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Read Litany Of The Long Sun (2000)

Litany of the Long Sun (2000)

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4.21 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0312872917 (ISBN13: 9780312872915)
Language
English
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orb books

Litany Of The Long Sun (2000) - Plot & Excerpts

That’s it! I’ve had it. I think having forced my way through the first three books of the Book of the Long Sun, I am entitled to say that I’ve given it a fair shake. Indeed, having also slogged through The Wizard Knight series and Soldier of Sidon, I think I can say that I’ve given Gene Wolfe a fair shake. And the upshot is that he and I don’t get along. I find that his works suffer from flat writing, flat characters, and flat plot(1). Here’s an extract. This is a main character just before an escape from captivity:Some had told him that he, too, should be dead—he could not remember whether it had been the surgeon or Colonel Oosik. Perhaps it had been Shell, although it did not see the sort of thing that Shell would say. The needler would not fire. He tugged its trigger again and returned it to the windowsill, congratulating himself on having resolved to test it; saw that he had left the safety catch on, pushed it off, took aim at a large bottle of cologne on the dresser, and squeezed the trigger. The needler cracked in his hand like a bullwhip and the bottle exploded, filling the room with the clean scent of spruce. He reapplied the safety and thrust the needler into his waistband under the yellow tunic.That focus on insignificant detail flattens out the plot. And just look at all that detail. It doesn’t add to our understanding of the character, the plot, or the themes. So why bother to have it? This extract is typical of the narrative here which is told in a fragmented, disjointed way. Is there a reason for this? Not that I can see. In fact, it seems to run counter to the central conceit behind the story.(3)For me, a work can even survive a lack of style, character, and plot if it at least has an interesting idea. But, nope, that’s flat too. Sure, he re-examines myths/religious stories(2). Sure, he plays around with the idea of the authenticity of the text(3). But what does it all add up to? Nothing. He isn’t retelling myths/religious stories to cast new light on them, or to cast new light on our relationship with them. He plays around with meta-fictional conceits, but merely for the sake of playing around with them. It doesn’t add to our appreciation of the genre, writing in general, or of life. Philip K Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is another work that can be accused of lacking plot, style, or character. As can Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. But Dick deliberately dicks around with our notion of reality, and Vonnegut savages the violence and incoherence of contemporary society. This makes the works still interesting decades after they were written because there was at least some coherence between the story/text and the ideas being explored. Gene Wolfe doesn’t do that. So, yeah. I've tried. I have so tried. And I seriously do not get the foaming, eyeballs-rolling adulation that he receives. At all.(1) Flat plot? Wait, aren’t there battles, and struggles to reunite with a loved one? Yes, but we are never invested in these battles and struggles. (2) Soldier of Sidon examined Egyptian myths; The Wizard Knight examined Anglo-Saxon / Scandavanian myths; and The Book of the Long Sun is a recasting of the Bible. (3) Soldier of Sidon is the collected writings of a man who writes down the events of each day because he forgets them when he wakes the next day. (view spoiler)[The Book of the Long Sun turns out to be the imagined recreation of events by a young student of Silk. (hide spoiler)]

If you are reading this review then you've probably already read Wolfe's Book of the New Sun quartet. If not, then I would suggest doing so first, because the two series (New Sun and Long Sun) are linked and reading one will enrich the other.Litany of the Long Sun (The Book of the Long Sun, books 1 and 2)OK. This volume makes up the first half of The Book of the Long Sun. This series is in many ways the exact opposite of the New Sun series. In New Sun, the main character was Severian, a torturer, a man in a terrible guild who did terrible things, but tried to become a better person. In Long Sun, the main character is Patera Silk, (Patera is a title roughly equal to "Father" for a priest; Silk is often referred to by others as an "augur") who is genuinely a good man in a bad religion. The mood and feel of the two works are different as well. New Sun was written in first person, the prose was dense and opaque; Long Sun was written in third person, and the style is what Wolfe referred to as "journalistic". Comparisons aside, this volume stands on its own merits and is top-notch. The setting is the Whorl, a generational starship, and a concept used many times in the genre. Wolfe's take on it, however, is unique and fresh, and evokes a mood and ambiance all its own. The ship is MASSIVE. As in the size of a small planet. Those within it are unaware they are even on a ship. It has rivers, lakes, grass, etc. Its "sun" is actually more like a long tubular bulb. But to the characters, it is a normal sun. The ship contains many cities and towns, even countries, each with its own laws and government. Anyway, Wolfe does a much better job explaining things than I ever could.Religion plays a central role in Long Sun. The Whorl's gods and goddesses are referred to often, as are the church and all its trappings. Normally I find religion in SF/F works to be boring and throwaway, but again, Wolfe's take on it is so different and unique that I find it compelling here. Silk's day to day activities, his simple way of living, are written in such a way that they are interesting. It is usually the evil or bad characters who are the most engrossing, but Wolfe proves that good characters can be just as or even more interesting.Silk's story is complex, sad, terrifying, uplifting, mysterious, humorous, awe-inspiring, and ultimately, human. Along the way he meets a variety of people, human and non-human alike; some of the humans are the most monstrous of all. Silk's discoveries are truly surprising, and the story unfolds in some very unpredictable ways. Watching Silk as he navigates his way through situations out of his depth with very dangerous people is a joy. He is clever, but he is not a liar, and uses the truth in ways that were ingenious to me.Anyway, enough blabbering. Go read these books and see for yourself.

What do You think about Litany Of The Long Sun (2000)?

