The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing, Book One

Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth -- its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals -- the kind of all-embracing universe that calls up comparison to the worlds of such contemporary fantasy masterworks as George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It's a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future, as untold thousands gather for a crusade. Among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasurimbor Kellhus -- part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence -- from lands long thought dead. The Darkness that Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion.