Books - Black Sun Rising

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	Books - Black Sun Rising

Black Sun Rising is a science fiction/fantasy novel by C.S. Friedman.

Plot summary

Black Sun Rising begins when a priest of the Church, Damien Vryce, arrives in Jarggonath. 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 Jarggonath 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 of his fear through dreams. They encounter rakh, where a member of the interpretor-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 concequences 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 recives 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 vist 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.

Release details

1991, United States, DAW Books ISBN 0886774853, Pub date 1 November 1991, Hardcover reissue
1992, United States, DAW Books ISBN 0886775272, Pub date 1 September 1992, Paperback reissue
2005, United States, DAW Trade ISBN 0756403146, Pub date 6 September 2005, Paperback reprint

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