pleasure demon (best 2 characters), is enough to just up and change your entire life and go on a dangerous quest and maybe die. this is a guy who mainly spends his time hunting down various virgins stranded in his magic forest (to feast on their fears etc), which no doubt keeps his hands full. it was just so nonsensical. hey Idiot Vampire! why are you even on this stupid quest? you prey on humans. Ciani barely even likes you pal, she's the warrior-priest's gal! so, anyway: awesome character; absurd character motivation.

(4) as far as Ciani herself goes, apparently "She's Quite a Woman!" - at least that's what multiple character say repeatedly, much to my annoyance.

so that's it for the eye-rolling parts. they are a big part of the novel, even enough to give it 2 stars. but there's a lot of intriguing stuff too. the novel is set on a far-flung world in the far-flung future, a world where some natural energy source called "the fae" literalizes everyone's dreams, fears, desires, etc. so on this world you have to exercise a lot of emotional/mental/spiritual control. supernatural creatures do exist, they gain lives and personalities, and often want your blood and/or booty. simple magical devices work if you really, really believe in them. things like guns are more problematic because if you have any doubts, your gun is just going to explode in your hand. and faith now truly and tangibly works. thousands of people believing in something can actually create something super-powerful - like an impregnable-to-demons church! or... HELL! Hell exists because people believe in it, uh oh. and so do pleasure demons, which isn't so bad. in this world, people have varying levels of ability to work the fae and some folks like The Amazing Chiani are born with natural aptitude. the fae itself is also fascinatingly divided into different sorts of fae, based on which type of natural energy source they derive from, and they each have their own unique properties, abilities, weaknesses. for instance, there is earth fae. and the fae that comes from light. or the absence of light. or even from tidal forces - my personal fave. it was all so interesting and carefully developed and new to me that - complaints aside - it all still sorta worked. ...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf-alien-planets-and-societies, science-fantasy

5.0 to 5.5 stars. C.S. Friedman is one of my favorite authors and I have never read one of her books that I haven't loved. I am in the process of re-reading her books after first reading them many years ago and I started with this one.

The first book of the "Coldfire" trilogy, this book takes place on the planet Erna which was colonized by people from Earth over a thousand years ago. When the colonist first landed on Erna, they discovered the "Fae" which is a natural force that causes the though ...more

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Sep 04, 2015 Ivan rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, fantasy

On second read my opinion remains mostly unchanged so does original review (with exception of fixing errors I couldn't be bothered to do first time around)

This was great.

Main plot has been seen many times.Fellowship travels to the hearth of darkness for good cause, in this case to restore hot sorceress power.Their travel will take them across Erna, planet who's creatures and natural laws are shaped but it's inhabitants both conscious and subconscious mind. Erna itself is biggest reason for my hi ...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Ben Johnson rated it it was ok

Black Sun Rising is a brilliant setting with a mediocre story. A warrior-priest and his companions track a demon in order to restore one of their member’s memories, but are forced into an alliance with perhaps the greatest evil of all: the former Prophet, damned by his own church and driven into a dark pact which brings both power and a vampiric curse. The novel sets up a variety of interesting themes but concludes its bloated story with cliches, a disappointment given the great world-crafting o Black Sun Rising is a brilliant setting with a mediocre story. A warrior-priest and his companions track a demon in order to restore one of their member’s memories, but are forced into an alliance with perhaps the greatest evil of all: the former Prophet, damned by his own church and driven into a dark pact which brings both power and a vampiric curse. The novel sets up a variety of interesting themes but concludes its bloated story with cliches, a disappointment given the great world-crafting of C.S. Friedman.

Black Sun Rising takes place on Erna, a planet whose original human colonists were driven back to the dark ages by the mysterious energy known as the Fae. The Fae both is and isn’t magic in the traditional sense: while it is used for common wizardly purposes, it is also a product of Erna’s ecosystem that grants human thoughts and, most dangerously, fears corporeality. Many humans have learned to Work it for their own uses and a few, known as Adepts, are born with the ability to both see and control the Fae effortlessly.

