Coldfire Trilogy

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The Coldfire Trilogy is a science fiction/fantasy trilogy written by Celia S. Friedman. It includes:

[edit] Setting

The books take place on the fictional planet of Erna, a planet where human fears and dark thoughts manifest themselves as "demons." A side effect is that higher technology typically fails to work because the more complex the instrument, the less likely observers are to have faith in it.

Two forces work to allay the threat of the demons, sorcerors who have learned to control their thoughts to thereby control the demons, and The Church, loosely patterned after Roman Catholicism, which leverages the collective faith of its followers to provide protection.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Near the end of the first book, it is revealed that the setting is actually science fiction; 1,200 years before the book begins settlers from Earth arrive, only to have all the information from their home planet and past lives destroyed in an explosion that later comes to be known as 'The Sacrifice' (described in a scene at the beginning of the second book, When True Night Falls). Erna has extreme seismic activity, as well as a mysterious force called the Fae that reacts to human imagination and fears. There are many kinds of Fae, the relatively unremarkable earth Fae, the tidal Fae (practically unusable by humans because of an unpredicatable system with the many moons), and the sinister dark Fae.

After a few hundred years of humans barely surviving on the planet, a spiritual leader called the Prophet arises. He has an idea to formulate a religion around the Earth Fae, thus the Church of Unity arises. Their goal is to render the Fae unresponsive to humans. But eventually the Prophet, and Adept who can see the Fae but is not allowed by the Church to work it, commits a horrible crime, giving his wife and children over as a sacrifice to dark creatures in return for an extended life, where he can only survive by feeding off blood, much like a vampire. The sun also hurts him, again just like a vampire.

Other interesting points on Erna are the Rakh, cat-like creatures that evolve to near-human after the landing, the mysterious Eastern continent, and the darkness once every few months (called 'True Night') when every moon and the Core has set.