Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Woodring Stover
I don't remember the first time I read this book, though I suspect it was sometime at the end of middle school/beginning of high school. I do remember that by my sophomore year of high school, I had worn the spine off (it was paperback) and had to get a new copy.
It's a sort of high fantasy/science fiction novel with a neat little conceit: the secondary world of 'magic, dragons, and wizards' (though they're called by different names)
is actually a secondary world, which (our) primary world exploits through its newest and biggest entertainment industry, simply called "the Studio." "Actors" are sent into the "Overworld" to live out more-or-less stereotypical fantasy adventures--with Earth's billions of spectators hooked in via some vague technology that lets them experience the actor's every move vicariously.
Stover's first book in this series,
Heroes Die, is basically the story of one of these Actors, Hari Michaelson on Earth, Caine on Overworld. The author describes it as "a piece of violent entertainment that's a meditation on violent entertainment--as a concept in itself, as a cultural obsession." I thought it was alright.
Blade of Tyshalle, the second book (though the first I read) is set seven years later, and (spoiler) Hari/Caine has spent those seven years paraplegic and increasingly despondent, despite the fact that, according to most fantasy-adventure logic (and our own), he "won" the events of the last novel.
"I won, goddammit. I beat Kollberg. I beat you. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. Shit, I even got the girl."
"The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said, "is that nothing is ever truly over."
"Fuçk that," Hari said. "I am living happily ever goddamn after. I am."
And though the book involves many characters and plots and subplots (perhaps too many, as some of its critics have noted), a huge part of it centers around the question of why Hari/Caine is not happy with his "happy ending."
This was the first book I had read to explicitly address a more philosophical theme; one of its dedicatees is Friedrich Nietzche, which was also the first time I had heard his name (he is referred to simply as "Friedrich" in the dedication, but his full name is brought up later in the book). In effect, it introduced me to philosophy and its marriage with literature. And because it was my first exposure to this kind of intellectual material, it would be hard for me to go back now and judge it objectively, whether it is really as lucid and provocative as I found it then. But I'm encouraged by the fact that, even years after I had stopped reading it repetitively, there would still be occasions when, out of the blue, a particular passage would appear in my mind, and I would stop and think "Oh!
That's what that meant!" And that's why it remains one of my favorite and most formative books.
A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers.
One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time.
One is mortal.
They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless.
They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers.
They each die fighting the blind god.