Recently read: "Shadow of the Torturer"

[viktor_haag]

I'm pretty sure that 2008 will be The Year Of Wolfe. To that end, I had this first book sitting on my book pile, and having finished it, I shall now move on to "Claw of the Conciliator". Gene Wolfe is, I find, a rather "love him or hate him" kind of writer. He can be dry, his narrators are unreliable and often not terribly sympathetic, his worldview often seems to lean a touch towards the conservative. But he's easily in my top five favourite authors, and perhaps top three, and the Book Of The New Sun tetralogy is the one that started me off on my love of Wolfe's writing. I may not get through all of my collection of his books this coming year, but I will certainly try to make a dent.

"Shadow of the Torturer" is a story set in a far, far future age (so that it might as well be some fantastic past) of a young man who must leave the calling he was born into, to work towards the calling he was (apparently) destined to embrace. It has a touch of bildungsroman about it, a touch of travelogue, a touch of adventure, all rolled up into a bit of a post-modern treatment of traditional heroic fantasy.

Wolfe's capacity for world building, especially naming things, is second to none. His plotting is good, and his characterization is deft and deep.

This is not thrills-a-minute fantasy, nor are the characters immediately accessible. But I still highly recommend this series of all his work, and Wolfe in general. If you are a fan of thoughtful speculative fiction that centers on character and careful world construction (of the sort that "seems real" more than the sort that hangs together scientifically, perhaps), and you haven't tried these, then you should. TOR has a lot of Wolfe's catalog available in boutique trade paper editions: start with "Shadow & Claw" which contains the first two books in the tetralogy.

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

It's hard to judge Wolfe other than this series given how the light of the new sun colors the rest of his work, but I find Long Sun to be at least as good, if not better in spots. It's not as baroque, but the central character is more accessible. I just wish the first book - Nightside - wasn't quite as slow as it is. Silk is a much more engaging character to me in book 2.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on that series when you get to it.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I've actually read about five eighths of the Long Sun tetralogy, and I agree that Silk is easier to get to than Severian. But my intention in TYoW is to (re)-read everything (and by everything I mean New Sun, Urth, Long Sun, Whorl, Latro, and Wizard-Knight books). After that, I'll adapt a more relaxed attitude and toss in the other novels and short collections I have here and there amongst other things.

But it's about time I seriously dug into Wolfe's canon.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer and its three sequels, is right there in my top 10 fantasy novels. I must have read and re-read the four books a good half dozen times since HS.

::B::

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

They reward re-reading like most absolute classics do.At some point, I hope I can find hardback editions of at least the New Sun books. There was a dedicated effort to make a leatherbound collection of the entire Vance oeuvre. I cannot quite justify that. But if some group were to do a similar thing for Wolfe's work I would probably spring for it.

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

Wolfe is probably one of the greatest living writers in the English language in any genre.