Chapter 61: Jaren shoots Zebel, who drops his father’s
soul stone. Mephistophilis splits bodily
from Teg and offers pardon. Vaun reveals
that the baal wants to subvert the Last Working to his own ends. Mephistophilis attacks the crew of the Exodus, defeating each in turn until Vaun’s void
drains the life from the demon. The baal
reappears in Teg’s body and feeds the last soul stone to the oracle. A god breaks free from the altar in a flurry
of geometric shapes.
Narr reveals himself
as the secret head of the Steerman’s Guild to Malachi in attempt to talk the
Guild master out of his revenge. When
that fails, he blesses Malachi’s wish to slit Jaren’s throat.
The sacrifice of high prana Gen souls is designed to replace
Thera with one-eyed Elathan as the god around which the Last Working is cast. Mephistophilis
intends to follow Elathan out of the universe as he is tired of living in a
universe that winding down like an old clockwork watch.
***
Chapter 62: Mephistophilis is still alive, having decoyed
Jaren and Vaun into killing Teg so that he could complete the sacrifice. He flees towards Timtzum, where Zadok created
the universe and where the Words of Creation are kept. Elena appears, warns everyone what could
happen if Mephistophilis reaches the Words of Creation, and resurrects Teg. The crew chases after the demon lord, pursued
by monsters.
To open the gate to
the Ninth Circle, Navkin warps the city of the Eighth Circle into concentric
rings. By spinning them in all
directions like a gyroscope, the gate opens to a land of ice, sleet, and hail.
Vaun states that Thera is of the Void and Zadok of the Well,
which aligns with traditional descriptions of yin and yang. However, the mythology of Nethereal states
that Zadok and Thera are ever fated to kill and transform into each other,
which might explain why Thera, in the form of Elena, has been connected to the
light of the Well throughout the adventure.
The icy description of the Ninth Circle is similar to the
frozen lake at the center of Dante’s Inferno.
***
Chapter 63: One last gate remains in the Ninth Circle,
which takes the Exodus to
Mithgar. They emerge in the midst of a
battle the Navy’s rebels are losing to the Guild fleet. Jaren moves to support the rebel fleet,
shattering the Guild formations. The Serapis and her supporting vessels emerge from
hiding and ravage the Exodus,
taunting Jaren on the comms. Jaren abandons ship in the Shibboleth alongside a shuttle presumed to be Elena’s. Meanwhile, the Exodus’s armor bulges and buckles under the Guild
fire, breaking open to reveal the pale form of Elathan.
In hindsight, it does not surprise me that there was another
gate in the Ninth Circle, or that it led to Mithgar. Dante left the frozen lake of his Inferno by
climbing down Satan’s legs before climbing through a cavern to the Earth’s
surface.
The armored angel/god once in the technological service to
humanity but now berserk is similar to the secrets of Evangelion’s mecha.
***
Chapter 64: Given the choice between chasing the
Shibboleth and destroying the Exodus, Malachi chooses the latter. Thus he has a front-row seat to a cosmic
horror finslapping his supports into dust.
Meanwhile, Jaren positions the Shibboleth behind the Serapis and fires on Elathan. The god of shipwreck charges the Serapis, worrying the ship like a rat before
flinging it down to Mithgar’s surface.
Elathan flies towards another gate in the stars, joined by Elena’s
shuttle and remnants of the two battle fleets.
Jaren orders the Shibboleth to
pass through the gate. On the other
side, they find the Mobius strip from Deim’s dream, complete with foreign words
on its surface. Golden beams lance out,
destroying many ship. The Shibboleth
attempts to land, but is shot down.
The description of a baleen monster that is part whale and
part ray recalls Sin from Final Fantasy X,
although, as a 3-D Final Fantasy game, the resemblance is likely accidental. It’s been a while since I’ve played FF VI, which does have direct influence
on the creation of Nethereal, so I don’t
remember if there is a beast similar to it in that game.
