The Book of the New Sun, by, Gene Wolfe: ***7/8
This is a masterwork, unique in so many ways, with a wonderful texture, tone, and magnificent writing. The opening paragraph, quoted below, showcases just how crisp and evocative Wolfe's writing is. This is the kind of book that's so good that I knew while I was reading it that I would have to cherish it because I wasn't going to read anything this good for a while, especially in the sci-fantasy realm. The funny thing about this book is that it doesn't look that long - 4 books combined into a 2-book set with a total of only 800 pages (the original books are Shadow of the Torturer, Claw of the Conciliator, Sword of the Lictor, and Citadel of the Autarch, combined into two books published by Orb Books as Shadow/Claw and Sword/Citadel) - but it reads long because each sentence, each scenario is so packed in with imagery and ideas that there are truly no superfluous words. (In just that sentence I used "truly" unnecessarily - it's hard to be so perfect with language). And in this book more than maybe any other I've ever read, it's worth the time to really sit and think on the text, not to just form a possible scenario in one's head but to work hard to craft the entire scene as Wolfe describes it. He provides such unique and vivid prose.
The book has a strange and somewhat dark timbre, and the author doesn't shy away from disturbing and sometimes heartbreaking material, which is wonderfully unusual. The story is told in a past-tense first person narrative by the protagonist, Severian, who as we learn in the first paragraph is an exiled torturer's apprentice. Among myriad other things, the book looks at the grim world of the torturer, which alongside the prose provides reason enough to read this book. But the seemingly random progression of the tale involves so many wonderful diversions that add up to so much more. The book reminds me more in tone of Steppenwolf than any fantasy novel I've ever read, especially in the progression of the story, though this book isn't quite as obtuse as Hesse's classic. Strangely, this is ultimately a plot-driven novel, but the characters are so rich and the settings so striking that the enjoyment doesn't usually come from the motion of the story but from the individual settings themselves. The ultimate progression of the plotline provides a deep satisfaction in the long run; in this respect the book's use of myth resonates strongly.
This book isn't perfect, but it's got so many fantastic and amazing things in it that it makes me reconsider how I apply rankings to books. I think in the past I have ranked books in almost the same fashion as grades are handed out on a math test - minus so many points for each wrong answer. Of course, that's not completely true, because of course I take quality into account - if the book is mediocre, it gets a mediocre ranking. But assuming a book is at least good, I start counting backwards from **** based on problems that I have with the book: a couple of bad coincidences and the book drops down to ***, etc. Using that scale, BOTNS would get only about a *** ranking, which is absurd. The book is not perfect, but the quality of the material is so fantastic, so in its own world of greatness, that its flaws just aren't as much of a problem for me. Simply put, reading this book was one of the best reading experiences of my life, so my ranking reflects that. I imagine I'll never find another fantasy like it, and this book will always remind me of my California spring of 2002, sitting on my bed on the floor, with the little bedside table and the low hanging, yellow lamp beside me, and the wonderful world of Severian, the torturer's apprentice.
QUOTES:
This book is rich with wonderful writing, and I could literally quote almost any random sentence from any paragraph on any page of the book. In fact, the first quote will be a random one that I'll select right now - Shadow/Claw, page 310, with whatever paragraph is approximately halfway down the page:
pg. 310 (the randomly selected paragraph) - "Then the young man fared forth and gathered to him other young men of the city of the magicians to be his crew, and from those who wore the colored hoods he obtained a stout ship, and all that summer he and the young men he had gathered to him armored her, and mounted on her sides the mightiest artillery, and a hundred times practiced the making of sail, and the reefing of sail, and the firing of the guns, until she answered as a blooded mare does to the rein. For the pity they felt for the Corn Maidens, they christened her Land of Virgins."
pg. 9 (opening page, first paragraph) Shadow/Claw (book 1 of Orb's two book set) - "It is possible that I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severain, had so nearly drowned."
pg. 47, Shadow/Claw - [conversation between the characters Ultan and Severian,]
[Ultan]: "'The entire life is in each finger'
[Severian]: 'But Master, how can that be?'
[Ultan]: 'How big is a man's life?'
[Severian]: 'I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that?'
[Ultan]: 'You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been.'"
pg. 48, Shadow/Claw - "I stopped for a time to look at [the books], sharing a little, forgotten garden of winter sunshine with a dry fountain. Before I had so much as opened any of the other volumes, I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indicator we have left childhood behind."
pg. 259, Sword/Citadel - "Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music."
(spring 2002)
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