Books like The Thousandfold Thought

This was a good finale to the Prince of Nothing series. I definitely consider this to be one of the best dark fantasy series I've read over the years. Bakker's fantasy world has plenty of depth and his story is engaging and full of twists and turns. It also helps that is is packed with memorable characters and that Bakker has an engaging writing style! This final book focused on the conclusion of the Holy War story arc as well as Kellhus's confrontation with his father. Outside of that there was plenty of other stuff going on to hold ones attention as the various factions kept up their plotting and intrigue while the Consult continued to make their own presence known to the wider world.The story was good. There was plenty of action and intrigue and also a decent amount of interesting social commentary inserted into the story in a way that did not overwhelm it. Kellhus's and his Dûnyain Logos philosophy have always been the most interesting bits of the story for me. It is a little nihilistic but I do love its acknowledgement of cultural indoctrination in particular. Not that Prince of Nothing is a series without any flaws. It is a super dark world with very interesting, but quite evil, characters and some fairly dark content so if you are in the mood for a light read this is not the series to go with! That said, I never felt like this series go too bleak in tone and that is due to the way Bakker succeeded in mitigating the horror and darker moments of the story. It helped that he never sold any of the characters to the reader as people they should like or be rooting for and that his somewhat detached narration style kept things bearable. The biggest flaws of this series for me was the misogyny that was ingrained in every level of the story and the overuse of certain tropes. Bakker claims the misogyny was a deliberate ploy on his part but I've got my doubts. If it was deliberate he was being way to subtle as this guy missed his point! I can see the cultural misogyny present in the worldbuilding as deliberate but I'm less inclined to give him a pass of the stuff we see in the story set up and in places where it has no reason to exist culturally. This series, and this book in particular, has always overdone the madness trope. Half the characters are insane! I've no problem with any of the characters story arcs individually but when you add them all together it makes the trope feel overused and comes off as a bit lazy. Not that any of the flaws were things that overly damaged my enjoyment of this series. It was fantastic in a number of ways and very engaging from start to finish. I just feel like with a few tweaks this series could have joined my all time favourites list! All in all I felt like this was a good conclusion to a memorable series. It wrapped out a number of ongoing story arcs but left plenty of openings to keep me interested in reading the sequel series.Rating: 4.5 stars. I'll round down to 4 stars on my official GR's rating just to chop one star off a book in this series as a result of its few annoying flaws:) Though it is a bit harsh. Audio Note: David DeVries did an excellent job with the audio. It is a pity he was not retained for the sequel series!