Malachi stares into the eye of Elathan before the attack. It is uncertain if he passed his SAN check…
The Shibboleth flies through one last gate, somewhat similar
to the transition in the Divine Comedy
from the Purgatorio on Earth to the Paradiso of Heaven.
***
Chapter 65: Jaren and his crew leave behind the wreck of
the Shibboleth to pursue Mephistophilis through the golden streets of
Tzintsum. The Gen captain confronts the
baal, which devolves into a fight.
Mephistophilis trounces Jaren and Teg, saying that he would have given
them honors for their act of service. As
he prepares to leave the universe, Navkin sacrifices her hellhound to give time
for Teg to recover and rush the baal.
Jaren manages to shoot Mephistophilis with a rodcaster. Although Tzimtzum is awash in molten metal,
the baal is not dead. Jaren tells everyone
to run and front loads his rodcaster.
Both baal and Gen disappear inside a small sun.
Elena appears, saying
goodbye as she must leave with Elathan.
Otherwise, to contain Thera’s soul within herself, she must read the
Words of Creation and end the world. If
another person reads them, she might be able to stay. As the words can only be read by a
necromancer, Deim must beat Vaun to the Last Working.
Tzimtzum is the golden city that Jaren dreamed of.
Necromancer here means Teth user, which explains why Elena,
as Thera’s soul, can read the words.
There is a passing resemblance between Mephistophilis and Sulaiman, the blond priest of Midras. The baal’s statement, “Midras is gone”, is also of interest. I do not see the two characters as being the same, but sharing characteristics of the people that worshiped Midras. Another name to watch for in Souldancer, just to see if –and likely when- Midras takes on a more prominent role in the story.
Zebel’s siring of Navkin makes Elena a motherless daughter
of a fatherless mother. No male genetic
material made Navkin, while Elena was a combination of two male fathers’
genetic material born spliced in Navkin’s egg cell. This symmetry was probably necessary to
prepare the vessel body for Thera’s soul.
***
Chapter 66: Dei falls for Vaun’s decoys. Elena dispels them, while he runs towards the
temple at the center of Tzimtzum. On a
tower reminiscent of Babel, Vaun prepares to read the Working. Deim attempts to stop him, but Vaun casts him
down from the tower. The First Working
is read. Deim awakens and looses an echo
of the Working stored within the artifact on his belt at Elathan, killing the
god. Fire races along the cables
connecting Elena to Elathan, consuming them.
As the ruined streets
burn, Elena tells Navkin and Teg, the only survivors of the Exodus’s trip
through hell, to flee. As they reach
safety through a portals in an arch, the Void in the form of Vaun confronts her. Elena has Thera’s soul, while Vaun has her
power. The Goddess of the Well faces off
against the God of the Void. She manages
to open a gate to the Void and seals Vaun within, replenishing the Well with
prana in the process.
Fire consumes
Tzimtzum.
Finding references to two Biblical stories on the walls of Tzimtzum
is curious, as Brian Niemeier insists that the universe is not our own. The stories are the Fall of Man and Tower of Babel, both of
which end in a scattering of people from a homeland and curses laid upon a
people. It is also curious that the 66th
chapter of Nethereal ends the tale with the advent of a god and fire falling on
heaven and the earths of the Middle Stratum, as the 66th book of the
Protestant Bible is the Revelation of John the Apostle, but that might also be
coincidence.
***
Epilogue: After
the fires that consumed Mithgar subsided, a survivor pulls himself free from
his shelter and screams in rage.
If this were not the first book in the series, the sudden
ending of Nethereal would work
against the story by not providing a satisfactory ending. Traditional five
act structure gives time for reflection by the characters after the climax
(or resolution in the diagram), typically devoting the same about of time to
the ending as was given the introduction. However, Nethereal
uses the extended introduction typical of two-cour anime
and ends right after the confrontation between Elena and Vaun is finished. As a hook for Souldancer, though, this works.
