Steven Wu's Book Reviews: When True Night Falls (C S Friedman)

In When True Night Falls, CS Friedman's second novel in The Coldfire Trilogy, the warrior-priest Damien Vryce and the nearly immortal Gerrold Tarrant continue their quest to eradicate the evil mastermind behind the atrocities of the first book. Along the way they encounter obstacles, enemies, betrayal, and plots upon sub-plots. And finally they encounter the great evil behind everything...or is he?

If you think this sounds a lot like the plot of Black Sun Rising, the first book in the trilogy, you wouldn't be mistaken. The biggest problem with When True Night Falls is that it basically recycles the overall story arc of the first book: an unlikely team discovers Bad Things, then try to stop these things from happening by attacking a shadowy sinister figure who only pops up near the end of the book. This is not to say that When True Night Falls is entirely derivative--there are certain sections that are substantially more exciting than anything in the first book, including the particularly gruesome trek through the land of the Terata, as well as new revelations about the nature of the Church and its mission. But in the end all the novel parts of When True Night Falls are too minor to make a difference--and too many significant parts of the book (including the setting-up-for-a-sequel ending) are too familiar to excite a reader's interest.

On a more specific note, the biggest disappointment of When True Night Falls was Friedman's failure to develop further the nature of the fae--the magic-like power that is affected by people's conscious and subconscious emotions. As I remarked in my review of Black Sun Rising, the fae is a fascinating concept that Friedman fails to treat with the proper respect. Rather than fully carrying out the (scientific) implications of the fae, Friedman instead treats it like generic fantasy-book magic. There are occasional exceptions to this--and, indeed, Friedman seems to promise a more interesting treatment of the fae in the last book--but Friedman really shoots her novel in the foot by making its most interesting element a bore.

Ultimately, despite some interesting sections, When True Night Falls is just more of the same. And, given the mediocrity of its predecessor, that's not a good thing.