1984 Campbell – CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH by Gene Wolfe

I have mixed feelings about this, the final volume of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. I’ve been a fan of the work throughout the first three volumes of its run, but the concluding entry is definitely the weakest.

In Citadel of the Autarch, Severian goes off to war and then chances into his destiny, which has implications for all of Urth. The first third is the strongest, as Severian finds himself recuperating in a military camp and becomes the judge of a story contest. The stories are all wonderfully told, and there’s a brilliant conceit involving a captured enemy combatant’s story; the people of Ascians can only speak in memorized passages from their holy text, but we still get his story in translation. In the second third of the novel, Severian goes to war, and we learn that….wait for it….war is hell. It’s a message that I approve of, of course, but it’s the most generic part of this extremely original series.

I won’t spoil the conclusion, even though it’s revealed early in the series, but it does occur through a series of random events, and it puts the character in an entirely different place than he’s been. I can see various reasons for Wolfe to do things this way, but it was a bit unsatisfying because a) it is such a chance occurrence and b) it takes Severian away from the very personal story that has always been at the series’ heart. The Book of the New Sun has been a sort of anti-quest, and the big finish didn’t quite seem an appropriate conclusion to Severian’s wanderings.

Still, this was a solid entry and what has been a fantastic and influential series.

Grade: A-

1983 Locus Fantasy - THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR by Gene Wolfe

Another installment in Wolfe’s dying-earth epic The Book of the New Sun, and we get new companions, new hints and mysteries about Urth, and more misery for the narrator Severian.

Severian finally makes it to the city of Thrax that he set off for midway through book one, and things don’t go well there. From there, various monsters, mutated bandits, wizards, aliens, etc. try to kill Serverian and steal his legendary sword and/or the magical claw of the conciliator. The writing is still literate and lyrical yet highly entertaining. Wolfe manages to maintain a really rich sense of mystery throughout the whole series, and he’s constantly adding details and raising new questions. In this volume we get to see some witches, ancient technology, and we begin to learn a lot more about the presence of aliens on Urth (known as cacogens to the locals).

On the negative side, the series’ bleakness is beginning to pile up to dangerous levels. I mean, it was always obvious that a story about a conflicted torturer wandering a dying Earth was going to be dark, but Wolfe really keeps dialing up the gut punches to Severian (and the reader) as the series goes along. Severian has consistently gained and lost companions over his journeys, but some of the losses in this volume are especially brutal, and the trail of death that follows Severian is almost getting monotonous.

Still, The Book of the New Sun remains a great series, and I would put this volume on the same level as The Shadow of the Torturer, though it was probably not quite as good as the Claw of the Conciliator.

Grade: A

1981 Nebula and 1982 Locus Fantasy – CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR by Gene Wolfe

Claw of the Conciliator continues The Book of the New Sun. Most of what I said about the series last Monday still applies. It’s a very well-written work with an intriguing narrator and a rich and fascinating world. Though Wolfe’s Urth owes a lot to the whole body of post-apocalyptic literature, there’s a level of detail here rivaled by few outside of Tolkein.

The novel, somewhat disconcertingly, picks up a few months after the abrupt end of the previous book. Severian the torturer is still on a slow journey to a distant posting. He’s been temporarily separated from his companions, and has a new friend Jonas. Following plotlines set up in the first book, he is torn between fulfilling his duty as a loyal member of the torturer’s guild and an old attraction to a group of revolutionaries under a nobleman named Vodalus. Severian has also picked up a magical gem called the Claw of the Conciliator, which figures heavily in the plot at several instances. Severian is drawn to the gem’s power, but he also considers returning it one of his paramount goals. At one point, Jonas mocks Severian’s contradictory goals, and I took this as Wolfe acknowledging his own schizophrenic plotting.

Jonas, and the eventual reveal of his place in this world, is actually a fascinating and worthwhile addition that adds a new layer to Wolfe’s Urth. But, what really makes Claw superior to its predecessor are the new layers that Wolfe adds to the overall narrative. It’s increasingly clear that nothing on Wolfe’s Urth is as it appears, and Wolfe does a great job playing with questions of reality, metaphor and legend. These ideas are developed wonderfully in various plot twists and some very evocative and beautifully written symbolic passages, especially in the latter half of the novel. At the end of Shadow, I was worried that this series had been over-hyped and that I was bound for disappointment. By the end of this novel, Wolfe’s storytelling had really flourished, I had gotten accustomed to it, and it was clear that this series really is something special.

It’s certainly not conventional sci-fi/fantasy, but it’s not really conventional literary fiction either. It’s an odd but fascinating hybrid of gritty pulp adventure and postmodern fiction. And I like it.

Grade: A

1981 World Fantasy Award and BSFA – SHADOW OF THE TORTURER by Gene Wolfe

This is the first novel in The Book of the New Sun tetraology, which is arguable the most award-winning science fiction series of all time. The only series that comes close to racking up as many awards is Bujold’s Vorkagasian saga, which required several more novels to do so (though New Sun never won a Hugo, but Bujold’s series won three). My copy also has a cover blurb from Neil Gaiman declaring it “the greatest science fiction novel of the twentieth century.” Plenty of hype here.

I assume Gaiman meant the entire Book of the New Sun. It’s clear by the end of Shadow that the series is meant to be read as a single story unfolding over four novels. I, on the other hand, am reading and reviewing each in turn. Not surprisingly then, my biggest problem here is that the novel feels so incomplete.

The story takes place in the far distant future. The sun is dying, and society is pretty low tech (though there are several genetically engineered – or alien? – creatures running around). The main character, Severian, grows up in the Torturers Guild. Yes, he is raised to maim and execute for interrogation or as punishment, but he’s a torturer with a heart of gold. He falls in love with the first “client” with whom he interacts. As a result, he leaves the guild and begins a journey to a new assignment. He meets a few eccentric characters, attains some valuable items, and as he is preparing to move on….the novel ends abruptly with a promise of more to follow.

It’s an entertaining story, interesting world, and Severian is a fascinating character, even if he remains a bit of a cipher despite being the narrator. The plot and world felt a tad generic – actually, I wondered if this novel was huge in Japan, considering that 90% of the anime from the last quarter century have involved an anti-hero wandering across a dying world. I think it was:

The main attraction is the prose though. The details are rich and evocative, Severian’s thoughts range from the philosophical to the brutally frank, and yet the novel always propels the reader forward. I’m not ready to anoint Wolfe the Faulkner of sci-fi yet, and the book does wander along the edge of pretension every now and then (we can’t talk about “historians;” we have to talk about “historiographers” because it sounds better. Who cares if it has a different meaning?) But, it was a very nice read.

Also, best cover ever?

Grade: A-