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Black Sun Rising, published in 1991, is a fantasy/sci-fi novel by C. S. Friedman. It is the first book in the Coldfire Trilogy.

Setting
As with all books in the Coldfire Trilogy, the events take place on the planet Ernya, colonized about 1200 years ago by humans, perhaps "tens of thousands" of years after leaving behind an Earth "half-covered in steel and concrete". The planet boasts three moons and orbits a single-star which lies on the edge our Milky Way galaxy. Soon after colonizing, the settlers discover to their chagrin that mysterious and powerful forces specific to the planet interfere with the normal physical laws and the laws of 'cause and effect'. The forces, known as 'fae', come in a variety of forms, the most prominent being earth, light, dark, tidal. The fae, among other things, prevent the reliable operation of machinery and use of human technology. Instead, human psychology -- the hopes and fears of an individual or a group -- can influence the operation of a thing, even influence then evolution of entire ecosystems. From the darkest of these subconscious fears, can come fae-born demons; from the prayer of thousands, light-infused-water so powerful that a single drop on the lips can fatally sear a man's mind. Earth fae surges to "uncontrollable levels" during earthquakes. The dark fae is at its most potent during rare astronomical occurrances named "true night" -- when not only have the sun and all three moons set, but the stars of the milky way ("Corelight") have dipped below the horizon. For the most part, humans have only a subconscious interaction with the fae. However, a very few set of humans, known as "adepts", have the innate ability to perceive and manipulate the fae; slightly more numerous are "sorcerers" who have a learned ability to "Work" the fae. All these elements combine for a setting that is b=oth science-fiction and fantasy.

Point of View
The story unfolds through the eyes, ears, and thoughts of several of the main characters, most prominently through Damien Vryce, a confident, burly, and deeply spiritual man. He is an ordained Priest, skilled in both Working the fae and wielding the sword. He falls for the adept Ciani and it is his devotion to her that drives the plot. Other main characters through whom the story is told: A few chapter-sections are entirely within the point-of-view of other characters, recurring and non-recurring.
 * The Hunter, human-born but now more of a monster, his entire existence is supported by the dark fae and is conversely harmed by direct sunlight.
 * Senzei, a sorcerer and long-time apprentice and friend to the adept Chiani.

Synopsis
On the planet Ernya, one humans colonised only 1200 years prior, a warrior-priest of the Church which is dedicated to the vision of a humanity living in harmony with the mysterious plantary force known as the fae, must join forces with a with a power-lusting sorcerer and with a mysterious but very powerful human whose nature relies on the dark fae, in complete opposition to the priest's faith. Their quest is to avenge an attack on their friend, Ciani, by slaying her attackers and in doing so, restore her memories and innate adept abilities. Along the way, they must pass through the lands of rakh, sentient creatures native to the planet but whom humans once hunted nearly to extinction and are still quite hostile to humans for it. One of those creatures, who has learned English, believes their goals align and thus joins their party. The advesary dispatches a demon who manages to slay one of the heroes and entraps another. The remaining ones manage to evade further harm, rescue the tortured, and through trickery and luck, bring down the advesary, ultimately allowing them to kill the dark beings. In doing so, they make yet another discovery -- the dark beings must have been created by an even greater evil that lies far to the east across a treacherous ocean-- one believed never to have been crossed by humans.

Plot (spoiler-free)
Damien Vryce, a Priest of the Church of Human Unification on Erna, upon arriving in the rugged city of Jaggonath for a special assignment, romances the attractive adept Ciani. Not long after, however, unknown dark beings attack her, depriving her of her memories and powers. In order for her Ciani to have any hope of getting these back, her attacker must be killed. Damien and Ciani's sorcerer-apprentice Sezei determine to carry out this task. Their hunt lies in the direction of the lands of the rakh behind "the Canopy". The rakh are the planet's native sentient creature, whom humans long ago tried to hunt to extinction. The Canopy is some kind of natural barrier that the planet itself errected to protect the remaining rakh from the humans. Only Ciani is known to have gone behind the Canopy and returned.

A mysterious man named Gerrald Terrant insists he join their party so he can also kill Ciani's attakers -- for reasons of his own. The four manage to cross the dangerous waters and the Canopy and are almost immediately captured by the rakh, who still havent exactly forgiven the humans. Managing to convince the rakh they are not enemies and their goals align -- the rakh having also fallen victim to "the Keeper" and the same dark beings that harmed Ciani -- the party is joined by the English-talking rakh, Hesseth.

As our heroes cross the continent, their enemy plots their destruction, wanting to capture and torture only "the girl and the adept". To those ends, the Keeper summons the demon named Calesti, who proves very effective -- one of the party members is deceived into committing suicide, and Tarrant is trapped and ultimately tortured for eight days. However, the rest of the party is able to evade Calesti, and discovers a "lost" band of rakh, who make their homes in tunnels far underneath the confines of the Keep. With the help of this tribes leader, the party rescues Tarrant, who is then able to contrive a plan to bring down the Keeper. The plan works, but with the Keeper no longer alive, the earth quakes out of control, trapping our heroes under the Keep and in the path of the now master-less dark beings they set out to destroy in the first place. Only through a desparate action of Tarrant can the party find their way to the surface. The action also succeeds in exposing the dark beings to sunlight but also in killing Tarrant.

