When True Night Falls Audiobook By C. S. Friedman cover art

When True Night Falls

Coldfire Trilogy, Book 2

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When True Night Falls

By: C. S. Friedman
Narrated by: R.C. Bray
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Two men, absolute enemies, must unite to conquer an evil greater than anything their world has ever known. One is a warrior priest ready to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause of humanity's progress; the other, a sorcerer who has survived for countless centuries by a total submission to evil. In their joint quest, both will be irrevocably changed.

©1993 C.S. Friedman (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Paranormal Paranormal & Urban Scary

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Featured Article The Best Fantasy Audiobook Series
Complex Characters • Engaging Storyline • Dark Fantasy Elements • Compelling Ethical Struggles • Rich World-building
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Wonderfully executed. Exquisite. My favorite author. Can easily bond with the characters. Narrator captures the essence of the story. Truly moving narrative.

The best trilogy I have ever heard.

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I think i am even more invested in the characters now than i was after the first one. The story just keeps getting deeper and i cant wait to read the third one! and still Terrant is more my favorite character than ever!

Second one and just as good!

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I loved this book. the story and narrator are both amazing. the expansion of the universe was worth it and the characters continue to have depth.

Best narration of any audio book I've ever heard

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Narrator was the perfect choice for the atmosphere of this book. Great book, better audio book!

Great sequel!

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The narrator was amazing! I look forward to listening to the next installment!
The story is well written,exciting, heartbreaking, creative and entertaining

Cold Fire Book 2

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it was ok. For me R C Bray saved this book. I have listened to the first one and this one. not what I was expecting, I won't do the last one. I do not like the way the author uses so much descriptive words. it's just too much. plus it's a little darker than I like. I know it's just me, this is not my kind of book.

Deep

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3.5 stars. Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

When True Night Falls is the second book in C.S. Friedman’s COLDFIRE trilogy. You’ll want to read the first book, Black Sun Rising, first. This review may spoil some of that first book’s plot.

At the end of Black Sun Rising, Reverend Damien Vryce, the devout warrior priest, discovered the source of the evil that is infecting his country — it lies across the ocean where there exists another continent that humans are aware of but know nothing about. In the past, several expeditions have been sent to explore it, but none has returned. Damien knows he should report to his church’s patriarch, but he’s afraid the patriarch will forbid him to go, so Damien ignores the man and instead boards a ship to cross the ocean. He is again reluctantly teaming up with Gerald Tarrant, the evil undead sorcerer who used to be considered a prophet until his fall from grace.

Damien despises what Gerald has become, but they have a common enemy and there’s no way Damien can succeed without the help of Gerald’s unholy power. Damien has begun to fear for his own soul because he’s using evil to fight evil. He is not sure whether the end justifies the means and he is worried about blurring the line between good and evil. He’s also not sure how far he should go to protect himself. Is it greedy to want to kill others to save your own life? Can you consider saving yourself to be working for God because then you’ll be alive to serve God?

When Damien and Gerald arrive on the other continent, they find a country that at first seems ideal — the citizens appear happy, prosperous, and full of faith. They’re more technologically advanced and they seem to have tamed the wild fae that wreak havoc in Damien’s land. But soon Damien and Gerald discover that something sinister is going on. They don’t know exactly what it is, or who they can trust in this foreign land, but they know they have to travel to a distant part of the continent to get answers. There are many hardships along the way and even Gerald is frightened by what they encounter. Then things get worse when Damien suddenly isn’t sure if he can even trust Gerald anymore. Is it possible that Gerald is actually allied with the demons that are trying to eradicate humanity?

The strengths of When True Night Falls are the same as those of the previous book, Black Sun Rising. Friedman’s style is engaging and Damien’s personal ethical struggles make for compelling reading. Friedman talks deeply and intelligently about the power of faith, sacrifice, repentance, and forgiveness. Most fascinating is how she portrays Gerald Tarrant as utterly evil, yet gives him just enough humanity to make the reader long to seem him redeemed. In When True Night Falls, we learn why Gerald sacrificed his soul and I think many readers will understand his reasoning and sympathize with him. (I did.) Gerald is completely aware that he can repent and be forgiven, but he also knows that his repentance would be false because he’s not sorry for what he did. Gerald Tarrant has got to be one of the most tragic “heroes” in fantasy literature.

