Skip to main content

Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman


My very first book review, and it's for one of my favorite authors.

C.S. Friedman hasn't written a whole lot of books, but what she has done has just about all been top shelf science fiction.

A few notable favorites would be Madness Season, where an immortal creature that can assume the shape of any animal, but is allergic to sunlight and must survive on the nutrients in the blood of other creatures (a vampire basically) must learn how to survive in a universe where the human race has been enslaved by a reptillian hive-mind race. And the Coldfire Trilogy, which features a planet that was started as a human seed colony, except the colonists found upon landing that there were forces that would act on conscious and unconscious thoughts and effect the physical world. Thus if you had a doubt that something might not work, it would be amplified, and definitely not work. Hundreds of years later, it's become a fantasy world, where people use guns in favor of swords, since they are more reliable, and people are able to tap into the ambient energy in order to perform magic.

Feast of Souls is the first book of the Magister trilogy, and is a pure fantasy setting, which is a first for Friedman. In this world, there are people who can perform magic, but the cost is high, for every magical working, a bit of the casters life force is expended. Small things may only cost a few seconds, but larger workings could burn off hours of their life. These beings are called witches, and their eventual fate is to die young in old bodies.

Witches are not the only ones who are able to do magic, however, there is another group, called Magisters, who are somehow able to perform magic without having to expend their life force, and as such, they are effectively immortal. It comes to be known that in order to become a Magister, one takes a witch, and has them expend all of their life force, then once they are about to die, they will find another life force, and live and perform magic off of it, until it is gone. Magisters are exclusively male for whatever reason, (the hypothesis is that women are programmed by evolution to want to nurture life, and are therefore unable to bring themselves to live at another's expense) essentially a prerequisite for being a Magister then is that one needs to be selfish to the point of believing that one has the right to live no matter what.

The primary concern that Magisters face is boredom, no mortal concerns matter to them, since they can just outlive any enemies that they might have, and their are only so many places to go and things to do in the world. Onto the scene comes one very stubborn woman who is determined to have the power of the Magisters no matter what the cost. And an invading species of creature that devours life force in a manner that the Magisters find a little too close to their own methods of finding power.

It was a very fun read, with lots of political angling, and intrigue, as well as heroic prostitutes and knights in distress.

If you like fantasy that's a little bit dark, I'd recommend checking it out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lemme Tell You About The Transformer, Astrotrain, And Why He's My Favorite

       I am, quite obviously, a massive fan of Transformers, but I grew up in kind of a weird time for being a fan. Really, I'm just a LITTLE too young. I remember seeing my brother, who was six years older than I, get all of the coolest Transformers, and then by the time that I started being able to ask for Transformers for myself, the nature of Transformers had greatly changed. I have a great anecdotal story about him clipping Soundwave (arguably one of the coolest Transformers toys ever, which turned into a microcassette player) to his shorts and climbing a tree. He then proceeded to fall 30 feet out of that tree, and land on Soundwave, which poked him right in the kidney, and he peed blood for a week.        While I still have a great deal of fondness for them, Powermaster Optimus Prime is just not as cool of a toy as the original Optimus Prime. Notably, if you landed on Powermaster Optimus Prime, he probably wouldn't puncture your kidney, but the original Optimus Prime mig
Post a Comment
Read more

A Return To My Brainstorming Days Of Old

Way back when, say, ten years ago, I had a dream of making a game. At first I wanted to make it a videogame like a JRPG (Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc.). Then it was going to be a pen and paper RPG (Dungeons and Dragons). And for many years, it kept bouncing around, back and forth between the two, I thought I was so very creative and clever. Eventually I started to realize that I was never going to be able to do anything like this on my own, and that neither I, nor any of my friends, had the time or energy to put into learning the necessary technical skills for a videogame, or simply the desire for a tabletop game. Still, I really liked brainstorming ways that different elements of a setting would interact with each other, whether it be a game system, a fantasy world, a system of government, or a military force. Sometimes I'd write this stuff down, but more often than not, I just day dreamed about it. I think it was kind of like therapy. I still wanted to do something wit
Post a Comment
Read more

The Worst Contact Allergic Reaction I've Ever Had

I'm started to feel like a bit of a freak show. I've of course been injured by shrapnel from a pipe bomb, and I've got impressive scars to prove it (side note: One of my friends said that I need to come up with a really awesome story to go along with my scar, and I sad "Someone throwing a pipe bomb at me isn't awesome enough?") I've mentioned that I took a first aid/CPR class in my first quarter of college, taught by Ron Hussman at Edmonds Community College. He was a great instructor, with a lot of great stories being a navy medic for 24 years, I think that's what he said. I'm proud to say that the pictures of my leg injury are now part of his curriculum, but I got tired of raising my hand every time he asked if someone had done something in particular. Called 911? Check Used an epipen? Check Been in shock? Check Ridden in an ambulance? Check Had burns in your throat? Check (seriously, don't let your kids hold roman candles while they fire) Lat
1 comment
Read more