Black Sun Rising
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| Author | C.S. Friedman |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Coldfire Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Publisher | DAW Books |
| Released | November 1, 1991 |
| Media Type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 496 pp (hardcover reissue edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-88677-485-3 (hardcover reissue edition) |
| Followed by | When True Night Falls |
Black Sun Rising is a fantasy novel by C.S. Friedman.
[edit] Plot summary
Black Sun Rising begins when a priest of the Church, Damien Vryce, arrives in Jaggonath. He meets a woman, Ciani, who owns a store called the Fae Shop filled with Worked objects of all sorts. Ciani is an Adept, a human being who can See the Fae all the time, while ordinary humans need to Work their eyesight to do so. He offers to take her out to dinner, things run their natural course, and eventually they become lovers.
However, just when things couldn't be better and it even seems Damien is falling in love with Ciani, something terrible happens- the Fae Shop explodes with Ciani inside it. Damien is certain she is dead, but Ciani's assistant, Senzei Reese ('Zen') arrives, to tell him she is alive, but with many of her memories gone and her abilities as an Adept were lost.
Damien, Senzei, and Ciani set off after her attackers. On the way, they meet an unidentified Adept named Gerald Tarrant. Damien is very interested to find out that Tarrant carries a sigil that marks him as a servant of the Hunter, a creature that lives in the Dark Forest north of Jaggonath and feeds off innocent women, but they are hunting the same creatures and join forces.
However, after they are attacked by some of the creatures, called Soul Eaters, Gerald Tarrant turns on Ciani and destroys what is left of her memory, then flees with her in the aftermath of the battle. Damien and Senzei, still wounded, go after Tarrant. After making it through the forest, they are intoduce to the Hunter, Gerald Tarrant, also Neocount of Merentha, the former Prophet of Damien's Church. Though the obvious tension is not much eased by the following demand that Damien and Senzei continue to let Tarrant travel with them, the Hunter does heal Senzei's wounds and returns Ciani to them, restoring the memories he had taken from her.
The group now travels to the rakhlands, where a trip over a fae-blocking barrier almost destroys the binding keeping Tarrant alive. In desperation, knowing the Hunter needs to be fed and not willing to allow anyone else to feed him, Damien forms a channel with Tarrant that will allow the Hunter to feed off his fear through dreams. They encounter rakh, where a member of the interpreter-like caste joins them, and gain a few leads on where they must travel: to the lair of the Keeper of Souls.
The Keeper sends a fae-born creature, Calesta, to attack and hound the travelers. Calesta tricks Senzei, using Zen's longing to be an adept against him- and killing him. The same night as Senzei's death, Calesta also traps Tarrant with an image of his murdered wife, and binds him over a subterranean fire, where the Keeper of Souls feeds off his pain. Damien then must make a decision: should he rescue the Hunter, and unleash his evil power over the world again, or should he leave him to his fate and try to defeat the Keeper of Souls without an Adept's power? In the end, he decides to save Tarrant and worry about the consequences later. They manage to defeat the Keeper of Souls by triggering an earthquake in the fault zone the palace is built upon, and then must flee the Soul Eaters. In the end, Tarrant brings down the roof of the tunnel they are trapped in, forming an escape route for Damien, Ciani, the rakh Hesseth, and exposing the Soul Eaters, and himself, to the killing sun.
Damien and Ciani return with Hesseth to the rakh village, where Ciani chooses to stay. Damien is ready to head back to the human lands, and the next stage of the journey, when he receives a surprising visitor: Gerald Tarrant, who had somehow managed to survive the exposure to sunlight. He tells the Hunter his plans- to go to the Eastern Continent of Erna, where he believes the corruption that turned rakh into Soul Eaters stems from. Tarrant refuses; he has been badly burned by the sun, and doesn't relish the thought of traveling miles above the earth fae, which cannot be reached through deep water, with the man who has sworn to kill him. But, after a visit from Calesta that nearly results in the breaking of an oath he had sworn long ago, the Hunter changes his mind and goes with Damien.
[edit] Characters in "Black Sun Rising"
- Damien Vryce – main protagonist, village priest
- Ciani – an adept, loremaster and owner of the Fae Shop
- Senzei Reese ('Zen') – Ciani's assistant. He wants more than anything to be an Adept.
- Gerald Tarrant – Adept, hunter, and former Prophet
- Hesseth – rakh translator who joins the group in seaking the Keeper of Souls
- Calesta – demon assistant to the Keeper of Souls
- Keeper of Souls – the adversary
[edit] Release details
- 1991, United States, DAW Books ISBN 0-88677-485-3, Pub date 1 November 1991, Hardcover reissue
- 1992, United States, DAW Books ISBN 0-88677-527-2, Pub date 1 September 1992, Paperback reissue
- 2005, United States, DAW Trade ISBN 0-7564-0314-6, Pub date 6 September 2005, Paperback reprint
