This volume picks up and concludes Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun quartet. Most readers will be absolutely lost without reading the first two volumes.Re-entering Wolfe's vision of the future, the tone is the same. Severian is as preachy and detached as ever, though readers will be relieved to understand how he got this way, as revealed towards the end of the second book. This does not excuse the needlessly somber and coldly overanalytical style of narration for the rest of these books, though, where it only serves to hinder the fluidity of storytelling. Wolfe's narrator drops major events, like an important character's death, on the audience artlessly and moves on with unsatisfying speed. Beyond a couple of paragraphs, many huge plot events seem to have no ramifications throughout Sword of the Lictor, and for a healthy part of Citadel of the Autarch. Progression is often clumsy and when Severian contemplates the story, he views it with a cold philosophy and analysis that does not remotely resemble how people would actually react, and that is so detatch and clinical that it isn't entertaining, either - that he becomes something other than a normal person does not excuse the often painful prose across the seven hundred pages before the change. The collected first person perspective of the story also hides or bluntly announces any character development, turning the storyteller into a barrier between the readers and the fiction. Because these latter two books have more adventure than first two, the style of storytelling is even more irksome, though Wolfe occasionally nails an action scene, such as a monster's attack on a small house in Sword of the Lictor. Readers who have made it this far will likely enjoy the sprawling strangeness of Urth, from strange creatures to a growing sense of its culture in things like a storytelling contest Severian recounts to us at the beginning of the final book.Sword sees the best relationship in the series, between Severian and Young Severian, a child whom our protagonist takes under his wing. The relationship doesn't thrive on fakely sentimentality or cliche, but opens up the mind of our narrator and produces more real human emotion than the revenge-based, economic or sexual-political relationships he explores with so many adult characters. The book also has the best ending, in that this one isn't abrupt isn't nearly as random as the close of the first two installments.Citadel returns to the standard of an anticlimactic ending. Considering how little plot exists in the over eight hundred pages of Wolfe's story, one can't really expect satisfying climaxes or conclusions, and the end to the final book reminds you of it, not with a battle or even a series of interesting actions, but in exposition and conversations. Conversation is the strength of the series, getting to more profound or interesting topics, or at least getting at them better than Severian does when he's on his own as narrator, but that doesn't make it a good ending. The major revelation at the conclusion is something most of the books haven't even considered, so it falls flat. This is made more annoying by Wolfe's heavy emphasis on theology, philosophy and governmental structures that we seldom see in action, but constantly hear about. Indeed, the weakest aspect of the whole quartet is that between the detached first person narrator and the frequent exposition, you read about a story more than you read a story.
Gene Wolfe, the poetically accented writer of intricate fantasy/science-fiction hybrids like this exquisite tetralogy, was inspired by that other pen-wielding magician Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth: Wolfe's series also takes place on a radically altered Earth in the far, far future when the Sun's fuel is running dangerously low. Amidst the wreckage of past civilizations lies the sprawling, endless city of Wolfe's protagonist torturer-apprentice Severian. Beginning as a gauzy, haunting bildungsroman, influenced subtly throughout by the Roman Catholic faith of the author and homages to other great works, Severian, cursed and blessed with a flawless memory that may or may not be allergic to the truth, makes a moral choice that leads to his flight from the vast metropolis, a journey requiring literally days of travel. As the story progresses while the fuligin-clad youth ventures forth past the city walls into unknown lands - and companions attach themselves to Severian in pursuit of unknown ends - the itinerant torturer becomes aware of troubles at the court of the Autarch, the all-powerful, myth-shrouded monarch of the torturer's world, who faces scheming rebel courtiers and consults with the enigmatic Hierodules. Severian will also hear rumors of a fierce war with strange-speaking foreigners from the alien culture of the north.Each of the four books that comprise the tetralogy unfold with a subtle shift in tone and tincture. In my opinion, the opening book possesses itself of an atmospheric wonder rarely achieved in the field of fantasy fiction. Whereas Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring begins with a localized and bucolic expedition that little hints at the historic importance of the quest vaguely discernible upon the horizon, and Stephen Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane initiates the reader into the grim, isolated and self-loathing existence of an embittered leper whose first overwhelming experience with The Land inspires him to an act of rape that jars the reader out of the moment, Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer is, in many ways, the strongest book in the series. From the opening sentences the reader is immersed in the portentous but ineffable shimmering of a mysterious civilization aged in its incantatory urban flavor like an oaken whiskey; the entirety a smoothly flowing, warming, and immensely enjoyable unfolding as the words daub every action, puzzle, and rumination with the purplish shadows of myth-in-itself. Severian's story is a narrative dream hatched from the timbered depths of moral perturbability and painted in the hues of enigmatic unbinding. The aura of lush decay that permeates the first book provides an ambiance Wolfe can never quite attain to, let alone transcend, in the following three pieces; but the route each of the three provides for the journey towards self-realization for the Torturer Apprentice are, nonetheless, worthy companions to the opening act.This is neither a Tolkien clone nor a genre-checklist fantasy-lite: Wolfe is a gifted writer who excels at painting sombre moods and shifting scenery, at casting mysterious strangers to beset the torturer and scattering hints that Severian's story is not all what it seems; and he expects the reader to make the effort to puzzle through his mysteries and render his veils. A thoroughly enjoyable and sublime series that only gets better with further readings.
