Kevin's Watch

Ainulindale wrote:Personally I can't wait for the new Latro book this year!

I read "Soldier of the Mist" a long time ago. I need to do some catch up before I read the new Latro book; I still haven't read "Latro in the Mist."

wooooooah, it took me a while to get back to say thanks for the suggestions, but thank you Lucimay and Syl. The Wizard Knight it is! I will read the online one too.

No problem. Love the new av.

i actually read "The Book of the New Sun" in 9th grade, the year before i started reading the first and second Covenant trilogies. to this day i consider them some of the most cerebrally challenging books i have read, and one of my favorite series as well. i have been a real getting-back-to-reading-all-the-time kick, and am planning on rereading them again for the first time in about 20 yrs after i finish a reread of a few other all-time favorite series of mine. after the reread i will then dive into the other Urth books which i didn't do way back when.

I read the Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun twice (years ago), and I know there's still lots of stuff in those books I don't understand or simply missed.

How are the books of the Long and Short Sun? Somehow I've always been hesitant to get them, in part because I fear they are sequels for sequels' sake, simply because of the success of tBotNS.

Difficult and complex. I think the first half of Long Sun stands up to New Sun, but after that... It's still good, but not my favorite of his work.

Okay....

As you can see I have been gone an awfully long time...

and what have I been doing while away....

I have been reading everything by Gene Wolfe. Yes indeedy.

Right, now I have to go and lie down and sleep.

The longand short of it is - I flippin love Gene Wolfe.

Welcome back, Emma.

Nice to see you back darlin' 'Bout time.

--A

EMMA!

Edinburghemma wrote:The long and short of it is - I flippin love Gene Wolfe.

The long and short of it, eh?

Glad you like it. Welcome back.

I was glad to see a Soldier of Sidon review in my local big city paper (The Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Usually I'll find reviews of mysteries, biographies, political essays or mainstream fiction every Sunday. There don't seem to be enough reviews of serious sci-fi/fantasy fiction in newspapers. Just thought I'd share my happiness with the world. Can't wait to read the book!


www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/entertainme ... 083639.htm





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Reading Sidon now. It's a lot more...foreign, I guess, than its predecessors. I had a detailed enough knowledge of Greece during the Persian War, and up to after the Pelopenniasian War, to get the context of much of Wolfe's writings, know when the characters he brought in existed some of the time, etc. While I enjoyed it, it wasn't exactly normal for reading one of Wolfe's works, where everything's very confusing and different the first or even second time through.

With sidon, it was back to a level of mystery. I know a fair amount of general stuff in relation to Egypt, their founding and such, but specific players in their more loosely constructed Pantheon and day-to-day life is, or at least was, nearly unknown to me.

An interesting side thingy not from Wolfe is that the slaves building the pyramids were pretty well treated - they even administered surgery and such to those who were injured.

Oh, and Tulizar, I straight up concur on there not being enough popular review of sci-fi and its "relatives".

I just finished Shadow of the Torturer, and am starting into the Claw of the Conciliator. It was hard to mentally jump the gap that was dropped between the end of one and the start of the other, but once I started reading it like a brand new book my fixation on that gap (and the curiosity it inspires) subsided.

It seems that Wolfe either enjoys phenomenology, or has simply through creativity employed it as a different means of telling this story and describing it's characters. There is a little bit of interior monologue, and a little bit of dialogue, but my impression is that deliberately or not, we learn about the characters from their descriptions of their experiences, or from Severian's description of how he experiences the characters, more than anything else. It is truly a unique way to hear a story as a result.

What I also think is interesting, is the little blurbs of philosophical exploration by the characters. The conclusion of the discussions doesn't necessary get to the conclusion that someone living in this world would call correct. And you can't even tell if it's correct in the world of the story either. The logic of that universe might be completely different from this one. Either way, getting to see how these people experience their world and think about their world truly makes it a place of it's own.

edit: Just starting into the fourth book. It's curious that the story took so long to get to the point where Severian would begin to question the philosphies he's assumed. Also, he should read from the Brown Book more if only for entertainment.

I suspect the second read through will tie things together more, right now, Severian almost comes across as amoral, and almost non-existant. Sad things happen, happy things happen, and neither is especially significant to Severian. He meets powerful beings, discovers things that most of his world haven't (it would seem) and yet is indifferent.

One side note, concerning Jonas... why is it that humanised machines always strike a reader as being more human than the humans in most stories? Of course, my assumption is that Jonas was some sort of android, although there are some resemblances in the way Severiam describes the cacogens. But all being said, I want to know more about Jonas's stories than I do about Severian's sometimes, eventhough Severian is the more human one. Why is this so easy to slip into? Just a pondering of mine.