Where many writers, such as John Ringo, tend to treat their last chapter
and epilogue as denouement, this felt more like a Marvel post-credits
scene.
***
Final Thoughts:
Once again, Nethereal is not a book that rewards close reading so much as demands it. As such, I must recommend the paperbound version over the ebook format, as the ebook tends to promote skimming. Even after the what was a reread for me, I still feel like I missed more than I managed to catch.
I am impressed at how little description is needed in Nethereal to create its haunting mood. Instead of detailing the setting and action with the clarity of a photograph, Niemeier paints with broad strokes, allowing each reader to fill in the gaps with their own mind. This makes the horrors of the Nine Circles more vivid as no written description or visual image can beat that created in the reader's mind. This approach is used to great effect by Hitchcock and other thriller directors in the days before directors could rely on special effects for scares, as the monster that cannot be seen is often scarier than the monster that is seen. Most anime influenced fiction swings instead towards more explicit description as they try to mimic the visual nature of anime.
Had I the time, I would have liked to delve in detail into such topics as story structure, anime influences, and how the dueling genre conventions of the Master Thief and the Pirate Captain shaped how the story of Nethereal was told. I did touch on some of these topics in the read through, but I either scratched the surface or could develop the ideas further. Nethereal is so content rich that there was always something new to follow in each chapter.
I would also like to investigate how Final Fantasy VI influenced Nethereal and Souldancer, but that will require a read of Souldancer as Nethereal only has resonances to the first half of the game's plot.
Next month's selection is Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny.
Congratulations, that was a titanic work.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Bravo! Thank you Nathan, and all of you gentlemen for giving my work such detailed consideration.
ReplyDeleteWonderful work on the review, found it very helpful.
ReplyDeleteSo, I read Nethereal (love that it's to be pronounced n -ethereal, never occurred to me) three time, and my opinion went from 'barely tolerable' after the first read to 'this is pretty darn good' after the third. Now this breakdown/review shows that I missed about 75% of what was in the story - problem with reading as I'm falling asleep at night, rather than sitting at my desk, pencil and highlighter at hand.
About 2/3 through Souldancer, and am running into a lot of 'wait - what was the story of that guy? He was in Nethereal, right?' In addition, since the answer to the good guy/bad guy? question is usually 'both' - this makes for a situation whereby one either plows ahead hoping things clear up, or sets it aside to look at Nethereal some more. Which is not going to help much unless one is sitting at the desk with pencil and highlighter at hand.
I've seen very little anime, but, from what I have seen, Soul Cycle seems suited to be an epic series, 200+ 1/2-hour episodes, where one can examine, rewatch, and contemplate characters, relationships and events over the course of months or years. Helps a lot when there are a comparatively large number of main characters and a huge number of supporting characters, with equally complex relationships/motives/goals, spread across a dizzying variety of planets/settings. Cramming in a few chapters as one falls asleep is very suboptimal.
Another thing I particularly agree with, in addition to the 'requires careful reading' part, is the Universe-building, as opposed to mere world-building aspect of the book. I think upon my first superficial reading, I was off-put by the non-real-world physics/magic/hoodoo. Once I let go of all expectations that, somehow, this was our Universe, it became increasingly better.
Finally, I see more Lovecraft in here, masked by the use third person versus first person narration: a lot of Lovecraft's mystery and horror comes from viewing the story from within the limits of a single observer, such that the reader's imagination build unseen horrors on a foundation of subjective experience. Brian's use of third person makes that particular trick more tricky, but the overall effect feels similar as he unfolds horrors over many pages, revealed comparatively dispassionately in the third person. Or maybe I need more coffee.
Anyway, as noted elsewhere and unlike our stalwart reviewer here, I almost completely lack knowledge of the immediate referents for the story, and thus am a less than ideal reader - a lot of cool stuff is going right over my head, as this review showed. Yet, I'm getting plenty enough out of this to read to the end.