Ciani is one of these Adepts, but she loses her powers in an attack by a mysterious group of demons for a somewhat poorly explained reason. Damien is a zealous priest of the Church who vows to restore Ciani’s powers. He is accompanied by Ciani’s assistant Senzei, who doesn’t do much except be sad that he wasn’t born an Adept as well. These three characters are all fairly one dimensional: Damien clings to black and white morality, Ciani has a thirst for knowledge that precludes morality, and Senzei just wants to be powerful.

However, they are joined by a much more interesting person: Gerald Tarrant, Fae-vampire. Tarrant was a powerful Adept who finally turned the tide in the struggle against the Fae by founding a Church to discipline humanity’s subconscious and thus limit the Fae’s manifestations. However, the Church eventually damned all sorcerers, and so after death he will go to a hell that he has literally created from the Fae. To avoid this, he murders his family to make a pact with ambiguous dark forces that grants him eternal life and devastating powers in exchange for life as a literary cliche.

The narrative is mostly told from Damien’s point of view, and the book is at its best when dealing with Damien’s conflicting emotions regarding his Prophet-turned-Vampire. Damien hates Tarrant with a religious passion but needs him as a weapon in his quest to help Ciani. He is forced to compromise his stark moral judgments, and enters areas of gray morality kicking and screaming. Likewise, the narrative needs Tarrant as a foil for the relatively simple characters to play off of, and as the only interesting character in the story.

Black Sun Rising begins with Tarrant’s savage murder of his wife and children, and Friedman does a good job of inserting enough instances of his savagery throughout the narrative to make you feel bad for liking him. But as the story develops Tarrant loses his mystique. He becomes more and more Dracula as his nature is explained, and the instances in which his powers are limited in order to generate tension feel contrived. Tarrant preserves his grip on what little humanity he has left by clinging to a personal sense of honor; he is the Honest Abe of vampires, for he will not tell a lie or go back on his word. His adherence to his self-imposed code is the primary way that the narrative justifies his involvement with Damien and his companions, but this mostly feels artificial.

At one point in the story Tarrant is badly hurt and needs to drink blood in order to heal himself. Ciani is the only one with enough blood to spare, but Tarrant won’t drink it because apparently he takes the form of his victim’s fears, and Ciani is most scared of a demon; therefore, if he drinks her blood he will become a demon and attack. He has also sworn not to hurt Ciani. Hence the awkwardly contrived predicament. So he has to stay weak, and the protagonists can’t rely on his powers, and thus narrative conflict is born. It’s a strained way to go about generating tension because the author wants to preserve sympathy for Tarrant. I say, make him drink her blood. Make him go crazy and attack her. Kill her, for all I care (like all the other characters, Ciani not especially likable). Let Tarrant deal with the collapse of his artificial humanity and let’s see what happens. Powerful moments in literature come from those kinds of severe shocks to a character’s worldviews, and this novel does not go far enough in that regard.

Rather than potent character development, Tarrant’s preceding dilemma results in more of the run-of-the-mill action that bloats the novel to almost 600 pages. Some of the action is great; the scene in Tarrant’s forest realm is particularly well done in it’s dark aesthetic. But there are also scenes of earthquakes, and confrontations with various demons that presumably are manifested fears but seem to be generic fantasy tropes, and treacherous nighttime marches that, while none are boring per se, comprise action fodder that doesn’t add much except reading time. While the time invested in the book lends itself toward investment in the book’s characters, the character’s developments over the narrative don’t seem to warrant it. It feels more cheap substitute than effective strategy. Certainly the characters develop and change, but it could have been accomplished in a more efficient (and effective) way.

As might be apparent from the preceding paragraphs, I enjoyed the set-up for this novel but was let down by the execution. The book primarily deals with the cliched theme of the corrupting influence of power, and near the end the book becomes almost pedagogical in this regard. It’s disappointing because this concern is not as unique as the setting is capable of. What compelled me the most was the ecological nature of the Fae; as a product of Erna’s ecology, I think it would have been interesting to explore more of humanity’s relationship to the environment. For example, what does it mean when a religion’s reality is fundamentally linked to one planet in a galaxy full of them? Where is the division between humanity and ecology when nature can manifest human fears and desires, and when evolution is driven by human perception? This is only the first book in the series, so it’s possible that some of those questions are investigated later. I just find them more compelling than the cliched “power corrupts” theme, and wish they had been the focus from the start.

