Rating: 
Summary: And Now, For Something Completly Different...
Review: Wow, this is some kind of great book! I'm sure that as you look at most of these reviews you get the idea that this book is not like anything you've ever seen. If that is the impression that you get, you are not that far off the truth. Comparing it to anything else I've read is going to sound a little strange. When I read these books I am reminded of a depleted future like some of Asimov's books, a quest a la Lord of the Rings, and...and...a sort of a moral journey like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. A very strange combination, to be sure, but Wolfe makes it work. The man writes like nobody else. I don't see how Wolfe came up with the premise for the series, but it is off the creativity scale. The books are set up as the journal of a former torturer, Severian, describing how he came to be the Autarch of his country. Genius. I've read some reviews that put down Wolfe's series. I don't get it. I own up to the series being challenging; it is NOT light reading. Anything being compared to Pilgrim's Progress is not going to be an easy read. It may not be the lightest thing in the world, but it is well worth the journey if you just stop and think about what you are reading. Part of the greatness of the book is that you need to analyze what it means to you. Anyway, I highly recommend the books to anyone willing to put forth the effort the books need to be appreciated. Try it!
Rating:
Summary: This is a thinking person's book
Review: This is by no means a conventional story; I might go so far as to say it is like nothing I've read before. Besides what has been noted already, I would like to emphasize that this is not a book to sit down to on a lazy Saturday, nor is it one to entertain on the primal levels of suspense or even emotion in a literal sense (you may not care much about the character through the whole of the series). Rather, the title's character, Severian, serves as a vessel of relizing a new world, in all its facets and dimensions. The Shadow and Claw is likely the most involved of the series, focusing more on the individual, but similar to our own lives, as Severian ages and gains in wisdom, so does his world expand. What I especially enjoyed was the way in which events from Shadow and Claw led to or are alluded to in the future volumes; the setting is so bogglingly woven that one could hardly appreciate fully the depth of Wolfe's writing by reading the series only once.
Rating: 
Summary: Forced myself to finish this
Review: Well, having given up on Shadow several years ago,
and having been told that people often gave up
on these books and loved them on a second attempt,
I am making a second attempt. I have finished Shadow
and Claw, and so far am not having anything resembling
a good time. I'm not that bothered by the antique vocabulary. I'm just
not sure that I care what happens to Severian or indeed
anyone else in the story. I enjoyed Jack Vance's "Eyes of
the Overworld" much more - and that has a somewhat
similar setting and somewhat similar vocab. I will read Sword and Citadel, but whilst it's possible
that they will make me re-evaluate events in books 1
and 2 I can't see myself deciding after 3&4 that
1&2 were, in retrospect, brilliant fun. In particular, Dr Talos' play near the end of book 2
is something I skipped faster and faster, like romance
scenes in a Doc Smith book. Eeeagh.
Rating:
Summary: A series that deserves more recognition!
Review: This series is one of my favorite works of fantasy. Admittedly, the characters can be a little flat sometimes, but the writing style is wonderful, as is the setting. Unlike most fantasy writers, Wolfe doesn't merely describe a copy of medieval Europe or some other historical setting. Unlike most science fiction authors, he doesn't merely create a copy of the present with faster computers and interstellar travel. He has created something truly alien. The obscure vocabulary that other reviewers have mentioned does not occur nearly as often as some would have you believe. Frequently, Wolfe just uses an existing word when another author would make one up. On other occasions, he avoids a more usual word because it would link the setting too strongly to something else.
Gene Wolfe is a master author, and he has written a story that can be read on multiple levels. You can enjoy these books by reading them like a simple adventure, or you can look for all of the allusions and hidden meanings that they contain. Either way, you'll likely want to reread them. These books should be better known. I hope that the publisher will reissue them in mass market paperback, since reduced prices might prompt more people to pick them up.
Rating:
Summary: Read it with a friend...
