Wolfe has an almost legendary status amongst fellow authors; Gaiman called him 'a ferocious intellect', Swanwick said he's "the greatest writer in the English language alive today", and Disch called this series "a tetralogy of couth, intelligence, and suavity".You can rarely trust the popular market to single out good authors, but you'd think it might be safe to listen to the opinions of other writers (especially an assemblage of Nebula and Hugo winners in their own right). I will give his fans one concession: Wolfe is an author who defies expectations. Unfortunately, I was expecting him to be remarkable and interesting.This book had been sitting on my shelf for months, along with other highly-praised works I've been looking forward to, but I bade my time, waiting for the mood to strike. Few live up to their reputation, but most at least deliver part of the promise.I would expect any author mentioned in the same breath as Peake to have an original and vibrant style, but I found Wolfe's writing to be simple without being elegant. His language and structure serves its purpose, only occasionally rising above mere utilitarianism, and then he rushes to florid flourishes that fall flat as often as they succeed. Sometimes, it is downright dull. The prose of the second book is stronger than the first, but its plot and characters are more linear and predictable.I appreciated his 'created language' more than most fantasy authors, but I didn't find it particularly mysterious or difficult, because all of his words are based on recognizable Germanic or Romantic roots. Then again, after three years of writing stories about Roman whores in Latin, I had little problem with 'meretriculous'. Even those words I wasn't familiar with seemed clear by their use.The terms are scattered throughout the book, but rarely contribute to a more pervasive linguistic style, as might be seen in The Worm Ouroboros, The Lord of the Rings, Gormenghast, or The King of Elfland's Daughter. Wolfe's terms pepper otherwise and unremarkable modern style, which hardly helps to throw us into a strange world.He is better than the average fantasy author, but he resembles them more than he differs from them. His protagonist started off interestingly enough: an apparently weak and intelligent man, which made it all the more disappointing when he suddenly transformed into a laconic, wench-loving buttkicker who masters sword-fighting, finds the Super Magic Thing and follows the path of his Awesome Foretold Fate. Again, I must agree with Nick Lowe: Wolfe's plot owes more to magic and convenience than good storytelling.It relies on the same tricks over and over: any time a character is about to give important information to us, there will be a sudden attack or other interruption, as convenient and annoying as the moment when the dying man says "I was killed by . . . aargh". We also get problems solved by divine intervention whenever things start to slow, which doesn't leave the characters much room to be active.He also seems to suffer from the same sexual discomfort that plagues so many fantasy authors. There is an undercurrent of obsession with women and their sexuality, complete with the sexualization of rape and murder. It's not so much a case of misogyny as it is an inequality in how characters behave.The women always seem to end up as playtoys for the narrator, running around naked, desiring him, sparring with him coyly, but ultimately, conquered; and the camera pans away. They always approach him, desire him, pretending they don't want him, then give themselves up to him. It's the same old story of an awkward, emotionless male protagonist who is inexplicably followed and harangued by women who fall in love with him for no given reason, familiar to anyone who's seen a harem anime.I will grant that the women have more character than the average fantasy heroine, but it still doesn't leave them with much. Instead of giving into love at first sight, they fight it as long as they can, making it that much sweeter when the narrator finally 'wins'. The sexuality was not new, interesting, arousing, or mutual, it was merely the old game of 'overcoming the strong woman' that is familiar to readers of the Gor books. The sense of 'love' in The New Sun is even more unsettling. It descends on the characters suddenly and nonsensically, springing to life without build or motivation. The word never comes up in connection with any psychological development, nor does it ever seem to match the relationships as they are depicted. More often than not, it seems love is only mentioned so the narrator can coldly break his lover's trust in the next chapter.Several times, the narrator tries to excuse himself for objectifying women by mentioning that he also objectifies ugly women. What this convolution of misogyny is supposed to represent, I couldn't say. The narrator seems very interested in this fact, and is convinced that it makes him a unique person. It made it very clear to me why the most interesting antiheroes tend to be gruff and laconic, because listening to a chauvinistic sociopath talk about himself is insufferable.Then there is the fact that every character you meet in the story turns up again, hundreds of miles away, to