My life in books

The Coldfire Trilogy, by C. S. Friedman:
Black Sun Rising
When True Night Falls
Crown of Shadows

Imagine a world that responds in a direct and material way to your hopes, your dreams, your faith … and your fears. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy (part science fiction, part dark fantasy) is set on such a world, the very distant planet Erna, colonised more than a thousand years ago by settlers from Earth (in a universe without convenient faster-than-light space travel, so that the colonists are well and truly on their own. Unknown to the settlers, Erna harbours – in fact, is permeated with - a previously unknown kind of energy, which its newest inhabitants call the fae.

The interaction of thought, imagination and emotion with fae energy results in the real, material, manifestation of those thoughts, imaginings and emotions. For the native intelligent species of Erna, the rakh, this is a process they have evolved within, and manipulation of the fae is automatic and instinctively controlled. However, for the human colonists, it is often involuntary, often uncontrollable, and often draws on their strongest and deepest fears and terrors, with the consequence that the colony is almost destroyed by the horrors taken from the subconscious minds of its members and made flesh. Over time, human society adapts, finds ways to cope with life in a place where anything you imagine, even your gods, can become real. Technology reverts to pre-industrial levels – the less complex a thing is, the less your mind can cause to go wrong with it. Some people – perhaps naturally evolving, perhaps changed by the presence of the fae around them or the hopes of the colonists for some form of adaptation – are born with the ability to see, and to consciously use the fae for their own ends. Humanity survives.

Some nine hundred years before the time period in which the novels are set, one man, Gerald Tarrant, later called the Prophet, sees the potential for a better future for humanity on Erna if faith and trust in a beneficent and protective God and His Church can be so created and nurtured and channelled that there is no deep well of fear in the darkest corners of human minds for the fae to work with. His Church begins to grow, but Tarrant himself fails in faith and falls into pride and despair and the certainty of damnation.

As the first novel begins, the Church is powerful but by no means sufficiently monolithic to bring about its long-held vision to deliver humans on Erna from the dangers of the fae through faith in the one god. Most humans have learned how to avoid or moderate, at least often enough to survive and occasionally thrive, the worst effects of living with the fae. Adepts and sorcerers Work with it. Horrors old and new still threaten humans who are careless, caught unaware, or simply unlucky. And having made a bargain with the dark forces of Erna to avoid death, Gerald Tarrant, now called the Hunter, walks the night and preys on human blood and fear.

But there is something else happening on Erna as well, and despite mutual distrust and antipathy, both Tarrant and a sorcerer-priest, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, are drawn into an uneasy working relationship in an attempt to discover what lies behind the strange memory loss of an Adept, Ciani of Faraday. What they discover will lead them further on a journey that has the potential to save – or end – human life on Erna.

By binding together in such a quest a devout and committed priest who is also a sorcerer, and the undead and sworn to evil founder of the Church he adheres to, Friedman sets the scene for a complex and nuanced exploration of the nature of good and evil, purity and corruption, faith and despair, of fall and redemption, sacrifice and rebirth, and the classic ethical and moral issue: do the ends justify the means? Can any good come of allying with a creature so completely sworn to evil as Tarrant the Hunter? Can the Hunter justify an attempt to save humanity without forswearing his allegiance to evil? Can either man remain what he is in the presence of the other? And if one, or both, change, what are the consequences both for them and for their quest? Friedman herself offers a glimpse into the kinds of questions she has chosen to consider in the writing of this trilogy:

The religious themes in CF? They are the meat of the series for me, an investigation in to the nature and ramifications of human faith the way only SF can explore it. What will our religions become when god actually answers our prayers? Are we prepared to deal with the kind of power we say we want? How does good inspire man, how does evil corrupt him, and what are the names of the ten thousand shades of gray in between? The fae provides a mirror that lets us see all these issues more clearly and postulate how they might affect us. I believe there is a beauty in religious faith that transcends the doctrine of any one religion, and I struggled to capture that beauty. (source)

And in addition to giving the reader a great deal to think about, it’s also a well-written, well-plotted story with compelling protagonists, intriguing antagonists, strong secondary characters, a well-developed setting and lots of action. My main complaint is that so many of Friedman’s memorable women characters either die or are left behind as Vryce and Tarrant struggle on through challenge after challenge to the end of their journeys.