Worst of all, the seeds are clearly sown for Tarrant’s ultimate redemption from his life of evil (I’m guessing in some sort of grand sacrifice to save Erna). While this isn’t bad in and of itself, it just feels too familiar. I want an evil character who stays evil. I want the series to take the moral ambiguities that so stressed Damien and drive them to an even greater extreme, an extreme that truly challenges Damien’s world-view and which cannot be ignored. As it is, Damien is able to preserve his moral compass; I want Tarrant to obliterate that compass as Damien is forced into deeper and deeper reliance on Tarrant’s evil. I want Damien driven to the brink of insanity, maybe over the edge, and then I want to see how he responds. Friedman doesn’t take enough chances in Black Sun Rising, and I’m hesitant to read another two 600 page books just to see if she will later on. Who knows, maybe I’d be pleasantly surprised by the sequels. But with so many other books waiting to be read, I’m not rushing to find out. ...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Mpauli rated it really liked it

Shelves: orga_read-in-2013, genre_fantasy

With Black Sun Rising, author C.S. Friedman transports us into a world of darkness, where your fears can manifest themselves to haunt and hunt you.

Erna is a planet humans from earth reached via spacship and settled onto. This sounds like SF, but is just a backdrop for a dark fantasy novel.
The society wasn't able to hold up to the level of progress of a spacefaring people. So, the atmosphere is more of a gothic victorian world. Think Bram Stoker's Dracula and you have a good picture.

Eevryday life ...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Mike (the Paladin) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Okay...this is another I'd like to give 3.5 as it's got to be above a 3 but I didn't care for it as much as I have many of the books I've given a 4.

It has an interesting "world system". I don't think the term "magic system works well here as it all has to do with the planet or world on which the action takes place. (To say more would of course entail spoilers). This book might be more accurately called "science fantasy" rather than epic or high fantasy as it's built around the assumption of an e Okay...this is another I'd like to give 3.5 as it's got to be above a 3 but I didn't care for it as much as I have many of the books I've given a 4.

It has an interesting "world system". I don't think the term "magic system works well here as it all has to do with the planet or world on which the action takes place. (To say more would of course entail spoilers). This book might be more accurately called "science fantasy" rather than epic or high fantasy as it's built around the assumption of an earth colony that arrived on this planet and then had to deal with the forces on and of the world of Erna that they were in no way equiped to understand or handle.

I found this book at times to be of the "neither fish nor fowl" variety to some extent. I liked the idea(s) that it's built on and the world building though I'm not sure the introduction to this world and it's specialness was done all that well. It's an attempt to inculcate the needed details into the narrative without doing a lot of plot exposition atop the storyline, plot and dialogue. A good way to do things when it works. here I think it bogged down a bit and often (for a while in the early chapters) had the reader going"okay...now how does that work?" Still it does eventually get roughly laid out and while we still have a lot of nebulous edges and loose ends to the system i assume she means it to be that way. A great deal of the plot is that humans are "still after all this time" trying to understand and learn to work with the plant's forces.

I found that while I got to know the people in this book the only one I really "liked" all that much was the priest Damien. I was never drawn into the "feeling" I think I was supposed to have for the others. This was the third time I'd set out to read this book. It wasn't that I "disliked it" I'd say I really "liked it" (I mean I gave it 4 stars based on my 3.5 liking) but I just never got heavily "involved" in it. On both prior occasions I laid it down and got involved in reading other things and just, never got back to it. that almost happened this time. I'm always into more than one books at a time and , true to what happened before I got into a few others and this one just didn't "cry out to me" to get back to it. I did as we are reading it in a group and as I said, it's "pretty good". I enjoyed much of it...I just can't say it really "drew me in". I could have lived without getting to the books end.

I have the two books following this one on my shelf and I will (hopefully) get to them "before too long". I don't know. I have a huge to be read pile of books, so we'll see. I'm just thankful for the abundance. After all too many books is better than not enough. They are such fragile things.

Okay, not a bad read, well written, enjoyable and interesting (mostly). As I said, 3.5...rounds to a 4. ...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Kris43 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dark-fantasy, epic-fantasy, sci-fi

Im having a hard time with rating this.