I had read that the Long Sun books are, superficially at least, less tricksy than Gene Wolfe's work usually turns out to be. I found this to be true, on a first reading. Indeed, I'm not sure I missed anything of significance; but then, I'm a veteran Wolfie.A reviewer on Amazon complained that the first of the two books compiled here, Nightside the Long Sun, was slow and tedious - that the hero, Silk, spends a hundred pages failing to sacrifice a crow and breaking into a house. Those two events, as well as some others of considerably greater significance, do indeed take about a hundred pages to tell, and while I appreciated the deeper undercurrents which are really what we acolytes read Wolfe for, I agree with that groundling reviewer that the break-in scene, in particular, is too long extended. However, it should be added that all the action of Nightside takes place over a period of three days.The second book in the compilation, Caldé of the Long Sun sets a snappier pace; indeed, it's all action, especially towards the end. I enjoyed it very much, especially the revelation of what the Whorl really is (even though this should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the preceding text).However, Caldé may contain, nearly at the end, the biggest flaw I've ever seen in a Gene Wolfe novel: a gaping hole in the scenery through which the mechanics of the plot, usually in Wolfe a marvel of invisible subtlety, are embarrassingly evident. It concerns the death of a character, a minor one with obvious major potential. The death comes as a surprise, so much so that I was moved to wonder why the character was killed off. The obvious answer, I am sorry to say, is that it was necessary for the character to die in order that there might be two more books in the cycle. If the death had not occurred, all would have been explained to Silk (and thus to the reader) far too early.Yet writing this, I find I am not so sure as I thought I was. That character, though minor, was very active while on stage, and very fully drawn. I have yet to read the second volume of this Long Sun omnibus edition, Epiphany of the Long Sun; it is sitting upstairs on my bedside table. I shall not be surprised to find the character returning in it, either resurrected or not actually dead in the first place. Such things often happen in the stories of Gene Wolfe.Yet I cannot help thinking that the point at which this 'death' occurs in the narrative is rather too convenient - for the author.Still, the great virtue of Wolfe's writing is that it promotes and rewards speculation of this kind. For those who like to read 'from between the shoulder-blades' as Nabokov put it, no science-fiction writer, either living or dead, compares with him. Indeed, his work invites comparison with that of Nabokov (or even Proust, a comparison Wolfe encourages). I'm not sure he is fully on that level; he is a religious man and a conservative, and is blind to human nature, particularly female human nature, in precisely the degree those adjectives imply. Certainly he cannot match Joyce or Nabokov for insight. But he is indubitably a great writer, worthy to be compared with those immortal names and to sit at the same high literary table.
—Palmyrah

Despite the similar name, and the recurrence of one (sort of) character from the dark brilliance of The Book Of The New Sun, the Long Sun books bear little resemblance to their better-known predecessor. Stylistically and tonally they owe more to Wolfe's Latro sequence than to the labyrinthine complexities of BOTNS - they are lighter, airier, and filled with a gentle pastoral beauty that makes the darker undertones of the text feel far more arresting and powerful when they occasionally burst through. The story of a young priest, Patera Silk, who is enlightened by a 'minor' God and charged with saving his church in a small, run-down part of the city of Viron; The Long Sun is a beautiful, sprawling reflection on love, religious and personal duty, and the nature of faith itself. Wolfe's prose is often exceptionally dense and elusive; and whilst BOTLS is certainly more accessible than BOTNS, newcomers to his work may find it frustrating. Additionally, Wolfe takes an unusually long-winded approach to setting the opening scenes, given the steady pace of the rest of the book, and the first 100 pages drag somewhat. Otherwise, a wonderful story told with Wolfe's customary imagination, skill and grace.
—Richard Gogarty

The Book of the Long Sun is really one long multi-volume work. This review of only the first half of the multi-volume “book” will therefore be inadequate. However, this is one of Wolfe’s easiest to read, making the journey much less confusing and difficult when compared to some of his other work.Before starting the review proper, there is another disclaimer. Viewing this book as a sequel series to the Book of the New Sun is misleading. Aside from the obvious tie in with the series’ title, there has been a grand total of one reference to anything related to the Book of the New Sun, which is very easy to miss completely. Because of this, it is better to have the expectations not of a direct sequel series; they are technically in the same fictional universe, but are more complementary thematically than anything else.In the novel itself, Wolfe is doing something most unexpected; he’s easy to read. There are a few archaic words like manteion and patera, but they are easily deciphered from the text. The narration is third person omniscient, which evades the common critique that Wolfe’s works are too unreliable to read coherently. I never found myself rereading passages to understand basic plot points or character motivations. Because of this, I am almost tempted to say this is a better starting point for those new to Wolfe than the New Sun.Characterization is perhaps the strongest part of these first two novels. Each and every character has a unique voice when they speak, and Wolfe never loses touch with those characterizations. This adds not only to the ease of reading, but also allows the reader to see how brilliantly the characterizations really shine. Motivations and intent can be followed effortlessly. This may seem like a silly compliment, but with Wolfe, his characterizations are so deep and nuanced, that having a simple presentation allows the reader to simply enjoy the ride.That is nothing to say of the most intriguing and well written character, the protagonist Patera Silk. I have never connected so much with a protagonist before, though this may be because I am also a 23 year old blonde haired male with extensive knowledge and personal faith in Christianity. The character is innocent and naïve, yet intelligent and charming to everyone he meets. Watching him act is seeing where his story leads is the main driving force of the first book especially. I kept wanting to read more after each chapter. Whether it was the fascinating spiritual religion of gods and demons Wolfe has created, the plots and motivations of various characters, or simply wanting to know more about the cylindrical whorl with its literal long sun, I always wanted to keep reading. It was a relief to simply enjoy Wolfe’s work without all of the consternation that usually accompanies such a challenging writer.
—Davis

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