Before you read this review, I make you this promise: I will not in any way reveal the plot beyond the first eight pages of Volume I. So feel free to read this post all the way through; I won't spoil a thing. If you want to know more before you buy the first book, click on either book cover to visit Amazon.com and read sample chapters.
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Volume I: Banewreaker
431 pages; ISBN: 9780765305213 (hardcover)
512 pages; ISBN: 9780765344298 (paperback)
Volume II: Godslayer
349 pages; ISBN: 9780765312396 (hardcover)
404 pages; ISBN: 9780765350985 (paperback)
What if the battle between good and evil were not as simple as it appears?
In Jacqueline Carey's magnificent two-volume series, The Sundering, the reader is forced to wonder. There are two sides to every story, after all, and even the bad guys can have the best of intentions...
The world of Urulat was created by the death of the one World God, who died in giving life to the seven gods of creation. This is the original sundering. From the one sprang forth the many. But with the separate powers of creation came also the power to disagree.
When the first-born creator, Haomane (God of Thought), tries to force our hero, Satoris (God of the Quickening a.k.a. sexual reproduction), to remove his Gift from the race of humanity, Satoris refuses to comply with his brother's demand, and for good reason. Humanity is the only race in which Thought is coupled with Life. To remove the Quickening from humanity would be to forever separate the one from the other, with potentially dire consequences.
Angered by this show of disobedience, and failing to understand his brother's reasoning, Haomane sunders the world, both literally and figuratively, splitting the land of the gods off from the rest of the continent so that the people are left alone, separated from the divine. Only Satoris remains.
The novels are beautifully written, complete with profoundly moving characters and a two-shot-latte-addictive plot that will keep you turning page after page even when you should have gone to bed hours ago.
(My boyfriend looked at the cover of Banewreaker and said it didn't look like something he would enjoy. "Not enough action," he said. I admit I pushed him—cajoled, entreated, begged—until he opened the book to a random page. Then he flipped to another... and another... "Okay," he said. "It's good." Was I right about the action? "On every page," he said. "Are you happy now?" Yes. Very.)
But even beyond this, these books are filled with meaning, raising questions that will tug at you long after you've finished the books.
These two novels are rich with the subtle yet persistent exploration of our own human sundering—the ways in which we try to separate our rationality from our animal instincts, for example, or to separate the divine from our "lowly," mundane existence. But each separation is the beginning of opposition, the beginning of good and evil. What would life be like if we understood ourselves to be whole beings, at once both rational and physical, both earthly and divine?
Modern science is discovering that our rationality is, in fact, inextricably linked to our animal urges, and that our physical bodies also seem to be linked to a higher power we have yet to understand. But where science is still unwilling to tread, these books pick up the torch, moving beyond "Is it true?" to ask the more startling, and more enlightening question: "What does this mean to our most fundamental assumptions—about the world around us, and about the very nature of humanity?"
Even if you have never before read a "fantasy" novel, these books are not to be missed. Pick up a copy of Banewreaker, Volume I of The Sundering, and read the first page or two. You won't be able to put it down. (My mother had never read a fantasy novel before I told her about this series, and from the very first page she couldn't put them down either.)
This isn't mere "genre fiction"; this is the very height of literature: gripping characters, provocative questions, and pulse-pounding entertainment all combined into a gripping read you won't soon forget. It just doesn't get better than this.