If I were to rate the world building and magic system, I would give it 5 stars, they are absolutely brilliant. This has strong sci-fi elements mixed with fantasy. The whole thing is happening in distant future. Humanity has moved to this planet that is totally different from planet Earth. It has something that at first looks like magic.

It is inhabited by sentiment forces who feed on human emotions/blood/semen and can be tapped to fuel various things. But t ...more

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Apr 19, 2018 fantasy fiction is everything rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-fiction, 2018-fantasy-read-in-english, epic-fantasy, grimdark-fantasy, science-fantasy, vampire-fantasy

6 stars!My forth English fantasy fiction. I can't believe that i didn't read black sun rising before!!
Review to come.

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Jul 19, 2013 Rob rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-female, read-2017, own, science-fiction, not-a-bookclub-club, audio-book

Executive Summary: I have mixed feelings on this book. Sometimes it was a 2 star, sometimes 4, and in the end I settled on 2.5 rounded up. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.

Audiobook: One of the things that attracted me to doing this book was how much I enjoyed R.C. Bray as the narrator of The Martian. He's quite good here, but at some points he's "too good".

What do I mean by that? Well his voices for some of the characters are so spot on the description as to be jarring, and I'd spe ...more

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May 22, 2008 Pax rated it did not like it

I finally made it to the end of this awful book, mostly by skipping about eighty pages in the latter half (figured out what I'd missed within five repetitive pages, and no need to slog through) and then skimming the rest.

All in all, this writer had a good idea, some fun character interplay potential and NO EDITING. As in, where was her EDITOR??? This could have been trimmed to less than half its dense, repetitive mass with such greater impact. Apparently this is part one of a trilogy -- the rest ...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Evgeny rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

A very dark book features one of the best bad/still most interesting guys in fantasy books.

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Nov 14, 2016 Dawn-a very sensitive romance reader rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, series-to-read-in-order, vampire, clean-read, some-romance, horror, dark-fantasy, paranormal, science-fiction, both-mcs-experienced

A re read for me. Read this back in the early '90's and completely forgot everything.

The good:

I liked the writing style in that it is very descriptive and shows more than tells. Tarrant and the priest were well developed and complex characters and I loved them both.

The world building was fantastic..beyond fantastic!

The pace was steady with good conflict and I did not skim.

The bad:

MC Ciani was a useless and underdeveloped charcter. She was not used to her full potential. I cared nothing about he ...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Chris rated it it was ok

Shelves: audiobook

There were some good elements of story here, and some good world concepts. However, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The prose is choppy, full of adverbs and redundancies. If I had to hear "he smiled grimly" one more time, I was prepared to gouge out my eardrums (I listened to the audio, obviously). The plot drags on and on. And on. And on some more. Events take forever to set up, and then when something does happen, I'm like "what the hell? Where did that come from? Should I rewind? Oh ...more

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Sep 12, 2017 Sumant rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: not-completed

Started reading book as it was recommended to me by many people, and also a book club of which I am an member was doing it for this month.

But after almost completing almost 80% of this book, I don't give a damn about the world which the author has created neither the characters, so I am going to stop reading this book and further books in this series.

I am just going to highlight the weak points for this book.

1. The story is all over the place.

The book begins with a certain premise and plot, but ...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Kinga rated it liked it

Shelves: pub-1991

How can you take such an interesting, excited and complicated world with so many conflict possibilities and write such a crap book about it? It’s rather amazing.

I haven’t read a proper fantasy novel since my early high school days. Back then I used chain-read Andre Norton but I can tell you very little about as it has been mostly eradicated from my memory to make room for all the plotlines of Grey’s Anatomy. Therefore I can’t tell you if C.S Friedman writes badly or whether she is in line with o How can you take such an interesting, excited and complicated world with so many conflict possibilities and write such a crap book about it? It’s rather amazing.

I haven’t read a proper fantasy novel since my early high school days. Back then I used chain-read Andre Norton but I can tell you very little about as it has been mostly eradicated from my memory to make room for all the plotlines of Grey’s Anatomy. Therefore I can’t tell you if C.S Friedman writes badly or whether she is in line with other fantasy writers and what is considered the norm in the genre.

