Going to be speaking in a lot of generalities in this review, since I don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't read it.Here we go.Hell yeah. I was hoping Book of the Long Sun would be a worthy follow up to Book of the New Sun. Was not disappointed. Let's get the obvious out of the way - BOTNS is my favorite work of science fiction or fantasy of all time, even above Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, or Solaris, and this sort-of sequel series is not at all on the same level as its predecessor. It's great on its own merit, but it isn't a classic like BOTNS. That's okay. It's still a Gene Wolfe book (er, books; I read them all together, as a single novel, but it's possible to read them separately, as four separate novels, without losing too much in the interim).The story is about a group of emigrants who leave Earth on a generation ship designed to carry them to a new, more fertile world. The ship, which is a giant, cylindrical hollowed-out asteroid called the Whorl, is controlled by various programs whose personified interfaces are viewed as gods by the ship's inhabitants. The main character is Patera Silk, a priest in the poorest sector of Viron, one of the Whorl's many (constantly warring) city-states. "The Book of the Long Sun" begins when Silk receives a vision from the gods commanding him to save his run-down church from a local gangster named Blood, who aims to purchase the land to use for his own corrupt ends. Unlike Severian, the self-appointed savior/hero protagonist from Book of the New Sun, Silk is above all an honest man, whose greatest flaw is not his selfishness but his overriding altruism.(Spoilers follow)Over the course of the next 1,000 pages, Gene Wolfe creates one of the most vivid, and well-built worlds in speculative fiction. This is a culture you will come to know so well you feel apart of it, because it is so realistically and profoundly developed, from the religious practices and diets of its people, to tiny details like their naming conventions (human boys and girls are named after animals and plants, or their products, respectively, while synthetic people, called "chems", are named for natural resources such as metals or minerals). The Whorl is populated by a gigantic cast of memorable characters: Oreb, Silk's talking bird, who loves to beg for fish heads; Maytera Mint, the soft-spoken Sunday School teacher who becomes a battle-hardened general; Blood, the fat, balding gangster-patriarch of Viron who grew his own daughter from a frozen embryo in the womb of a lynx, to cultivate certain psychic traits in her genome; Chenille, the fiery-headed prostitute who becomes a vessel of possession for various (bickering) goddesses; Auk, the hulking thief who becomes a prophet and leads the people of Viron to their new home on the planet Blue. As typical of Gene Wolfe, even the minor characters - of which there are hundreds - are interesting, and have arcs which are both unpredictable and wholly satisfying.My major complaint about this series is that, also typical of Gene Wolfe, there are parts where it drags like a mofo. This is frustrating because often times the best parts of the story are happening, right between the lines, and a reader who is paying attention will know exactly what is going on - but we don't actually get to read about it, just the characters talking about some mundane thing in front of their faces, with the cool stuff only getting a short synopsis a few chapters later. I know this is a pillar of G.W.'s style (and of many other great writers, E.G. Nabokov and Hemingway), and it is probably the one thing his fans love most about his writing, including me, and even Neil Gaiman... when the trick is employed *tastefully*. It makes you feel smart and rewards you for paying attention- But, it is not always employed tastefully in Book of the Long Sun. WHY G.W.? The highs of "A-HA!" are higher and the lows lower in this series than in Book of the New Sun. For example, the last 100 pages are particularly frustrating, because the events - of Silk and his party going to Mainframe, in a desperate attempt to find the shuttles that will fly them to their new world, all while a hostile city is invading Viron and Viron is losing the fight - deserve their own novel, but are condensed into a handful of chapters... most of which are spent on the characters moralizing, or discussing inconsequential melodrama, and not the actual events driving the plot forward.Still, this is a minor complaint. If you have read Gene Wolfe before, you already know what you're getting into. And you also know even his lows are higher than 99.9999% of the rest of the books in the genre. Book of the New Sun should no doubt be read first, probably two or three times, before tackling these four sequels. If you enjoyed New Sun, you will enjoy this. By the way, the relationship between the two series is not immediately apparent... but it's one hell of a mindfuck when you figure it out.