What do You think about Sword & Citadel (1994)?
The second half of the Book of the New Sun, Severian ends his quest to return the Claw of the Conciliator, and finds that there is a lot more to do.A year ago I read the first half of the series (book #1 and 2). When I got towards the end of book 4 I remembered why it took me so long to finish this series. The solitary life of Severian really got to me, and I grew tired of only his thoughts, his confusions, and his descriptions.Add to that Gene Wolfe's constant barrage of made up words that one has to try to remember what it means, my brain started to hurt. I really wish I had not taken a year to get to the second half, I may have remembered the meaning of certain words better (weapons, creatures, plants, clothes). While I've gotten the things that irritate me off my chest, this is a fantastic series. I will most likely read this series again, especially knowing the end. Also, a mistake I made was reading Stephing King's Dark Tower series in between these two books. There are enough similarities in the two, that I am still not sure which part I read in which series. So I would like to read this again without the confusion of the Tower in my head. (Though the final remark Gene Wolfe makes as the "translator" of the series, nearly had me on the floor with laughter at how similar the series are).If you liked this series, I do recommend reading the Dark Tower series and if you like the DT series, I recommend reading The Book of the New Sun series (though keep in mind that it requires a little more of you intellectually than the DT series does).
—Juliette
Finished "Sword", almost done with "Citadel"The third volume, Sword of the Lictor, which I just finished, opens up quite a bit. I love the first two, but this one, I think, is my favorite volume; I'm almost done with the fourth. In "Sword", Severian continues to be unlucky in love with a girlfriend who is depressed and freaked out, and if anyone has an excuse, she does.He betrays his guild, which he swore so passionately not to do again, for the second time and for the same reason and for the same person. Consequently, goes on a major mountain hiking, rock climbing, journey; on the lam from the law, where it becomes apparent who his nemesis is, and he solves the mystery of the interstellar master hunter who's been stalking him, meets the most horror (and thought) provoking alien imaginable, becomes a father, is almost raped by a larger then life, three headed, demi-god, is captured by his world's version of a satanic cult,eats hallucinogenic mushrooms, visits the castle of a self creating frankenstein's monster,and meets the masked aliens (cacogens) who were so interested in Dr. Talos's play in "Claw", and the mask is pulled to reveal the horror beneath...which is in turn a mask which is pulled to reveal...well..you'll have to read it.Not necessarily in that order, and much more.....All still with the narrator's, (interesting to me,) philosophical interspersions into the text. Here is a particularly cute, mystical, little musing, questioning the relation between human existence, symbolism, and text:"If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan.The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last."
—Bill
I already have plans to re-read this again in a few months, so I'll put off a proper post until then. I feel like I won't actually be qualified to discuss it until I've read it all at least twice. And that's really the whole point, innit? Nothing makes any kind of sense until almost the end, and even then you're left wondering what else you missed that maybe seemed unimportant the first, second, fifth time through. I wasn't entirely impressed with the first two books (well, the second mostly), but now I look forward to revisiting them. No ratings til I've re-read. Of the Book of the New Sun liturgy of the Pelerines, I will say nothing. Such things cannot always be well described, and even when they can, it is less than proper to do so.
—sj
