---
product_id: 61557344
title: "The Great Ordeal: The Aspect-Emperor: Book Three Paperback – July 25, 2017"
brand: "r. scott bakker"
price: "₨3060"
currency: LKR
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.lk/products/61557344-the-great-ordeal-the-aspect-emperor-book-three-paperback-july
store_origin: LK
region: Sri Lanka
---

# The Great Ordeal: The Aspect-Emperor: Book Three Paperback – July 25, 2017

**Brand:** r. scott bakker
**Price:** ₨3060
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Great Ordeal: The Aspect-Emperor: Book Three Paperback – July 25, 2017 by r. scott bakker
- **How much does it cost?** ₨3060 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.lk](https://www.desertcart.lk/products/61557344-the-great-ordeal-the-aspect-emperor-book-three-paperback-july)

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- r. scott bakker enthusiasts

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    NO SPOILERS REVIEW
  

*by I***N on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 18, 2016*

I have been a huge fan of The Second Apocalypse series right from the first book The Darkness That Comes Before. There is really nothing in any modern fantasy/sci-fi genre that even comes close to Baker's philosophical and artistic style. I have devoured the three Prince of Nothing and the two Aspect-Emperor books in 3 months in 2013 and the wait of the Great Ordeal has been quite long to say the least. At one point, I was worried that the last two books would never see the light of day because of all of Scott’s publisher issues.Of course the second I heard that the Great Ordeal finally had a publication date, I pre-ordered both the Kindle and Audible versions. Now that I had a chance to listen to/read The Great Ordeal, the question is was the wait worth it? I say absolutely!Baker picks up right where he left off. Everything that made me like this series so much is still here in copious amounts. You will find plenty of philosophical musings about the make-up of morality, about the nature of a god/supreme being, about the foibles of human nature, about the essence of faith, about cause and effect, and many, many other themes.Baker’s style is still very much true to form. He strikes a perfect balance between being artistic and almost mystical, without losing the reader or making the prose unnecessarily hard to understand. I find this to be his greatest strength as a writer, the only other person to accomplish this successfully is Dostoyevsky. As a matter of fact, both Baker’s and Dostoyevsky’s styles are rather similar in a lot of ways. Perhaps it’s no wonder they are two of my favorite fictions writers. And yes, I did just compare a world famous 19th century Russian novelist with a contemporary Canadian sci-fi writer, such is the interesting world of literature.Since I promised no spoilers, I will not comment very much on the story. I just want to assure readers that every major plot line and character gets plenty of air time. The main plot as a whole also moves along quite nicely. While I can definitely see how Baker is setting up the pieces for the conclusion, I totally cannot even begin to guess how all this will come together at the end.In this installment, we also get a much better exposition of the Dûnyain as well as the Nonmen. These sections were probably my favorite ones. A lot of these scenes are largely dialogue driven, but they are so interesting and well done that I was completely engrossed and almost transfixed while reading them.My only quibble is that there are parts of this book that can be probably be slimmed down a bit. There were places where I felt like things dragged a little bit, particularly on Esmenet’s chapters. Overall, not a big deal, it’s probably no more than 5% of the book that I would cut.In conclusion, this an absolutely great book and completely true to the essence of the series. Scott does not miss a beat despite the actual “great ordeal” involved in getting this published. If you are a fan of the series, have waited a long time, and are on the fence as to whether you want to get back into this, my wholehearted recommendation is to get this book!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Characters so human you can't help but hate them.  Every single one.
  

*by Z***G on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 19, 2016*

Assuming anyone that is considering this book has already read the previous two in this series and the three in the preceding series.  You already know Bakker's singular style.  You know the astonishing depth of his world building.  You know the complexity and realism of his characters.  You know that he breaks with so many tropes of the genre, creating a world and mythology unlike any other.So why not 5 stars?  Two related reasons.  A huge part of the underlying theme involves the limits of people understanding their own motivations.  The title of one of the books "The Darkness That Comes Before" is a reference to this.  On his blog Scott Discusses this at length in what he calls the Blind Brain Hypothesis.  I find it fascinating, but not nearly as fascinating as he does.  You get the impression that more text is spent on characters contemplating or reflecting on their actions than is spent on them actually doing things.  There are a great many "Okay, I get it, Esmi feels sorry for herself, can we please move on with the story" moments.That leads into reason number two; the characters are so human, so flawed, so like lost blind children, that they are very very hard to like.  In fact, I hate them.  I hate every last character in the story to the point where I want the bad guys to succeed in killing them all.Given that, why four stars instead of one?  Because everything else is just that good.  So good as to ruin many other fantasy stories for me.  After reading Scott, most other fantasy reads as childish, even entry level Disney fluff.  He has elevated this space and for that I wish him all the success in the world

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Fantasy as it should be
  

*by E***N on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 11, 2016*

I grew up reading fantasy and the classics (Tolstoy, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Austin, etc). As I read more of the classics, the terrible prose and character development of most fantasy became intolerable and I drifted away from the genre. For many years I read none- Bakker's series is one of those that brought me back into the fold. His combination of absolutely all encompassing world building, an epic plotline, navel gazing character introspection, philosophical musings, and horrific violence is, for me, what fantasy should be. He writing is, of course, a big notch below that of the classic authors but for fantasy his wordy, almost voluptuous, prose is a dream come true. He veers into grandiloquence occasionally but I'll forgive him for that. He also has a handful of words he LOVES and overuses: marmoreal, cyclopean, legion...to name a few. However, he creates real characters and is able to delineate personalities (a rarity for fantasy, which tends to survive on cardboard cutouts). His scene in Thousandfold Thought when Achamian watches Esmenet wash clothes in the river is, along with Gollum's near recanting outside of Cirith Ungol in LOTR, one of the most tragic things I've read in fantasy. His "bad guys" are exactly that: horrible and damned with no chance at redemption. His battle scenes are breathless and visceral. His entire world has such a substantive feel, an distinct atmosphere unlike any other I've read. From the characters, to the religions, to the regions, to the magic schools...everything is distinct and colorful. The latest book continues the tradition of excellence. The tragedy of the non-men and their fall from grace to madness is especially well captured and unlike anything I've read in fantasy. Bakker's idea that their unnatural immortality is incompatible with their god given mortality is a subtle horror that plays out very well across multiple books: what else could be more awful than the loss of self, as memory, which binds our past to our present, slowly erodes across the millenia? The ways he has developed for the non-men to cope are brilliant and pathetic as their attempts to recapture what they have lost results in the degradation and collapse of a once magnificent race. His books are ones I wait for and actually buy in hardcover form as soon as available. The only other fantasy authors receiving similar treatment from me are Martin and Rothfuss.

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*Store origin: LK*
*Last updated: 2026-02-09*