reveal that they are someone else and have been secretly controlling the action of the plot. It feels like the entire world is populated by about fifteen people who follow the narrator around wherever he goes. If the next two books continue along the same lines, then the big reveal will be that the world is entirely populated by no more than three superpowered shapeshifters.Everyone in the book has secret identities, secret connections to grand conspiracies, and important plot elements that they conveniently hide until the last minute, only doling out clues here and there. There are no normal people in this world, only double agents and kings in disguise. Every analysis I've read of this book mentions that even the narrator is unreliable.This can be an effective technique, but in combination with a world of infinite, unpredictable intrigue, Wolfe's story begins to evoke something between a soap opera and a convoluted mystery novel, relying on impossible and contradictory scenarios to mislead the audience. Apparently, this is the thing his fans most appreciate about him--I find it to be an insulting and artificial game.I agree with this reviewer that there is simply not enough structure to the story to make the narrator's unreliability meaningful. In order for unreliable narration to be effective, there must be some clear and evident counter-story that undermines it. Without that, it is not possible to determine meaning, because there's nowhere to start: everything is equally shaky.At that point, it's just a trick--adding complexity to the surface of the story without actually producing any new meaning. I know most sci fi and fantasy authors seem to love complexity for its own sake, but it's a cardinal sin of storytelling: don't add something into your story unless it needs to be there. Covering the story with a lot of vagaries and noise may impress some, but won't stand up to careful reading.Fantasy novels are often centered on masculinity, violence, and power struggles, and so by making the narrator an emotionally distant manipulator with sociopathic tendencies, Wolfe's story is certainly going to resemble other genre outings. If Severian is meant to be a subversion of the grim antihero, I would expect a lot of clever contradiction which revealed him. His unreliability would have to leave gaping holes that point to another, more likely conclusion. If the protagonist's mendacious chauvinism is not soundly contradicted, then there is really nothing separating him from what he is supposed to be mocking.Poe's Law states that it can be difficult to tell whether something is an act of mockery or an example of genuine extremism, and perhaps that's what's going on here: Wolfe's mockery is so on-the-nose that it is indistinguishable from other cliche genre fantasy. But even if that were true, then the only thing separating Wolfe from the average author is the fact that he's doing it on purpose, which is hardly much of a distinction. If a guy punches himself in the nose and then insists "I meant to do that", I don't think that makes him any less of a dumbass.Human psychology and politics are fraught enough without deliberately obfuscating them. Unfortunately, Wolfe does not have the mastery of psychology to make a realistically complicated text, only a cliched text that is meta-complicated.After finishing the book, I tried to figure out why it had garnered so much praise. I stumbled across a number of articles, including this one by Gaiman and this one by an author who wrote a book of literary analysis about the New Sun series. Both stressed that Wolfe was playing a deliberate meta-fictional game with his readers, creating mysteries and clues in his book for them to follow, so that they must reread the text over and over to try to discern what is actually happening. I won't claim this isn't a technical feat, but I would suggest that if Wolfe wanted us to read his book over and over, he might have written it with verve, style, character, and originality. As the above critic says: "On a first, superficial reading, there is little to distinguish Wolfe’s tetralogy from many other sf and fantasy novels . . . The plot itself is apparently unremarkable."Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I have no interest in reading your average sword-wielding badass gender-challenged fantasy book over and over in the hopes that it will get better. If Wolfe is capable of writing an original and interesting story, why cover it with a dull and occasionally insulting one?I have enjoyed complex books before, books with hidden messages and allusions, but they were interesting both in their depths and on the surface. I didn't find the New Sun books particularly complex or difficult. His followers have said that he isn't 'concerned with being conspicuously witty', but I'd suggest he's merely incapable of being vibrant or intriguing.There were interesting ideas and moments in the book, and I did appreciate what originality Wolfe did have, but I found it strange that such a different mind would produce such hidebound prose, tired descriptions, convenient plots, and unappealing characters. It has usually been my experience that someone who is capable of thinking remarkable