Now I’m finally finished with this book, I read the Team Ibex translation. While it was interesting, I had multiple question marks after reading. As I now learned from reading TvTropes that this was supposed to be the prologue for a whole series, making me interested in the world was probably the goal. But do we have nowadays any more information regarding some plot points?
- First, which English translation is considered better in your eyes? I only read this one and while my confusions might stem from that translation, I didn’t exactly like the book well enough to read the other translation to check.
Now to the plot points:
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What happened to the girls? In TvTropes its said they run away? I never picked up anything like that while reading. For me it was an undisclosed mystery all the time.
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was there any mention in DE of the total end behind the pale, the Rodionov trench?
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also how did Rodionov know about all the future stuff? Is it supposed to be like in Asimov’s Foundation: everything is just mathematics in the end and with the correct formula, you can calculate the world’s trajectory?
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What happened with Jesper leaving Khan? As Jesper is going North, I do not really share Khans assumption that it was too much for Jesper. As prologue of the series it probably was supposed to set up the protagonist trio and then distribute them all on different paths.
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Are the girls similar to Innocents (with capital I)? Or is there any explanation why they have such a strange connection to the pale that the text directly says that Zigi gained pale related superpowers from their vanishing? And they realized “something is going wrong”? Wrong compared to what?
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also regarding the Innocents: What exactly is the connection between the Pale and the Innocents? From DE I got more the feeling that they were mystically connected to human thought, but here Saint Ambrosius says human nihilism brought him into being. But at least the people shown in the books weren’t exactly nihilistic. I mean even Ziki didn’t seem to really believe it in my eyes. So to me it read more like a normal “crazy person in a position of absolute power in a nuclear armed theocratic country” instead of the mystical “advances human technology and thought simply by existing” that I remember about Dolores Dei.
I remember that there was this one fact sheet from the start of DE development that explained the Innocents as beings who receive future thoughts and technologies through the pale. But I’m sure it also said that those were only earlier ideas and they scrapped that. But since DE started development after the book, does it hold true here? So does that mean its a closed loop time travel? People in the future are nihilistic, because SoMeBoDy is nuclear carpet bombing the world while simultaneously the world is getting memory wiped and these thoughts then influence a certain person to start sending out Easter eggs for the whole worldin the first place? -
And on that topic: why is the genocidal campaign of Ambrosius advancing the Pale? I thought the Pale was Human thought or rather the combined human remembering of the past. By eliminating humans, shouldn’t that instead stop the Pale, since there are less humans who can remember?
So in general: I don’t think my time was wasted reading the book, but I also wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody but hardcore fans.
Thanks for the detailed answer!
As far as I understood it, the self chiller can talk to the memory of deceased persons in the Pale. But if they are not dead, he can’t get in contact with them. Thus proving that the girls are not dead.
And interesting part about communism rejecting the pale, I somehow missed that part. But it would fit to the communism side quest in the game. Strong enough conviction, like belief in communism, can reshape reality and therefore can also counter the Pale.
I will check out the podcast when I have time, thanks for linking it!
And yeah the game is melancholic but optimistic, but the book very much makes it clear to the reader, that the world is going down. Maybe to increase the stakes when it is saved in the finale, but somehow it never felt like a book about saving the world. Like Disco Elysium, it felt more about the personal stories of some “normal” people in a big world and they aren’t in positions to change it.
And Khan felt very much like the main character of the trio to me as well. And I found fascinating how much of his behaviour fits to ADHD, including his reaction to calm down when taking amphetamine. Its surprising how much understanding the author has about drug effects, here and in the game.
Yeah, Revachol being nuked, and the pale consuming Vaasa really made the world seem grim and hopeless. Also would have been interesting to see what the Saint Ambrosius would do, whether he’s a real innocence or another imposter, and how far would Mesque go in their war. I read somewhere online that there’s a shivers check in the game where Harry can sense that Revachol would be destroyed in 20 years, I never found it personally.
Other than the war, the book seemed to end by setting up Khan and Zigi’s missions. Felt like the whole book was just a prologue to their respective quests. Now I’m not sure who controls the IP of Elysium and whether Kurvitz’ next game is even set in the same world or if they’re creating a new setting.
I didn’t get the Shivers check myself, but it is during the dance scene in the church.
Why do you think he is “another imposter”? I don’t remember either the book or the game talking about successful innocent imposters.
I think all 3 boy protagonists would have their own journey in addition to Zigi.
The glossary of the tauri translation of the book mentions that there have been 6 elected innocences but only 4 of them were legitimate. So I think it’s possible for someone to claim to be an innocence but isn’t. Maybe the word imposter isn’t the right word to use here.
Ah, I forgot about that. After reading the wiki about them, of course it’s befitting to everything else: its a question of politics, where the faction that elected the innocents wasn’t happy with the result and their actions, therefore declared them counter or false innocences. But no word on if they are or not, just the politics themselves.