The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing, Book One

Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth -- its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals -- the kind of all-embracing universe that calls up comparison to the worlds of such contemporary fantasy masterworks as George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and Stephen R. Donal…