things is capable of writing remarkable things.Sure, there were some interesting Vancian moments, where you realize that some apparently magical effect is actual a piece of sci fi detritus: this character is a robot, that tower is actually a rocket, a painting of a mythical figure clearly depicts an astronaut--but this doesn't actually add anything to the story, they weren't important facts, they were just details thrown in.It didn't matter that any of those things were revealed to be something else than they appeared, because it didn't change anything about the story, or the characters, or the themes or ideas. These weren't vital and strange ideas to be explored, like the mix of sci fi and fantasy in Vance, Le Guin, or Lovecraft, but inconsequential 'easter eggs' for obsessing fans to dig up.As Clarke's Third Law says: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Therefore, switching back and forth between magical explanations and super-technological ones doesn't mean much, on its own. They're indistinguishable. Star Wars may use the trappings of sci fi, but it's just a fantasy story about wizards and knights in space. In order to make the distinction meaningful, you've got to put some kind of spin on it.Overall, I found nothing unique in Wolfe. Perhaps it's because I've read quite a bit of odd fantasy; if all I read was mainstream stuff, then I'd surely find Wolfe unpredictable, since he is a step above them. But compared to Leiber, Howard, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Eddison, Kipling, Haggard, Peake, Mieville, or Moorcock, Wolfe is nothing special.Perhaps I just got my hopes up too high. I imagined something that might evoke Peake or Leiber (at his best), perhaps with a complexity and depth gesturing toward Milton or Ariosto. I could hardly imagine a better book than that, but even a book half that good would be a delight--or a book that was nothing like that, but was unpredictable and seductive in some other way.I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did. It all plods along without much rise or fall, just the constant moving action to make us think something interesting is happening. I did find some promise, some moments that I would have loved to see the author explore, particularly those odd moments where Silver Age Sci Fi crept in, but each time he touched upon these, he would return immediately to the smallness of his plot and his annoying prick of a narrator. I never found the book to be difficult or complex, merely tiring. the unusual parts were evasive and vague, and the dull parts constant and repetitive.The whole structure (or lack of it) does leave things up to interpretation, and perhaps that's what some readers find appealing: that they can superimpose their own thoughts and values onto the narrator, and onto the plot itself. But at that point, they don't like the book Wolfe wrote, they like the book they are writing between his lines.I'll lend the book out to some fantasy-loving friends and they'll buy the next one, which I'll then have to borrow from them so I can see if there's ever a real payoff. Then again, if Sevarian's adolescent sexuality is any evidence, the climax will be as underwhelming as the self-assured, fumbling foreplay. If I don't learn to stop giving my heart away, it's just going to get broken again.Ah well, once more unto the breach.My Fantasy Book Suggestions
Have now finished this first volume (two novels) in the New Sun series of Wolfe's-- great stuff! Well, you have to be someone who doesn't need to be catered to. I notice that with a lot of Wolfes' books those who don't like them complain about them being hard to get into, dragging, not going anywhere, that sort of thing-- but I think we can attribute this to different kinds of reading, the sort of which CS Lewis talks about in his Experiment in Criticism, if I remember correctly-- I believe it comes down to reading for a basic sort of escape, for a more passive experience in which you are given want you want and expect and don't have to work for it (ie, don't have to work to keep your eyes on it), versus reading to be transformed, reading in a way which admits that the book is worthwhile in its own right and has a right to be engaged with, rather than you having the right to be engaged by it. I think this is one reason the classics stay classics (other than the power canon gives to the upper/middle classes or others who master it and so mark themselves as the cultural elite)-- if we engage with them at all, we do so because they have rights over us and so we grant them those rights and are able to experience them in a "literary" way, rather than what I'm for the moment calling "escapist". This isn't to say that the way we perceive the work is all there is to it-- things can be written to facilitate escapism, and to facilitate transformation (another term I'm using loosely, sorry!), and the latter are signaled in their own ways, for example, by other respected authors calling Gene W. "dangerous", etc, or by the very obviously overwrought riddle of a fiction that the Fifth Head of Cerberus is. It also isn't to say that "literary" books need to be anti-narrative, or unenjoyable apart from intellectual candy-- in fact, I think