Rating: 
Summary: An emotional ending
Review: Like so many others, it is difficult to articulate one's feelings after finishing 'Whorl.' I re-read 'In Green's Jungles' prior to 'Whorl' and realize that I was far too harsh in my review of that book. It was necessary and much better than I thought, but the third outdoes them all.The book does return to the whorl (as advertised) as well as Green and Blue and, well, everywhere. The adventures that the narrator has can only be experienced for themselves. What is necessary to say is that Wolfe has done what few others could do. Unlike most books and series, which have a clearly define structure even if there are flashbacks, Wolfe writes this series as if he were writing a journal. Not with a faux lack of structure, but a real lack of structure that is somehow structured. It is as if it were written by someone (actually, several someones) who was writing as many people would with digressions and promises to explain something that never is and then is much later. There is confusion as small details suddenly blossom into the main purpose of the passage until the original intention is lost and only returned to much later. How a writer can pull off this effect and still balance all the details must require a mind and a focus that is found in few writers. Not to give too much away, there are two endings, both of which are extraordinarily emotional. The reader has spent so much time with the narrator and with his trials and his very real efforts to achieve things (and his very real failures) that the reader is heartbroken to have to come to the end. Why? I don't know. Somehow, Wolfe has managed to create a character with whom it is easy to identify, someone that we wish we could be. Not because he has fantastic adventures, but because he wants so very much to be a good person, but whose failings are continually in his way. I have never been more saddened to have to leave a narrator than I have in this series. Even though there are maddening moments -- because every reader should have a handle on the narrator's identity by now, and it is frustrating that the narrator is so behind -- there are wonderous surprises around every turn, occasionally forcing the reader to re-read a chapter from this series, and occasionally from the New Sun or Long Sun books, and alwasy causing the reader to realize that certain obfuscations are not so muddy but are crystal clear only in hindsight. The reader has to trust Wolfe to make it all clear, and he admirably accomplishes this task and far exceeds any expectations. It feels as if this might be Wolfe's last book, since it ties together the three major series he has written. (Many writers have done this, tied together their disparate series I mean, but none with the eloquence that Wolfe has achieved.) I sincerely hope not. I would imagine that Wolfe will write another book, perhaps another series, but it seems impossible that even he could top this one. (Not, I imagine, that he would try to do this better but that he would do something different, as he has in all of his series.) In any case, the ending rends the heart as if the narrator were gone for good (which he is in a way, and is not).
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful, Haunting, Unfulfilling Finale
Review: Mr. Wolfe ties up a number of the infinite series of mysteries in this poignant, elegiac finale and, in doing so, writes some of the most heartbreaking scenes in the history of literature (Horn's encounter with the ghosts in Ermine's, the old Sun Street manteion, his father's shop, etc.), but the ending is so abrupt that the end result is unfulfilling. And, yet, unfulfilled Wolfe is better than his contemporaries' finest works. Such is the power as a writer and depth of insight into the human condition as a man that Wolfe possesses. Horn does indeed make it back to his home and succeed in his epic quest in a way that Wolfe has, in some senses, telegraphed to the astute reader and, yet, the "shock ending" is a deeper mystery revealed concerning Horn's blurred identity than one might suspect! To say anything more would be to reveal the Book of the Short Sun's central conceit, but readers of the "prequel" series The Book of The Long Sun will find bittersweet irony in the fate of Horn, the young boy who lived his life in conscious imitation of his teacher, Patera Silk. Silk, after all these years and changes, still comes across as a Truly Beautiful, Good Man, guilt-stricken and heartbroken, but doggedly pursuing noble purposes through the savage landscapes of the newly-colonized planets and the decrepit Whorl spaceship, and of the human heart. The puzzles that are addressed are well-handled, but loose ends remain---though with a writer as deep and subtle as Wolfe, the reader must always wonder if these loose ends are not answered in some subtle way upon which he/she has failed to pick up. This series is not only for the scholarly Seeker For Truth and Penitence, but can also be read by the casual reader who will enjoy the surface level of a deeply-felt story well-told. Taken together, the Book of The Short Sun in its 3 volumes is one of the most poignant, trenchant and enchanting works of modern fiction and Wolfe's best since The Book of the New Sun tetralogy.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging--but as brilliant as it gets
Review: NOTE: This review is for all three books comprising The Book of the Short Sun
WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS:
The Book of the Short Sun will be one of the finest reading experiences of your life... if you can get through the thing. The difficulty in extracting those rewards out of the text is considerable and not to be lightly discounted. Reading these books will require supreme effort. Willing readers will have to be intensely interested with how individuals relate to historical and semi-mythical figures, religion, and their own personality as influenced by these themes. These books are about as far as you can get from the popular concept of "space opera" and thrilling, "page-turning" fiction. An analogy to Moby Dick is probably very appropriate as that work due to the very slow pacing, the introspection, and the great literary symbols stomping through the setting reified and alive. Any scholar of literature should be deeply fascinated by these books.
WHY YOU SHOULD PASS:
There is no shame in not reading these books. They are terribly difficult and an exercise in stamina though we feel most people should at least try once. If you have attempted Shakespeare and been turned back because of the language; if you have attempted Moby Dick or novels by Henry James only to be turned away by the lack of progression in the plot; if you have attempted James Joyce's Ulysses but been baffled by the interior monologue, then Short Sun is probably going to daunt you as well. But we feel the rewards of this book are equal to those giants in literature.
(...)
Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment
Review: Return to the Whorl is like a Christmas Fruit Cake--all too full of candies and fruit and nuts for my tastes. Mr. Wolfe desperately needs an editor who would cut these books by half or more. The Book of the New Sun was very interesting despite a tendency to introduce unexplained marvels for no apparent plot reason. The Book of the Long Sun was entirely too long. He has good, sometimes wonderful, characters who spend too much time doing pedestrian things. On Blue's Waters led me to hope that he had regained some of the magic of his earlier book. Then came In Green's jungles..a step back. Then this, which was so tedious I could barely finish it. Fantasy fiction, which abandons the normal theory of some metaphysical cause and effect, drifts into a meaningless subjective expression of whim in this book. A gross example is the Godling who appears in this book (and on the dust cover). What possible explanation for this being can there be? I could go on at great length, but it is now clear that this kind of fiction is not for me any longer.
|