Be warned: this is a negative review. However, my disappointment is more in the author than in the book itself. I would have rated higher had it come from any other pen but that of Gene Wolfe.I read this second volume of the Long Sun Cycle immediately after finishing the first. I found it confusing - more so than is usually the case with Wolfe. This is an author who likes to challenge his readers, and confusion, followed by cogitation and re-reading, is an essential part of the Gene Wolfe experience. However, much of the confusion in this instance seems to be the result of the author having too many subplots to juggle, making his performance unappealingly frantic. The disparate plot threads are woven together in a great hurry at the end of the book, resulting in a fabric coarser and less attractive than we have come to expect from Wolfe, or any writer who aspires to the highest standards.Speaking both as a reader and as a writer, I must say I found the Book of the Long Sun disappointing. Although the religious and mythological aspects of the tale being told are as central to it as those in Wolfe's masterpiece, the Book of the New Sun, the layered depth of ideas and philosophical maturity evident in that book are not, to my mind, to be found here. Rather, the subtext is an allegorical reprise of Christian doctrine complete with original sin, a Fall and a world damaged by it, the manifestation of God to humanity and the coming of a saviour who redeems mankind. Yes, much or all of this was in the Book of the New Sun too, but in that cycle these ideas are critically examined and re-examined, and we are left to draw our own conclusions about them; the writer does not force his own on us. Sadly, this cannot be said of the Long Sun cycle. It is a much more superficial work that imposes its religious subtext on the reader willy-nilly.In other ways, too, the Long Sun books disappoint. People like to use the word 'Dickensian' in a complimentary way; I, who am no fan of Dickens, would agree that Wolfe's characterization is, in these books, Dickensian: idiosyncratic and exaggerated to the point where disbelief can no longer be suspended and the character becomes a capering painted clown on the stage of the page. Other reviewers have made much of the different 'voices' in which the characters in the Book of the Long Sun speak - but many of these voices are artificial and annoying, just as Dickens's characters' often are. Examples include Pateras Incus and Remora, the various talking animals (including one named Catachrest whose dialogue is sloppily rendered in catachreses - this kind of thing has been done far better by writers like Will Self and the Amises père et fils) and a mad swordfighter whose! speech! is! lousy! with! exclamation! marks. The fact is that Wolfe is not really very good at characterization by dialogue; you hear the same voices, with minor variations, in book after book.More generally, Wolfe is a writer with a naturally formal style that lapses too easily into ponderousness. This is by no means a fatal flaw - in the mouth of Severian the Autarch, for example, or Latro the proto-Roman mercenary, it works very well indeed. It also fits well into the science-fiction/fantasy milieu in which Gene Wolfe operates. But it does limit his auctorial options, because it makes giving believable voices to all his characters difficult (as we have seen). Wolfe's young people are always either old people in disguise or else caricatures of the young as their elders see them; similarly, his women tend to talk and act not as real women, but as women as conceived by men. Clearly Wolfe pays less attention than he should to how real people speak - which is to say his characters are not drawn from life. Given the science-fiction/fantasy milieu in which he operates, is this such a grave flaw? I believe it is. Together with the unedifying attitude to women and sex I mentioned in my review of Litany of the Long Sun, this is Wolfe's greatest fault as a writer.Overall, my verdict on this book, and on the Long Sun Cycle as a whole, is that Gene Wolfe, who has proved himself capable of far better work, here falls disappointingly short of the standard we expect of him.
What do You think about Epiphany Of The Long Sun (2000)?
I honestly don't know how to feel about this book. In some ways it was so compelling and wonderful and in others it is SO BORING. And not, like, at different times. At the same time. I don't even know.So much of it is pure dialogue, and he is SO TERRIBLE at writing dialogue, so how come I still like it? I would not recommend this to anyone who has never read any Gene Wolfe. But if you have, and you know you like him, then maybe you can handle it. And think that it's great?It was seriously either a two or a five so I gave it a three. I don't even know!
—Kerry
The final two books of Gene Wolfe's expansive Book of the Long Sun series, these works round off the tale of Patera Silk and the colorful inhabitants of Viron in a most satisfying fashion. Wolfe's episodic and elliptical approach to the narrative becomes more pronounced as the narrative nears its end, even as the reason for that approach becomes clearer. These works nicely draw together both the narrative and thematic threads that Wolfe has developed throughout the series. In particular, I was struck by the numerous examples of resurrection imagery in a book that is ultimately about a world full of people looking forward to a better life in a better world.But the real achievement of the book for me, outside of the impressive world building, lies in the portrayal of Silk, the series' main character. Silk's fundamental identity is one closely tied to the notion of sacrifice, always willing to put himself in harm's way for the sake of others. Wolfe handles Silk's psychology delicately, leaving the reader with some ambiguity about the augur's faith and thus making him resemble an actual human being full of doubt and uncertainty himself. That said, Silk's final action illustrates something about his faith, and as such makes the conclusion of the book a moving and psychologically consistent portrayal of the series' central character. Combine this conclusion with Silk's commitment to peace, his willingness to serve the disenfranchised, his lack of a thirst for power, and his many flaws that he seeks to overcome and grapple with, and Silk becomes one of the most complex religious characters I've ever had the privilege of encountering in literature.
—John
EPIPHANY OF THE LONG SUN is an omnibus that combines Caldé of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun.A smooth speaker, naturally athletic, and an intuitive and inventive tactician, Silk may well prove to be the greatest Caldé that Viron has ever had. He even has impeccable manners. Even authors of fantasy, a genre that has created many near-perfect savior figures, run a risk when they make their heroes too good. Fortunately, Gene Wolfe’s defense against this charge is more in-depth than the throwaway “he’s a savior figure, so he’s supposed to be nearly perfect.”In Epiphany of the Long Sun, Gene Wolfe compensates for Silk’s flawlessness by imposing an impressive set of handicaps and obstacles upon him. Even though he has the support of the people... Read More:http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
—Fantasy Literature