the more vulgar branch of escapist literature, which tells us that the only strength in story-telling is keeping the action rolling, is what makes it difficult to appreciate the fuller aesthetic (not purely intellectual) beauties of "literary" narrative-- the muscles responsible for processing narrative atrophy, or never get built up (I'm more inclined to say they atrophy). Take Tolkien, who in many ways is accurately called an escapist author and who may be perceived as more popular-- some would defend the "escapist" stuff I've been talking about by mentioning him as both escapist and literary, but I would point out that nearly every one I know has parts of Tolkien they get hung up on, whether the descriptions, the long start, or Tom Bombadil, things which cater to the needs of the "work" rather than the desire of the reader for a smooth ride. Also, despite being criticized for a naive portrayal of evil, it is now more accepted that Tolkien was one of the "war" authors, traumatized by one of the world wars and writing a much more nuanced view of heroism, evil, violence, etc, than one would expect in "escapist fantasy"-- Tolkien may still be called "escapist", but escapist in a productive way (what that is would be another essay, though you can read his take on it in "On Fairy Stories"). OK, I'm going on a bit long, but my point being that "naive", or vulgarly "escapist" reception of Tolkien which is only concerned with whether or not he is entertaining you is less likely to contribute to your ability to navigate the real world, morally/ethically/intellectually, whatever, whereas engaging with the work on its own terms, finding sympathy for Tom Bombadil, for scenes which may not immediately seem connected to the action, etc,-- well, I think healthy engagement like that is good for us in the same way that talking with someone in a way which allows you to sympathize with them, understand them better, see through their eyes, etc, is good for us, and similarly is always healthier for us than talking/listening to someone just to get through the conversation or get some special bit of information from them or get compliments, etc. Yes, I admit, I think there it is possible to differentiate between good and bad reading ethically speaking... but I do have to admit that Lewis also said that both kinds of reading are acceptable, and I certainly read to escape to, so I think my condemnation of the one is motivated more by all the poor reviews I see of the sort of book that demands the other sort of reading. And I should probably admit that the "ways of reading" take on literature also has the potential to be as elitist as the enforcement of a canon, but "escapist" lit. is itself a mind-numbing tool of the state, or at least potentially so-- so nothing is inherently innocent! But good writing/reading is a healthy antidote to that, I think.All that to say-- loved this book, but it is demanding! Also, as I start through the next book, there are plenty of anti-hero elements to the main character, but I think learning to sympathize with a character's faults while not necessarily endorsing them is in itself a good exercise. Original Review:I've read the first half of this volume now, which is the first book of the four in the series. Got hung up for a while, unfortunately after a friend complained about it-- I didn't think my enthusiasm could be dampened so easily-- but I've really enjoyed it. Wolfe's work has such an interesting, surreal quality to it, at the same time that things still cohere, and you trust that even when they don't, they must actually work together. And his prose is so beautiful-- a bit "off" in a way, but he does a good job of making language and story beautiful by making it strange enough that it is called to our attention (what was the term for that again? Coined by the Russian formalists, I think). I think I'll need to reread the series several times to "get" it, but that seems to be the way it is with all of Wolfe's work, and it doesn't stop me from enjoying it. Creative and insightful. And in one of the last chapters I read there was a reference to the moons Verthandi which circle a dead star-- Verthandi being the present participle of the verb "to become, to happen" and one of the names of the three norns in Norse Mythology who are apparently adaptations of the Greek fates adapted to the Norse belief in Norns who accompany childbirth, set a child's fate, etc-- the one named "Verthandi" is interpreted as representing the present. Wolfe borrows from other bits of our past to translate the past of the far future (as he mentions in a dry little appendix on the problems of translating an as-yet unwritten document from the far future), which makes me wonder how many connections I'm missing. That Wolfe is a fan of Norse lit is not a surprise to me, after reading his Wizard-Knight duology, but I hadn't realized that he referenced "my" mythology as far back as this series. I suppose it could also be a random mistake, but considering that the three Norns are likely covered even in basic introductions to Norse myth, it seems reasonable enough that a well-read man like Wolfe would have come across this tidbit.
What do You think about Shadow & Claw (1994)?
Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is one of the most revered severed series of all time. Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, GRRM and goodness knows what other celebs swear by them, not to mention armies of fans among sf readers everywhere. With this kind of adulation writing a review for the books is a risky undertaking. I mean you are fine if you love the books unconditionally and happy to declare yourself a convert, but what if you don't?Fortunately for me I like the book (part 1 & 2) well enough to be able to show some appreciation of its merit, less fortunate is the fact that I don't actually love it."Shadow & Claw" is an omnibus volume comprised of the first two books of the 'The Book of the New Sun': Volume 1: The Shadow of the Torturer and Volume 2: The Claw of the Conciliator. The series is often described as “a novel in four parts” so having read just parts 1 & 2 so far I can not claim to have read the entire book. In fact my attempt to review The Shadow of the Torturer after I finished it was a miserable failure because 25% of a book is too little to write about. Worse still, I first read “The Shadow of the Torturer” on audiobook and in that format most of it was incomprehensible for me, these books need to be read attentively and I can not do that while jogging. I always find printed books to be more intimate and easier to follow any way. The first thing I noticed about Wolfe’s writing is the prose, it is florid, literate and complex, I often had to read sentences or whole passages twice to decipher their meaning. His writing is also often highly evocative, for example this particular sentence is till rattling around in my head: “The hope in her voice now made me think of a flower growing in shadow.”I have never seen a flower growing in shadow but the sentence conjured up a feeling of hopelessness very clearly for me.Many reviews of this book mention that it demands multiple reading for full comprehension. Personally there is at least 15% of the book that I do not quite understand, perhaps after a few days of digesting it more details will fall into place. The author has a habit of suddenly going off on tangents that leave me floundering. There is a whole chapter describing a play put on by the characters that at the time of writing makes no sense to me.The protagonist and narrator of the story Severian is not exactly likable as he seldom shows any emotion, even though his actions are often driven by his feelings. The female characters are all very well developed and I really feel for their plights, including the more villainous ones.OK, that is the best I can do at this point (pathetic, I know), once I finish the remaining volumes I will try to add more substance to this review. This brings me to this passage from the end of the first and second volumes: “Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I cannot blame you. It is no easy road.”Definitely no easy road, but I’m game!
—Apatt
I started into this series with trepidation—I wasn’t sure exactly how I would feel about a torturer as a main character. But Severian (get it, severe, sever) turns out to be charming in his own way—he is intelligent, empathetic, and friendly. Most of all, torture is just a job. He does it because it is he is a member of the guild, not because he has some psychopathic joy in the process. He does what needs to be done, follows the rules of his guild (except that one time that gets him into trouble), and generally just tries to do a good job. His one characteristic that annoys me is his tendency to “love” which ever woman is closest to him—and they change over fairly regularly and then change back. So far (end of book 2), he hasn’t found a woman that he isn’t interested in nor has he found one who rivets his attention.In some ways he reminds me of the Knight, Sir Percival. There are repeated mentions of his “noble looks,” suggesting that he may be the illegitimate son of someone of importance. Just as Percival spent his childhood in the forests, “ignorant of the ways of men,” so Severian spends his youth confined to a small part of the Citadel, learning his trade as torturer and very little else. Around the age of 15, when Sir Percival had his life-changing encounter with King Arthur’s knights in the forest, Severian has his life-changing evening in the necropolis where he encounters and assists the outlaw Vodalus. Like Percival, his ignorance of the ways of the world outside the Citadel often place him in perilous situations, which he comes through due to his basic honesty and ability to make friends who have the needed skills.Urth is an interesting world too—a very old Earth, apparently formerly space-faring and technological, very much reduced to the rather Medieval state that Severian inhabits. There are occasional bits of technology that still work, continuously reminding the reader that this is in the far future, when the sun has dimmed just as the civilization has.Wolfe’s conceit in these novels is that they are translations from a future language, hence the plethora of words that sound like we ought to know the meanings, but it takes a little bit of thought to figure out exactly where they come from. I’m always interested in linguistics and I like it when an author is too. I’ll definitely be reading the third book in the very near future.Since this volume is actually two books, it counts as 159 & 160 for me from the NPR list of classic science fiction and fantasy.