Review: I bought the first book of this series because of SF awards it received over the years (e.g., Nebula). So, I went in with rather high expectations and still was completely blown away. The characters are complex beyond imagination (mine, not Wolfe's, clearly). I've spent hours contemplating whether Severian is a moral man or not... My reason for posting this review, however, is to say that I only fully began to appreciate this series after a close friend read it and we began to discuss it. Wolfe leaves so many gaps in the plot...in his universe...in his philosophy...that the reader can supply a lot of imagination. Hearing my friend's interpretation, and his hearing mine, really brought that point home to each of us. I think a casual reading would still prove enjoyable. But, this book (at least for me) really came alive after long periods of introspection and discussion. So, get a friend to read it :-)
Rating:
Summary: Sweet torturer
Review: When Gene Wolfe's series of novels, "The Book of the New Sun," hit the shelves, they revolutionized the science fiction genre. Reading more like fantasy, these books had such a richness of detail and so many impossible ideas, that you are almost forced to take notes just to keep up with the narrative. But despite such complexity, the books are gripping and easy to read. This is greatly helped by there being, almost exclusively, one point of view. Severian is the central character in the story. A young boy, perhaps orphaned, entering into the little known torturer's guild in the far, far distant future. We don't know the year but we do know the sun is in decline and a religion has sprung up surrounding the myth of the coming of the new sun. Severian knows nothing of the world, at least in the beginning, but it is that very innocence that helps introduce the wonders of his world to us. As he is forced into the broader landscape, we, the readers, are dragged along with him, learning of giants, green men, aliens, rebels and the mysterious Claw of the Conciliator. These books are definitely going to be read and re-read by fiction lovers. They are classics and as such, only get better with time. If you enjoyed Robert Silverberg's "Majipoor" novels or Jack Vance's "The Dyng Earth" series, then you will not want to miss the four novels in "The Book of the New Sun" series, recently republished in two doubled volumes.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great literary achievements of fantasy
Review: Like thousands of teenagers, I came of age with *The Lord of the Rings*. The rather ugly Bakshi movie was the first one I went to see without my parents, and the novel was virtually the first one I ever read that was not a children's book, except for Jules Verne's *Mysterious Island*. Just like many Tolkien fans, I became a lifelong devotee of the fantasy genre, and explored the more promising of the other Middle-Earths, from Lankhmar to the Dark Shore, Lyonesse, Majipoor, Amber, Earthsea and the world of the Hyborean Age. But of all the fantasy series I ever read, the only that ever compared to Tolkien's masterpiece in my opinion was Gene Wolfe's *New Urth* tetralogy. The others were fun, imaginative, full of action and adventure, but they either failed to maintain throughout the literary and spiritual power I had found in *The Lord of the Rings* or to equal the richness of its world-building. Interestingly enough, however different Tolkien's and Wolfe's epics might be, they share two profound similarities. First, both were written by Catholics and infused with their author's faith. With Tolkien, all the trappings of religion are evacuated from the world itself while the story is saturated with religious symbolism. With Wolfe, on the contrary, Christianity is still very present but transformed, as if through layers and layers of rewriting, into a distant shadow of itself. There is only one God, Pancreator or Panjudicator ; an almost legendary «Conciliator» walked the earth eons ago and is still venerated by the order of the Pelerines ; and priests, rituals, sacred items and guilds abound, as in the Golden Age of Christianity. The other similarity between the two sagas is the spiritual nature of their ultimate magical item. In *The Lord of the Rings*, the object is the ring itself, each successive use of which is a step on the path to damnation - conferring power on Earth in exchange for another fraction of the user's soul, as witnessed in the various states of spiritual decrepitude of those who have succumbed to the temptation. In *The Book of the New Sun*, the most powerful item is the Claw of the Conciliator - «the most valuable relic in existence», a gem that «performs miraculous cures... forgives injuries, raises the dead, draws new races of beings from the soil, purifies lust and so on. All the things [the Conciliator] is supposed to have done himself.» In other words, Tolkien's ring is the Devil ; Wolfe's Claw is God : an interesting symmetry. The texture of the two worlds, however, is very different. Middle Earth seems to be set in a