“She kneed her unhorse gently into motion again and tried to lose herself in memories of her family, as a means of combating the uneasiness that had been growing in her since she left the Bellamy household nearly an hour earlier. Her daughter Alix, barely five, had already [...]. Tory, nine, had […]. Eric, the oldest […]”

This is not a very sophisticated way to introduce characters (very minor ones as well), almost as bad as having the characters look in the mirror to describe their looks. So there is this sort of lazy writing and there are characters who say every other page ‘God help us’ or ‘gods help us’, depending on which denomination they belong to.

But that’s nothing, it could still be a four star read because the world, in which the nature produces currents which respond to psychic stimulus and can take a physical form, is a fascinating and intricate one. There is an outline of a religious conflict between the old religion (based possibly on Christianity brought to the planet by its colonisers from Earth) which rejects any use of those magic-like currents and all the new religions invented on the planet which pretty much base themselves on the fae – the currents. But instead of this fascinating story of high politics, religion and magic, we have a lame tale of a girl, Chiani, who lost her special powers and a group of men who, for god (or gods) know what reason decide to help her get them back, even if it means risking their lives.

We have the priest who has a bit of a crush on Chiani, which is why he decides to ruin his career and go against everything he believes in just to help her, while still acting like a self-righteous prick when he is forced to accept help from someone who seems to be not a very good person at all (we will call him the Lesser Evil). The Lesser Evil puts up with the self-righteousness of the Self-Righteous prick and generally acts in a very honourable way and is the most interesting and three-dimensional character, which is quite funny because he is supposed have no human soul left in him. I don’t know how Friedman managed to make her inhuman character the most human of them all but it probably wasn’t intentional.

Oh, and there is this one more character, so superfluous that you can’t help but wonder if he is going to be killed off somewhere along the way.

The four of them set off to get Chiani her magicks back. Chiani’s motivation is obvious but the rest of them follow because of some peculiar mix of honour debt, loyalty, and simply having hots for her. The fact that they are actually saving the world (and therefore themselves) at the same time seems to constantly escape them, when focusing on that would just make a lot more sense and make their motives logical.

In the end it’s a fairly enjoyable read but you are left thinking that there is a better story happening somewhere else in that world.
...more

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Jul 19, 2011 Kat Hooper rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook

Black Sun Rising is the first novel in C.S. Friedman’s popular COLDFIRE trilogy. I read Dominion, the prequel novella, a couple of years ago after reading (and loving) several of her science fiction novels. I admire Friedman’s worldbuilding and her writing style.

The COLDFIRE trilogy feels like traditional epic fantasy, but it would best be categorized as science fantasy because it takes place in the far future on Erna, a planet colonized by humans looking for a habitable world. When they got to ...more

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Oct 30, 2007 Mary rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi, fantasy

I'm not really sure what I didn't like about this book. The setting was amazing, the plot was interesting, the characters were... well, they weren't horrible, but I've read better. And that, I think, is where it lost me. I liked the characters well enough, but their problems didn't engage me. I wasn't particularly upset when one of the characters died, I wasn't particularly glad when they resolved some of their issues, and I wasn't particularly interested to find out what happened to them in the ...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: minority-and-women-writers, fantasy

There is an old episode of Star Trek . . .

Okay, for you born after the 1990s, I'm talking about the really old ones. You know the ones with the Enterprise attached to a string, with Leonard, with Shatner and his ever changing girdle.

Anyway, in this episode, Lt. Uhura, who is very cool, gets her knowledge zapped by some alien in bad make up.

That's this book, sorta.

The book is about power, knowledge, people, and cost. Very few books deal with cost. This is one of them. I enjoyed this book very muc ...more

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Sep 13, 2015 Emily rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: a-own-it, fantasy, dnf

Yet another book I couldn't finish. I gave this one a good try - read up to 176 and then asked myself "why am I forcing myself to read a book that bores me?". The characters are wooden and uninteresting - you learn pretty much nothing about them or even what they look like. The main guy falls in love with the girl in a week and decides to travel to the ends of the planet and face death just to help her. The magic system was not interesting to me and I really dislike the authors writing style. It ...more

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Jun 19, 2017 *Absorbed in Countless Worlds* rated it liked it · review of another edition

Strong points to this book :
- Excellent, dark atmosphere.
- Rich worldbuilding.

Weak points :
- Character depth.
- Storyline and its execution.