One poignant and haunting moment, is when Severian runs into the alzabo. Again, the creature did nothing different than a wolf might, but did so in a fashion that was sentient, which turned the alzabo into a fiend like thing, especially with the creepy words in italics.

edit2:
Finished up the series yesterday. I'm not sure where I end up on it. I certianly enjoyed the story about the importance of stories, or story about the importance of memories. I enjoyed the approach used in telling the story, but, at the same time, I never developed much of an attachment to Severian through the whole series of events. It's strange to be intimately familiar with a character, to be given some sense of his psyche and his thought process, and yet not really miss the character so much as the story when everything is done.

p.s. the ending, a couple things I assume, but I was wondering...

Spoiler

First, Severian brings the innkeeper to Dorcas, so that she won't be alone in the world? Second, Severian returns to the Atrium of Time, and seeks out the girl he met way back when. Is he doing so because of some discovered love? Is she some key to his moving from this time to the time of the new sun? Last, what was the test? He knows that he passes it whatever it was, but what was the test?

And one more, why does Agia get to walk away unharmed, having been responsible for maiming and scarring Severian? Agia, in general, just doesn't add up. Are we supposed to assume that Volerus and the previous Autarch had a similar relationship in their time, before the Autarch became the Autarch?

They've released a new UK edition of the Book of the New Sun. The design matches the Wizard Knight omnibus, and they've retitled it: "Severian of the Guild".
Amazon page with image here.

I do not like that cover. Black is the only way to go. And the picture is just weak.

Yeah, I'm not keen on the picture or the title, and the colour, while not too bad, isn't what I'd have chosen.

One poignant and haunting moment, is when Severian runs into the alzabo. Again, the creature did nothing different than a wolf might, but did so in a fashion that was sentient, which turned the alzabo into a fiend like thing, especially with the creepy words in italics.

I thought the encounter wiht the alzabo was one of the coolest parts of the book, I really enjoyed it.

First, Severian brings the innkeeper to Dorcas, so that she won't be alone in the world?]

Spoiler

The waiter at the inn, Ouen is dorcas' son - this is one of those gene wolfe plot points which is revealed in a couple of lines, and if you miss it it's gone forever and it's never talked about again. Basically the waiter had a locket with his mother's picture in it, he takes after her to some extent. The lake she was in preserved her, which explains why she's so young.

There's some other stuff about dorcas' relatives but I'll leave it for you to search out if and when you reread the books.

Gene Wolfe's books are not very honest or open. I know it's been said by some that severian is telling the books after dying, though I'm not sure what the evidence for that is. As far as the personality stuff, I would say that severian simply doesn't talk about his personality much - at times he acts angry or impulsive. Latro in the soldier series is much the same - he'll get in fights and be agressive and you won't get the typical paragraphs like "what this dude said really pissed me off" first to clue you in to the fac tthat he's getting mad.

An exception is the book of long sun.

As far as the personality stuff, I would say that severian simply doesn't talk about his personality much - at times he acts angry or impulsive. Latro in the soldier series is much the same - he'll get in fights and be agressive and you won't get the typical paragraphs like "what this dude said really pissed me off" first to clue you in to the fac tthat he's getting mad.

When these things occur, Latro can be much more obviously irrational, prejudiced &c. than Severian ever is--Severian, I think, always tries to portray his actions in the best light, while Latro states things the way he sees them even if his views come across as wrong (and his views can change from day to day depending on what people tell him).

So, I read Book of the New Sun for the first time earlier this year, and am currently halfway through Wizard Knight. I gotta say, I'm really impressed. BotNS was easily the most challenging thing I've ever read. It was the only book I can remember reading and recognizing that I was missing a large chunk of what was happening while I was reading it. (I mean, with good books, I usually discover new things on a second or third reading, but ....wow). And while Wizard Knight seems a little less complex (so far at least) it's equally as enjoyable. I find I'm not always forming the same kind of emotional investment in the stories as I do with, say, SRD, but Wolfe's stuff is always fascinating to me.

So a couple of questions:

1- Is Wolfe always this good?

2- Does he always use this type of "not-quite-reliable" first person narrator, or did I just happen to find two series where he does?

I love the fact that the lack or reliability is different though. With Able, I get the sense that he doesn't get what's going on anymore than I do. With Severain though, I got the impression that he knew exactly what was happening, he just didn't choose to always tell me.