Weeks pass. Damien believes the evil that created the dark beings lies on the continent further to the east, across an ocean that human explorations have never returned. As he sets out on his treacherous journey across an unknown ocean, he is joined by Hesseth, and surprisingly by Tarrant, who had managed to survive the quakes and again has his own motivations for hunting down the evil across the waters.

Detailed plot (spoilers)
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Plot summary
As they make their way north, they encounter a man by the name of Gerald Tarrant, who marks himself as the servant of the Hunter, a powerful Adept who lives in the middle of a vortex of Fae. He accompanies them for a time, for unexplained reasons.

One night as the party rests at an inn near the Forest, they are accosted by the Soul Eaters responsible for Ciani's current condition. In the immense confusion of the battle, not helped by the mysterious appearance of a hooded woman who utilized the Tidal Fae, Tarrant loses self-control, and accidentally feeds upon the vulnerable Ciani, sapping her of her remaining memories. In a rage, Damien attempts to confront a strangely weakened Tarrant, who flees with Ciani. The two remaining of the party rush off to rescue Ciani from where she must have been taken; the Forest. The Priest and the Sorcerer manage to combat the dread creatures that feed on the Dark Fae swirling around the Forest, a winded Damien and a mortally wounded Senzei stumble upon an immense castle; a castle Damien eventually recognizes to be of Church-design. The Hunter's servants welcome them inside, and ask them to wait for their Master. To the surprise of all, the Hunter is none other than Gerald Tarrant himself; furthermore, Tarrant reveals himself to be the former Neocount of Merentha, and Prophet of the Church for Human Unification on Erna, Damien's church.

While Damien buckles under this revelation, Zen succumbs to wounds he sustained from the dark beasts of the Forest, which the Hunter offers to cleanse. As payment, Tarrant demands to be allowed to accompany the three of them on their journey. The Hunter is an insurmountably arrogant man; the assault by the Soul Eaters made him feed upon Ciani, a woman he vowed not to harm. Ironically, part of the forces that protect his existence is his honor, and reneging on any vow he makes could destroy him. He refused to allow anyone to make a fool of him, for which he seeks to find the Master of the Soul Eaters in order to punish him. Damien grows conflicted: on the one hand, the oaths of his Order demand that he do what he can to destroy this evil standing before him, and entering into a pact with him would be the blackest anathema; yet without the Hunter's help, it was very likely that the three of them would not survive to find Ciani's violators. With a heavy heart, he accepts.

The group then begin their way to the Rakhlands: a land inhabited by an intelligent and indigenous species of Erna called the Rakh. The Rakh are somewhat feline in appearance, but are very much humanoid, having evolved rapidly from their smaller, cat-like ancestors thanks to the appearance of the humans. They are primarily hostile to humans, given the latter's attempt at eradicating their race some hundreds of years ago.

To enter the Rakhlands, the party must cross the Canopy, an odd anomaly in the Fae, where it fluctuates in intensity and power randomly and rapidly. As Gerald Tarrant relies upon the Fae to live, this crossing nearly kills him. While he survived, he is hopelessly weakened, and would require months to heal under normal circumstances. Knowing this, Damien volunteers to feed Tarrant, as the Adept would be useless in his current condition, and the group needed him to survive. Tarrant reluctantly accepts, chafing at the idea of having to rely on another for his continued existence, and establishes a link between them that would allow the Hunter to feed on Damien's fears.

The Keeper sends a fae-born creature, Calesta, who uses Senzei's longing to be an Adept as a means to kill him. Calesta 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? He ultimately decides to save Tarrant and worry about the consequences later. They defeat the Keeper of Souls by triggering an earthquake in the fault zone upon which the palace is built. As the party flees the Soul Eaters, they end up trapped in a dead-end tunnel. Tarrant collapses the tunnel, forming an escape route for Damien, Ciani, and Hesseth, 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 when he receives a surprising visitor: Gerald Tarrant, who had somehow managed to survive his exposure to sunlight. Damien asks the Hunter to join him in his journey to the Eastern Continent of Erna, where he believes the corruption that turned rakh into Soul Eaters originates. 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 nearly results in the breaking of an oath he had sworn long ago, the Hunter changes his mind and goes with Damien. Their experiences in the Eastern Continent are documented in the next book, When True Night Falls.

Characters

 * Damien Kilcannon Vryce – main protagonist, Knight of King Gannon's Order of the Golden Flame, Companion of the Earth-Star Ascendant, Reverend Father of the Church of the Unification of Human Faith on Erna
 * Ciani – an Adept, loremaster and owner of the Fae Shop
 * Senzei "Zen" Reese – 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 seeking the Keeper of Souls
 * Calesta – demon assistant to the Keeper of Souls
 * Keeper of Souls – the adversary

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

Category:1991 novels Category:American fantasy novels Category:DAW Books books