The main weakness of When True Night Falls, at least in my opinion, is that it’s much too long. Like the first book, it’s a fantasy quest involving all the familiar elements — lots of travelling, fighting, hiding, fleeing, etc. There are earthquakes, crevasses, desserts, oceans, cliffs, volcanoes, and all sorts of other hostile landscapes. This just goes on way too long and makes some parts of the book feel like a 1980s epic fantasy quest. (Though a particularly well written and intelligent 1980s epic fantasy quest.) If the number of pages detailing the traveling had been cut by a third, When True Night Falls would have been a better book. The ending is exciting and touching, though it’s a little annoying that it’s clear that another quest will be needed to wrap things up.

I read the audio version (26 hours long!) narrated by R.C. Bray. I have enjoyed his performance so far. In this second installment he distinguishes the speech of a couple of the new characters by giving them an unnatural cadence, making them emphasize the wrong words in a sentence. I’ve heard this technique used before and I wish narrators wouldn’t do it. I think it’s unappealing and distracting — it sounds like computer-generated speech. If the narrator has run out of voices, I’m perfectly able to rely on context cues from the text to understand who is speaking (after all, that’s what we do when we read in print). Other than this issue with a couple of minor characters, Bray’s performance was very good.

Compelling, but too long

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Celia S. Friedman appears to be an established American fantasy writer. The Coldfire Trilogy the first trilogy she ever published. ‘Black Sun Rising’ is the first book of the trilogy, though she has later written a prequel to the trilogy in the form of a novella called ‘Dominion’ (+/-30 pages, guessing by the length of the audio recording). It was the latter that draw me into this trilogy.

It is an excellent introduction to the planet of Erna, a planet which in substance is very different from earth and also consists out of a mysterious substance called Fae (think of an animistic reality which really comes true) that makes people’s dreams come to life and gain substance. In ‘Dominion’ we are introduced to Gerralt Tarrant a seemingly undead vampire and fallen prophet of the Faith in the One God, creator of Earth and Erna who seems to have made some dark covenant to yield and bend the Fae to his purposes. He seems evil to his core, but maybe there could be some goodness left in him… somewhere. These were the two concepts that I found quite original and that draw me to ‘Black Sun Rising.’

‘Black Sun Rising’ introduces the listener to the Reverend Damien Canon Vrice, whom is a Jesuit-like warrior priest fighting the evil conjured up by the Fae through human dreams. He has just arrived in the great city of Jaggonath, the seat of the Eastern Patriarchy from the Western Matriarchy. (I wondered if there is not a play on the Latin Western (Roman Catholic) Church and the Eastern (Orthodox) Church.) Falling in love with a heathen ‘adept’ (a person who has assimilated with Erna and can yield some natural power over the Fae), Vrice is summersaulted into an adventure when some mysterious creatures from the Rakh lands (a place inhabited by an indigenous species of Erna called the Rakh which seems to have evolved into something maybe more human) steals her ‘adept’-powers. Besotted by love Vrice sets out with Ciani, the ‘adept’ and his lover, to get her powers back.

However, as they travel to these mysterious lands, they meet a dark and threatening stranger, seemingly one of the dark minions of the Hunter, the fallen prophet of Vrice’s church, Gerralt Tarrent.

Friedman explores themes of good and evil, truth and lies, corruption and purity within this novel. I think that she successfully shows that a diamond has many sides, while entertaining the reader/ listener with wit and misdirection. Though I sometimes felt that some of her characters are too predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and went on to listen to “When True Night Falls” and “Crown of Shadows.” In many ways the books stays within the classical style of the hero’s journey. Yet there is enough suspense and intrigue to give a satisfactory listening experience. The trilogy is a worthwhile buy.

R.C. Bray is an established audio book narrator, though I see some reviewers complained about his reading. Though his American accent came over more pronounced at some places in the audio book than other, I found his narration quite enjoyable. He did especially a good job with the demon voice of Calista.

If you are looking for a fantasy trilogy with some interesting concepts, enough intrigue to hold you and keep you guessing and with a good ending, this trilogy comes highly recommended.

Enough to draw you in and keep you listening!

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I love these novels, and such a good performance makes me love it more. Great work.

great performance

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The complexity that Friedman goes for here is substantially ante'd-up, with a largely unseen but very felt villain. The portrayal of religion is perhaps overly shallow, despite being complex, but it gets the point across. I'd read some reviews prior to listening, and this book is often criticized for forgetting characters like Cianni. Personally, I found her story to be complete in Book 1, with the cast here being much stronger and losses much more felt. The end kind of unspools in a couple of strange ways, but I try to avoid spoilers. I'll just say that, given the thematic underpinnings of colonialism, and Tarrant's own stated theories, the end seemed to too easily resolve certain problems that deserved more thought and gravity than the length of the book allows for. Book 3, which I've just finished, however, improves on this immensely.

Great twists and turns, but stalls in act 3

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