Rating: 
Summary: Okay follow-up
Review: I read Gene Wolfe's four-volume "Book of the New Sun" when I was in high school. Even though I read indiscriminately in those days, I knew that these books were something different, something special. What originally drew me to them was the unconventional employment of his hero, Severian, who we meet in the first book as an apprentice torturer. I was a big fan of fantasies with someone other than the orphan farm boy who turns out to be the long-lost prince (my high school favorite being, of course, the leper and unbeliever, Thomas Covenant). But what kept me reading was the language. Wolfe's style in those books was a complex baroque--what we read as fantasy, in the strictest Arthur C. Clarke definition, is really only far future science, Wolfe was saying. And what is old (especially in language), becomes new again, with a strangely reminiscent quality. Wolfe's books were set so far in the future that the sun is a dying star.When you write a masterpiece, as Wolfe did, it is hard to top it, and, although The Urth of the New Sun attempts to be that fifth book that provides a seamless integration with the four before it, something is missing. It could be that Severian has finally risen too high (literally) for us to follow; it could be that the metaphysics of the New Sun become too convoluted. Or it might just be that I waited too many years between the tetralogy and this book to be able to pick up the narrative thread. I know that in the first four books Severian engages in remembering instances that occurred earlier, but it seems endemic to this novel, taking seemingly forever for something *new* to happen. But you don't read these for the plot. It is Gene Wolfe's genius for making obscure words and ancient terms seem like the language of a new world that leaves you spellbound. This might frustrate some who do not have an OED handy or a grasp of foreign roots, but most SF readers are used to trying to understand new words in context. To use a fairly simplistic example: you know that a falchion is a sword- like thing when it is used to chop someone's head off. Wolfe took some years off before returning to this world in the 1990s in the Long Sun books. I'm interested in how they compare, hoping that he was able to capture more of the original spirit there than in this novel.
Rating:
Summary: This book was 'merely' quite good.
Review: I should start out by mentioning that the first four books of this series are among my favorite books of all time. I was one of those people who eagerly awaited the publication of each new book in the series, who has re-read the series several times looking for further clues to the eventual outcome of the series (which is left as something of an exercise to the reader) and who never hesistates to recommend these books to friends and family. Which is part of the reason I found this book somewhat dissapointing. While filled with the same brilliant concepts, and stunning prose as the first four books, I found it lacking in the sorts of mysteries that made its predessors so wonderful. It struck me as rushed, and almost had a 'contractual obligation to the publisher' feel to it. Plus it does a good job of answering a lot of questions about the original series, but those questions were a big part of why I loved the books in the first place. Now having said all that, I think these things stand out only because the first four books were so carefully crafted, so unrushed and so clearly a labor of love. Overall, I recommend this book. But I can't recommend it with the same wholhearted enthusiasm as the first books in this series.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Breathtaking
Review: I was left stunned, and, in the usual Wolfe fashion, breathless by what I feel is the best book in this incredible series. In The Urth of the New Sun, the taste of the magical and mysterious that Wolfe teases us with through the first three books is laid on thickly as we are finally brought to understand many of the mysteries of Severian's amazing universe. This is the fairy tale of all fairy tales, and a book you must not miss!
Rating:
Summary: A new hope for Urth: Wolfe returns to Briah
Review: In Urth of the New Sun, Wolfe revisits an exhausted humanity
of the far future, in which the dying Sun slowly withdraws its
warmth and hope from a once-proud world. Returning
to illuminate old shadows, and paint in new ones, Wolfe places
Severian before his final test, and struggles with the right
of one man to condemn a dying yet beloved world to death for
the sake of a new hope. We travel with his characters to the
depths of space, where a ship lifts its sails to the solar wind, and where a star races
urgently through the night, bringing Urth's fearful salvation. In such
unfamiliar surroundings, we discover that certain familiar truths, about honesty and trust, lovers and friends, and the strange virtues of death,
remain constant even there. Wolfe is,
as always, thoughtful, moving, and dark, without neglecting
the possibility of light.
Rating: 
Summary: Gene Wolfe soars to new heights
Review: Mr Gene Wolfe certainly has a hotline to some dark spirit, and this novel is no exception. The story plunges from episode to episode with the usual disorienting pace, the images and devices are as disturbing and powerful as ever, and the plotting as intricate and dazzling. But something new happens - as we realise that the story of Severian is the story of nothing less than a new God, the messianic figure who will usher in the end of one world and preside over the birth of another, the story attains a level of religious and mythological depth not seen before in the New Sun novels. The writing about Yesod, the world beyond the world where the beings of our own and other Galaxies are to be judged, is of a degree of lyricism and passion rarely encountered in run of the mill SF. As piercing is the end of the book, where Severian encounters himself and his companions as figures in a new pantheon. The underlying themes of human pain, loss, beauty, transcendence and death are handled with a seriousness, power and deftness that only Tolkien CS Lewis behind and Ursula Le Guin have matched.