—Wanda
Brilliant, complex, ambiguous, alien.Spoiler Warning: This is a review of the entire four-part Book of the New Sun and contains spoilers from the whole book. (There are no spoilers for Urth of the New Sun though.)It is hard to read and come to terms with a work that is universally hailed a masterpiece and not infrequently compared to Ulysses. When you approach a novel that is rumored to contain depths and mysteries, that is the subject of full-length literary analyses, and that you know has been lovingly picked apart by a dedicated usenet group for over twelve years, you can feel the room getting a little crowded. When you are led to believe, and secretly hope, that this is the Great Science Fiction Novel that might, through sheer tremendous art, justify and elevate the entire genre, then you are perhaps being unfair. It is hard to read a book when each line has to contend with the echoes of tremendous expectations.But if we can get past these things-- and it took me two readings to get past them-- then what we find is indeed something wonderful: weird, sincere, mysterious, and totally unique.This is of course the story of Severian, the exiled torturer's apprentice who journeys farther and farther north-- out of the City Imperishable, across the meadow roofs of the House Absolute, into the mountains, up to the battlefront, and behind enemy lines-- only to loop back and arrive, spiritually triumphant and bewildered, at the southern gate of his home city as the Autarch of the Commonwealth. It is a story of spiritual renewal, as Severian comes to understand the Claw of the Conciliator, an artifact from outside our universe with the ability to reverse entropy and even time, named after the figure who once, legends say, "took a dying woman by the hand and a star by the other, and from that time forward... had the power to reconcile the universe with humanity, and humanity with the universe, ending the old breach" (my favorite line from the book). Above all this is the story of Earth millions of years in the future-- now called Urth, and having drifted over the eons into something strange and sad and sometimes barely recognizable. Without giving much specific information on the historical eras that have passed, through oblique touches (the sun is dying and stars are visible in daylight; the moon is green with forests planted in the distant past; the ground is saturated with broken shards from bygone eras, so that digging almost anywhere turns up old broken relics), Wolfe gives us the sense of vast ages elapsed, of a world familiar while deeply alien.It is that obliqueness that makes Wolfe a difficult author. Sometimes he lays clues for a specific revelation, such as the identity of the maid who participates in the guild's yearly ceremony, who Severian takes the time to describe so poetically. More often, the clues don't add up to a clear picture, and when we struggle to piece together the logistics of the Botanic Gardens, or how Typhon's reign fits into the history of Urth, or the relationship between Miles and Jonas, we can only form a vague picture, and a feeling of ends not quite joining up. This is a good thing. By not having pieces neatly fit together Wolfe avoids a feeling of thinness and over-explanation that plagues a lot of the genre. There is a sense of wondrous revelation that you, as a reader, almost but don't quite get, and it's our inability as readers to assert narrative control over the book's key concepts that makes them so deep and rich. As Borges, who inspires at least two of the book's episodes, says, "Mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something... this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon." But dealing with the ambiguities and uncertainties of these partially-occurring revelations makes reading Wolfe hard and tricky.It's also hard because it's often not clear where things are going. When I think of The Book of the New Sun, I think of an abundance of rich, mysterious events and conversations and little moments that don't fit into a single linear narrative, but rather, like pieces of a mosaic, contribute organically to an overall effect. At times it seems unbelievable that they all occur in the same book. To name a few: the Librarian's Book of Gold, the terrifying Revolutionary, Severian's dream in Baldander's bed, the Jungle Garden's time travelling (or spell-adelled) occupants, the Lake of Birds, the alliance of Malrubius and the dog Triskele, the green man, the dissolution of Jonas in the antechamber, the titanic butterfly-being swimming between the stars in the Autarch's book, Dr. Talos's play, the appearance of the undine, the Cumaean and Apu Panchau, Cyriaca's story about the building of the library, the truth about Dorcas, the alzabo, the terror of Typhon, the truth about Dr. Talos, the strange connection between Miles and Jonas, Master Ash, the battle scene, the Ascians, the return to Valeria. Indeed, how can so many wonders exist side by side? Surely they must somehow cancel each other out.But somehow they all work together. This is in part due to the strength of Wolfe's prose, always in control of the situation, and partly from the unifying influence of a few basic themes, primarily resurrection. Struggles towards rebirth and renewal occur almost everywhere you look, from the coming of the New Sun, to the fates of Dorcas and Thecla and Miles, to the perversions of the alzebo and the awakening of Typhon, to Severian's own journey of spiritual renewal. This is a journey from the darkness of the torturers' tower to the shining light of the Autarchy, (or from fuligin, the color "darker than black", to argent, the color "more pure than white"), a rebirth which, we hope, will parallel that of Urth's fate. The book ends inconclusively, but the signs look good. For all of the bleakness of this dimly lit, sad future, there is reason to hope. Wolfe is a man of faith, and by the end of this book of strange marvels, we might be too.
—Jason