Still a good read!

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Dec 05, 2016 Zach rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction

1200 years ago, human colonists landed on the planet Erna, which they quickly discovered was home to an energy field called the ~~force~~ fae, which reacts to the human mind by giving life to people's unconscious fears and desires. This doesn't mix very well with human technology, so what we have here is a kind of post-apocalyptic science fantasy (indeed, the characters stop at an Inn of the New Sun early in the book, hint hint).

With that (very appealing!) background in place, our story proper begin 1200 years ago, human colonists landed on the planet Erna, which they quickly discovered was home to an energy field called the ~~force~~ fae, which reacts to the human mind by giving life to people's unconscious fears and desires. This doesn't mix very well with human technology, so what we have here is a kind of post-apocalyptic science fantasy (indeed, the characters stop at an Inn of the New Sun early in the book, hint hint).

With that (very appealing!) background in place, our story proper begins with a priest meeting, and immediately falling in love with, a renowned scholar. After they spend an indeterminate amount of time together (probably days, but maybe weeks, neither of which is really enough to support the weight of the rest of the book, and the fact that it isn't clear is weird enough in and of itself, but here we are), things fall apart, both for the characters and for the book, and we're only on page 75 (of almost 600). The scholar has her magical powers and, well, joie de vivre stolen by a group of monsters, and so the priest (in addition to a student, who barely counts as a character, and a vampire, but more on him later) sets off to kill the lead monster and therefore make her happy again. She tags along too, but is now just a blank slate of sadness. That's two characters out of four who are not really characters. They're later joined by a fifth whose single character trait is "not a human" and then, briefly, another, who doesn't even get a name and whose single character trait is "even less of a human."

As a catalyst for a fantasy quest, this is pretty lackluster stuff, and the weirdest part is that Friedman appears to realize this, (view spoiler). This is a particularly bizarre case of what the internet would call "fridging" - the whole point of this character's anguish is to get the priest and vampire together so that they can argue while hauling her along on their rote epic fantasy wilderness travel, headed toward a showdown with a big villain whose identity I smugly figured out almost immediately (100% incorrectly).

Aside from the banal plot, my chief complaint (as almost always with this sort of mass-market genre literature) is that things should be weirder. We're told over and over again that the fae twists reality to suit the subconscious mind, but this basically only ever manifests itself in the casting of a few spells and monsters appearing at night and swiftly getting chopped to bits by the priest or the vampire [Also there's a pleasure god/demon of some sort who provides the vampire with a nonsensical reason to join the quest]. The most interesting part of the book, by far, is in the initial city and the hints we get at how society has evolved in the shadow of the disastrous colonization. Mainstream society has adopted to the day-to-day use of what is essentially magic, while the Church (a much-mutated version of Christianity, it appears, with the priest and the vampire sharing a joke about "parting the waters" at one point) wants to return to a more terrestrial way of life.

This is as good a point as any to segue to the vampire, who, it turns out, was once the prophet of this church, before forsaking his soul and humanity for eternal life sustained by feeding on the fear (and/or blood) of women he kidnaps and hunts. There's a painfully obvious subtext of sexual assault here, which later moves to outright text, with the narrative letting us know that while he is incapable of actually performing sexually, he uses the threat in his arsenal of fear-mongering. The other subtext here is the homoerotic relationship between the priest and the vampire, who loathe one another and are from completely incompatible backgrounds but are inescapably drawn together anyway, etc. It's like one problematic romantic cliche after another, but with no indication that the relationship will ever be consummated (or, perhaps, that the author is even aware of it). The vampire is clearly the author's proudest creation, but he, like the novel itself, moves quickly from some interesting ideas into cliche.