Rating:
Summary: More than Just Dotting the i's, Crossing the t's
Review: Part of the motivation for reading URTH OF THE NEW SUN is simply to breathe in more of Wolfe's beautiful prose, as written by Severian, and to take a few more footsteps in the path of that (ex?)-torturer. URTH OF THE NEW SUN does more than simply show us what happens when Severian takes the trip implied at the end of THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH. It does not explain away the mystery, but deepens it; it widens and deepens our understanding of the universe of Wolfe's Sun Books, and warns us to (in Flannery O'Connor's phrasing) beware of "the swiftness of mercy" and the painful touch of Divine Grace. Le Guin (who sometimes achieves the goal herself, but not as often as Wolfe) is correct in calling Wolfe science-fiction's Melville--not that Wolfe and Melville have the same vision, but they share the ability to make the concrete things in their fictional worlds embody ideas and truths without losing their "thingness"--they escape the Scylla and Charybdis of fictional idealism and materialism. In Wolfe's case, I would call this "Incarnational" fiction, grounded in his Catholic worldview, but whatever perspective it comes from, it is worth seeking wherever it can be found in literature.
Rating:
Summary: The New Sun: A Story of Redemption
Review: The underlying allegory in the Book of the New Sun is the story of the redemption of one man- Severian- and all men and women on Urth, as represented by him. It is an intentional irony of the story that when Severian embarks on this final odyssey he is already more than one person himself, from his experiences previously; and indeed those inside him form part of the process of saving his (and thus the Urth's) soul.
Those who read this story as a straightforward space opera will probably be puzzled and confused. However, as a spiritual pilgrimage and tale of the human condition, pain, and forgiveness, it is without parallel as far as I know in the science fiction genre (and with few parallels in any other genre).
The clever connections with Hebrew and Christian mythology continue to run beneath the surface of the story, and if it wasn't already clear from Severian's monologue in the earlier books about God being a torturer, too, it becomes evident in this book that Severian is a literary Christ figure- though one of the most bizarre and fragmented I have come across, and certainly one of the greater and so more human ones.
The delight in following this myth is only increased by Wolfe's admirable, unshakeable dedication to real science. The evolution of the even more fantastic part of the New Sun Universe shown to us in this additional novel continues to be hinted at and explained in terms of the real world, though shrouded in myth and awe.
Those who fail to understand the strength of the ending would be well advised to go back to the earlier novels and re-read the script of the play Severian performs in the Autarch's gardens. In fact, the entire series improves with re-readings, as it has obviously been cross-written throughout- no mean feat when the last book is written so long after the first four are theoretically complete.
Rating:
Summary: A dazzling and imaginative coda to a fantastic series
Review: THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN is a coda to Gene Wolfe's four-volume masterpiece The Book of the New Sun. It is a work both like and unlike its predecessor, and is essential reading for anyone who appreciated The Book of the New Sun.THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN begins with Severian having just completed the second copy of his book while on the Ship of the Hierodules, journeying to Yesod, the universe higher than our own, that he may stand trial to bring a New Sun to Urth. Although The Book of the New Sun was concerned mostly with Severian's internal thoughts, THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN is very much concerned with the universe(s) outside Severian. The settings in which Severian finds himself in the first half of the book, outside the Ship, in the Ship's holds, and finally on the isle on Yesod, are brilliantly exotic locales, but which Severian himself knows are beyond his understanding. In The Book of the New Sun, Severian writes his tale in a complete manner, understanding why various aspects of his adventure are as they are. In URTH, however, Severian gives detailed descriptions of where he travels, but writes as one completely lost as a mere human among the Hierodules.Yesod is one of the most fascinating settings in science fiction, and Wolfe's clear style brings them to the reader's imagination fully. Wolfe's concepts of the wings of Tzadkiel looking like curtains around him while he sits on his throne, the scarab machine that like something out of ancient mythologies makes Yesod function, and tongueless Apetha enthrall the reader. Madregot, the Brook beyond Briah were Severian pauses for a moment, is a rather powerful place to the reader.The second half of THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN involves Severian's return to Urth. As other reviews have let out, it does indeed deal with time travel. And although Wolfe does obviously tie up several loose ends in this part of the Book, he also clearly evokes Severian's bafflement at his own omnipotence. The final scene of the book is mysterious and it is difficult to say it concludes anything, so the ending is a beginning of something much more for Severian, about which we must only speculate.Having completed The Book of the New Sun, a beautiful and original work that was for me the Book of Gold, I hope readers will go on to THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN, which dazzles and entertains as much as the first four volumes of Severian's tale. Having finished it, perhaps the reader will wish to go on to Wolfe's other "solar" works, The Book of the Long Sun and its follow-up The Book of the Short Sun.
Rating:
Summary: Coda to the Book of the New Sun, greatest fiction work ever
Review: The Urth of the New Sun is a coda to the Book of the New Sun but it is, ironically, the best of the cycle. Kabbalistic structure and theological symbolism abound in one of the more esoterical of Wolfe's works. As Severian journeys to Yesod, the setting of the Ship is totally believable and its descriptions are breathtaking.
Rating:
Summary: Shadows from the future haunt the dreams of the present
Review: Things that happened in the first book were caused by the Autarch in this mighty brain twister. Best time story ever.
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