Keep up the good work!
I am impressed at how little description is needed in Nethereal to create its haunting mood. Instead of detailing the setting and action with the clarity of a photograph, Niemeier paints with broad strokes, allowing each reader to fill in the gaps with their own mind. This makes the horrors of the Nine Circles more vivid as no written description or visual image can beat that created in the reader's mind. This approach is used to great effect by Hitchcock and other thriller directors in the days before directors could rely on special effects for scares, as the monster that cannot be seen is often scarier than the monster that is seen.
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of part of an essay that John C. Wright penned on The Night Land (at http://www.scifiwright.com/and-no-female-ever/), and I think things work for Niemeier for the same reason:
Hodgson concentrates on creating a background so unearthly, so inhuman, so stark and huge and mysterious and grim as to excite awe. It is not a horror story, in the sense of a story that means to fascinate by means of the horrid. It is a story that attempts to capture the grim majesty of an utterly malevolent cosmos, to excite our wonder at the unnamed and the inexpressible.
>How can an author express the inexpressible? The first tool an author can use to create the effect is contrast. [...] The second tool is adumbration. Nothing in the Night Lands is described; nothing more than a suggestive name is ever given. Whether the horrors in the Night are extra-terrestrial, extra-dimensional, something created or summoned by man, or something that descended from black heavens in forgotten aeons for reasons never to be known, is not said, nor should it be. The implication is that the men of the Last Redoubt would not or cannot make the distinctions we who live in happier days might make between the natural and the supernatural, necromancy and technology.
So what happens when the setting is weird and strange?
>For this technique to succeed, the human characters cannot be themselves so exotic as to distract the reader from the huge and monstrous landscape through which they crawl. [...] Hence, inevitably, they must be archetypal.
Millennial King certainly picked up on this in the review at https://millennialking.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/review-nethereal-by-brian-niemeier-or-hell-and-back-again-a-necromancers-tale/
And Tropes Are Not Bad
I waited until the synopsis of the last chapters of "Nethereal" to comment. First, Superb work on the review, and congratulations to Brian on the Dragon award. As I mentioned in an earlier comment I started Nethereal with high hopes. The first couple of chapters promised a fun, wild ride. Unfortunately I soon got bogged down and found myself wondering what was going on. As the book progressed I kept waiting for it to coalesce into a recognizable story line, but all that happened was that it just got more confusing. I noted the comparison to anime, particularly Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Outlaw Star. I loved both series, but it has been a few years since I watched either. The strong points, and flaws in NGE are quite similar to those in Nethereal. Both began with gripping story lines. One characteristic of anime is that it often begins on a premise too outlandish to take seriously. But then it treats that premise with completely ingenuous seriousness until you find yourself drawn in and hooked nonetheless. The battle for Earth, using the Evas to fight the Angels is a perfect example. Same with the interdimensional quest in Nethereal. NGE lost it with the human instrumentality project. Who wanted this? Why? What was it supposed to accomplish? How does it relate to the Angels and the Evas? There was an alternate ending that tried to clear it up, but I found it less satisfying than the mysterious last episodes in the original. In Nethereal, I kept wishing that the story would focus one particular quest. The stones would have worked. An evil genius traps the souls of an entire race in a prison of stone cubes. The lone survivor of that race has to avenge his people, and free them. Bang. great story line. Or- a pirate crew is running from the law in a totalitarian universe. They need to find some sanctuary, assemble a resistance army, and defeat the bad guys. Or- My father built this ship, and it is mine by birthright. Only I can realize its potential and use it for its intended purpose. Or, using the Outlaw Star reference: A quirky crew of likeable humans and aliens is on a picaresque adventure through the galaxy. Any of the single story lines would have been a blast. Mixed all together it just got murky. I understand that a second or third reading would have cleared up some of the questions, but not every reader is willing to invest the effort.
ReplyDeleteJWM