distant past, barely threatened by the first premises of industrialization. Urth on the other hand is our own world millenia hence, a decaying planet waiting for a promised rebirth, frozen in some static medieval social order, incapable of producing any complex artefact except by magic, and borrowing fragments of more advanced technologies from its own past or from the mysterious hierodules, elusive offworlders who only have transactions with selected individuals on Urth and seem to be guiding the world's destiny in some occult fashion. Tolkien was obviously not Wolfe's major influence. The world Severian, his first-person narrator, so entrancingly describes seems to be a mixture of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Peake's Gormenghast, a labyrinthine urban world rather than an enchanted primeval setting, filled with Lovecraftian horrors and filtered through the literary sensibilities of an admirer of Jorge Luis Borges. So if you know that you will not recapture the wonder of *The Lord of the Rings* by reading any of its countless rehashes, and are seeking for an original voice of comparable eloquence, the *New Sun* cycle is for you : open the gate to the necropolis, unsheathe *Terminus Est* and come drink the analeptic alzabo. *Shadow and Claw* brings together in one volume the first two novels in the series, *The Shadow of the Torturer* and *The Claw of the Conciliator*. It is followed by *Sword and Citadel*, the conclusion of the original series, initially published in two volumes, and *Urth of the New Sun*, which I have not read yet. Wolfe further expanded the saga with the books of the Long Sun and Short Sun, comprising seven volumes so far. And readers who have fallen in love with his universe will also be interested in *The Castle of the Otter* (1983), a collection of essays he wrote on the *New Sun* cycle ; *Lexicon Urthus*, a New Sun encyclopedia ; and GURPS New Sun, the role playing game based on the series.
Rating:
Summary: Above and beyond my expectations - masterful
Review: The literary value of this work is immense. It can hardly be explained in the farmiliar terms of plot and world and character development, because it is so much _more_ than just these concepts. It is full of rare gems, little bits and pieces of paragraph or phrase that reach out to you with a beauty only rarely seen in the works of other authors. It's an uncommon mix of the two halves of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. If you are a serious reader but have yet to find anything sci-fi/fantasy that seems worthwile, consider giving Shadow & Claw a chance. If you are an avid fan of the genre, by all means pick this up - Wolfe is a shining example that the more popular, well-known authors aren't always the best (I didn't hear about Wolfe until after college). Younger (pre-college) readers will probably struggle with this series.
Rating:
Summary: Brillant
Review: Wolfe creates one of the most round characters in Severian. He is a torturer but no more a sadist than anyone else. He has many contradicting elements, but so do real people. The writing is baroque, sonoral, and wise. There are many quotes from the Series that are absolutely breath-taking. The plot doesn't seem to be there at first, but it is plotted like a Gene Wolfe novel where simple clues are all over the place. Not for light reading, but if you are in the mood for something along the lines of Dostoyesky but with a science fiction flare this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: The book that will change your life
Review: Seriously, this book ( and it's sequal- Sword and Citadel which is just as good ) will forever change the what you think of the whole sci-fi and fantasy genre, and forever "ruin" for you the pleasure of reading the more light and trashy writing of the genre, because when you'll start compering this masterpiece to it, well, you just won't be able to digest it anymore.
This book presents you to a strange suureal world, that as you go along turns up to be our own world, somewhere in the far future, although in some aspects it resembels the far away past. The story is told by the main Character- Severian, A young torurer's appreantice, who is cast out of his guild, and sets off on a long juorney on Urth, our own old Earth, now very ancient, and nearing the end of her time, because the old sun is dying.
We get to know this melancholic and forgotten Urth Through the eyes of Severian, Who finds himself seeking to bring comfort and life to the dying planet, instead of the pain and death he was trained to dispense as a turturer. Physics, metaphysics, Philosophy and ancient myths are assimilated into a thought provoking consept to the nature of the universe.
A lot has been said here about wolfe's writing, and i can only agree that it's wonderfully complex and compelling, draws you the world of Urth by a language which brings back to life Medival and roman world, as well as the future, a mixture wich is that Urth .
Maybe the most bewildering, painfully beautifull book You'll ever read.
|