Honestly, I would have quit this one about halfway through if I hadn't just done that to a different book. The sunk cost fallacy is a dangerous thing. ...more

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Nov 03, 2018 Wanda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-project, used-books, fantasy, read-in-2018, z-1990s, female-authors

This book has been one that I’d been looking forward to in my SFF reading list and I was not disappointed! It has much more good/evil complexity than many of the fantasy books that were previously published (before 1991). Although it is in many ways a typical quest tale, Friedman gives it a couple of twists that distinguish it from earlier quest tales—one member of the party is undoubtedly evil and the party is looking to track down a demon-type entity which has stolen the memories of one of the This book has been one that I’d been looking forward to in my SFF reading list and I was not disappointed! It has much more good/evil complexity than many of the fantasy books that were previously published (before 1991). Although it is in many ways a typical quest tale, Friedman gives it a couple of twists that distinguish it from earlier quest tales—one member of the party is undoubtedly evil and the party is looking to track down a demon-type entity which has stolen the memories of one of the party. This demon must be killed to restore her to some semblance of normality. Normally, all of the questers would be good guys (sometimes corrupted like Boromir in LOTR), but this is like inviting one the Nazgul to join you in your travels! They are not looking for an object, but for a target, bringing back a memory, not a trophy.

The world Erna, where this tale takes place, reminded me somewhat of Sheri Tepper’s world, Grass. There is a malign feeling to Erna and its inhabitants toward the humans who have settled there that felt familiar from that world. I also was reminded of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series—the settlers of Erna didn’t actually choose the planet so much as get stranded there and have to deal with the fae emanations of the new world, just as the Darkover colonists must deal with their unchosen planet. Plus, the changes to humans and the rakh of Erna made me think of Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, and the adaptations of the ship-wrecked Tanu & Firvulag on ancient Earth.

Having enjoyed all of those books, these were all good associations for me. Although most groups fulfilling a quest have to deal with the price of success, I thought this one explored the notion of “how much power at what cost” very effectively. It is, of course, the first book in a trilogy, so I didn’t expect things to wrap up neatly, but I was pleasantly surprised at how unsettling the ending was—Ciani is restored, but has been very much changed by the whole experience; the priest has to let go of his preferred outcome; the Hunter has realized his limitations. I very much look forward to continuing the series.

Book number 296 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
...more

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Nov 16, 2016 Kitvaria Sarene rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy-no-subgenre, fantasy-all-subgenres

Don't let my low ranking deter you - this is a perfectly fine book, just not my exactly my personal cup of tea.

First off it has kind of a fairytale vibe for me - and I never liked those.

It also starts off with a feel like a secondary world - but after a short while (so no spoiler) we learn that it actually us humans in the future - and I personally HATE mix ups of realworld and secondary worlds. No idea why - it just doesn't click with me.

It is written emotionally - don't get me wrong, it isn't ...more

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Apr 21, 2014 Conor rated it really liked it

Read this trilogy ages ago, before I was even on GR. I've hardly seen it talked about on here which is a shame as although the pacing was poor in places and the supporting cast of characters was limited this was a memorable trilogy (especially this first installment) with one of the most unique and disturbing worlds in fantasy or sci-fi and a great relationship/bromance developed between the 2 lead characters. Gerald Tarrant was also a great anti-hero or maybe just straight up villain. A man who ...more

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Jan 10, 2018 Triumphal Reads rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy

Cons - Silly relationship
- Somewhat slow start
Pros - Gerald Tarrant
- The planet Erna is an awesome setting
- Several deep themes are touched upon

4.5 out of 5 stars - Full review can be found at - https://triumphalreads.com/black-sun-... ...more

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Apr 24, 2012 Neda rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, sf, couldn-t-finish

