Going back and reviewing my blog entries made me realize how much detail I put out about my thoughts on The Fallen, and here, I haven’t hardly said anything about the Beyond. There are a couple of reasons for this, I suppose – largely the rewrite of Trials disrupting that process, and perhaps a desire to write overcoming a desire to opine. Still, here’s what the book deals with…
Beyond basically covers two periods. First, there is the time when Vanarra’s reign as Matriarch is ending. She’s done well, has fostered a very strong house, but has come to the end with some measure of regret and loss, especially since the loss of her beloved Buck not long before the book opens. While she has the gratitude and satisfaction of a life spent well, she still looks forward realizing that her possibilities are few, and her future is at the point where nothing else is in front of her other than a downward track. The second period of time is after she leaves with Theo and Sahni. Not giving anything away here, since this is the epilogue of The Rescue. Fifteen hundred seasons later (nearly one for every individual rescued from the Meeting Den), Theo directs her to return to Thuria, a Thuria that has enjoyed a splendid “Golden Age,” but one that is also succumbing to dark echoes of Sahni and Van’s accomplishments in the age before.
Society, when Vanarra returns, has changed. There are improvements, such as the equality of mixed bloods now being fact and not something hoped for, and there are many disappointments, like the decline of the houses and rise of cults in her name’s sake and in Sahni’s. There are a lot of opportunities to paint concepts that I find disturbing into the work, such as the “commercialization” of religion and faith or the “softening” of key truths and standards.
There’s also the struggle for control, for dominance of those one does not agree with. For the de Caterra, they had Vulpi. For the Foundationalists, they had their own mechanisms of persuasion and control. Neither of those more “overt” or medical kinds of control are asserted here – this time, it’s the control of belief. When those who are responsible for offering the correct path soften and sweeten their message to make it more appealing, it is, in the end, less substantial. Those who crave a deeper meaning and true purpose in their lives are left empty and hollow, and they see through the fake facades and paper thin pandering. Left with no viable alternative, they turn to others who offer what, objectively, is the wrong answer, but it is alluring, nonetheless, because it “pretenses” well at having actual substance and depth.
Rituals, in particularly intense and challenging rituals, even scary ones, can present the forms of substance and unity even when the truth of them isn’t there. Creation of an evil, of an enemy, can unite and galvanize those together who would otherwise splinter and disagree. Fear, simple fear, can wrap tight cords around those might try to look and find the true path lost to them. Ignorance, however… ignorance is the touchstone. One can choose no other alternatives if they are kept ignorant of the fact they exist. Through lies and misinformation and indoctrination, an individual’s perception of the world can be markedly and completely shifted so far that the beliefs as crazy as “When George Washington died, he became a god!” can actually seem real.
That’s a good sampling of where Beyond is heading. More later…
JTL