Point of View

Raul Endymion narrates the last two books of the series while imprisoned following his trial for heresy. He is writing out the story of his life and his years with Aenea on pages of vellum. He destroys the pages he writes each day, but later learns that they are being preserved and will be used as the final addition to Martin Silenus's Cantos. Raul narrates the story in third person, and explains that his ability to do so as an omniscient narrator is based on the fact that through Aenea's teaching he has learned the languages of the living and of the dead, and thus is capable of witnessing any of the events in the story again, including scenes in which he played no part. He almost never breaks into the narrative. In the rare instances when he does, his intrusions have been isolated by Simmons...