I slogged through about half of the book, thinking maybe it will get better - I heard a lot of praises for this trilogy, so I expected something quite different. But I give up. I'm done. No more.
One reason why this book gets two and not one star is the magic system, which is interesting, if confusing - humans can use, consciously or unconsciously, natural forces of the planet Erna (called fae) to, well, do stuff, like materialize fantasies or nightmares, or change reality in accordance to their I slogged through about half of the book, thinking maybe it will get better - I heard a lot of praises for this trilogy, so I expected something quite different. But I give up. I'm done. No more.
One reason why this book gets two and not one star is the magic system, which is interesting, if confusing - humans can use, consciously or unconsciously, natural forces of the planet Erna (called fae) to, well, do stuff, like materialize fantasies or nightmares, or change reality in accordance to their purpose. So we have quite a different natural world then on Earth - evolution works according to the need of the creature, and humans unknowingly with their research created their rival species on the planet. Not the Star Trek story here - humans immediately tried to commit genocide, causing rakh (said species) to flee and try to protect themselves, creating demons which plague humans. Or something.
So, that's the good start.
Then we have our main characters - kind of vampire/evil fae/ex-human, priest (faith is the weapon of mass destruction here), chick/ex-adept in magic and kind of sidekick of the said chick go on a quest, searching for stolen...I don't know...adept-ness of the chick (she can't do magic anymore). Ok, good. There is even kind of girl-rakh, though I didn't follow that through. What I don't understand is why every character in this book just have to be so damn unlikable. Every time I kinda try to like somebody, he/she just do something to make me mad (or indifferent, honestly, I didn't think that possible). Or he/she isn't there anymore. I don't like the chick, I don't know why her co-characters like her, and why they want to help her. We don't know anything about her, except some vague things about her vitality, and some flirty stuff whith the priest, all vague. Really. Kind-of-vampire had some promise, but not much charm. Priest has the personality of a brick wall. And sidekick...I almost forgot that he is in the book. So they travel, and thare is some kind of fight, and I thought, yay, now we'll see some good, quality character interaction, and maybe author will permit us to get to know them all a bit. And then...kind-of-vampire and chick just go. Puff! Somewhere.
And that was the last straw. At that point I decided to make "couldn't finish" shelf, just to put this thing there.
Good luck if you decide to read it. I won't bother. ...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Lorena rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy

I found the fantasy world that was created here to be very interesting, and the author certainly does like her anti-heroes, based on this book and the one other I've read by her so far. However, I felt that the backstory and some of the characters could have used more filling out. We've barely been introduced to our main characters when suddenly they are thrust into their Designated Quest, supposedly in part because of the deep feelings two of the characters apparently formed for each other virt ...more

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Oct 24, 2013 Blodeuedd Finland rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

I struggled, oh how I struggled. This was the second time I started this book, the first was a DNF. This time I did get to half the book, but yawn.

The world is fascinating! Scifi mixed with fantasy. Humans came to a planet and settled. They lost their tech ad found magic and a cruel world. Awesome worldbuilding.

But, the characters are flat, the story was not interesting. After 250 pages I started to skim. I just could not bother anymore. At the end I closed the book, and will not read more or ca ...more

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Jan 24, 2019 Malum rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fantasy

This book started very promising. It has amazing worldbuilding, some interesting plot points (especially with the different religions and the magic vs. religion debate), and a few really interesting characters.

After a short while, though, a lot of things that Friedman was building is thrown out and it turns into your basic fantasy quest with lots and lots of walking around and our heroes bumbling blindly into dangerous situations.

It's a real shame, because Friedman could have done so much more ...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Blake Charlton rated it really liked it

five stars for classic science fantasy with wonderful world building. vivid setting and characters, a straight-forward and satisfying story. my only complaint concerned anachronisms in the prose style (e.g. characters from a pseudo-medieval (or maybe pseudo-neogothic) culture using corporate slang like "PR"). but overall, this is a wonderful series and deserves to be revisited in this era of gritty fantasy. i'm looking for the rest of the series.

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topics	posts	views	last activity
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Fantasy. One MC was a vampire-like being. He lived in a castle in a forest that he controlled and hunted in. Somehow he got roped into some quest with a group, and they have to cross a desert where he nearly dies from sun exposure. Spoiler. [s]	4	47	May 18, 2018 07:20AM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Sci-fi/Fantasy - Technology stops working based on fear or unbelief, a guy with green arrows? [s]	4	283	Mar 03, 2018 05:38AM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED: Fantasy: Book with a cleric that must team up with a dark wizard on a quest	2	25	Feb 05, 2018 06:19PM
The Not a Book Cl...: BSR: Part 6(Chapters 42-Epilogue)	3	6	Sep 15, 2017 01:01PM
The Not a Book Cl...: BSR: Part 5(Chapters 35-41)	5	5	Sep 15, 2017 12:27PM
The Not a Book Cl...: BSR: Part 4(Chapters 29-34)	6	6	Sep 12, 2017 02:40AM
The Not a Book Cl...: BSR: Part 3(Chapters 22-28)	7	4	Sep 09, 2017 10:05AM

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About C.S. Friedman

C.S. Friedman

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Celia S. Friedman is a science fiction and fantasy author. She has also been credited Celia S. Friedman and Celia Friedman. ...more

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