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Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The…
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Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' (edition 1994)

by Gene Wolfe

Series: The Book of the New Sun (Omnibus 1-2), Solar Cycle (Omnibus 1-2)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,930603,093 (4.1)201
Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly.

Shadow & Claw
brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume:
The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession â?? showing mercy toward his victim.
Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I've read in years!"
The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.
"One of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century." â?? The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied
… (more)

Member:KatharineDB
Title:Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'
Authors:Gene Wolfe
Info:Orb Books (1994), Edition: 5th, Paperback, 416 pages
Collections:Wishlist
Rating:
Tags:None

Work Information

Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

  1. 20
    Lexicon Urthus by Michael Andre-Driussi (Cecrow)
    Cecrow: Companion piece serving as interpretive guide to Gene Wolfe's multi-layered work.
  2. 10
    Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (LamontCranston)
    LamontCranston: "The composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality."
  3. 00
    The Hyperion Omnibus [2-in-1] by Dan Simmons (LamontCranston)
  4. 00
    The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge (LamontCranston)
  5. 00
    Solar Labyrinth: Exploring Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" by Robert Borski (Cecrow)
  6. 00
    Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (LamontCranston)
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» See also 201 mentions

English (57)  Romanian (1)  German (1)  All languages (59)
Showing 1-5 of 57 (next | show all)
Gene Wolfe is one of those writers that though I've long been dimly aware of him, my curiosity about him was particularly stirred up by the denizens of /r/printSF, where he has a particularly vocal and adoring group of fans. His work is famously inscrutable; the introduction to this book (by Ada Palmer of the inscrutable Terra Ignota) says that there are science fiction books that are confusing to the inexperienced reader sf—and as those books are to easier books, so is The Book of the New Sun to those books. That is to say, there are some science fiction books you can only read once you have learned how to read science fiction, and Gene Wolfe you can only read once you have learned how to read Gene Wolfe. So I was pleased when I was gifted the new "Tor Essentials" editions of The Book of the New Sun, and I recently read the first one, which collects the first two books, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

Book of the New Sun is about a member of the guild of torturers, Severian; Shadow of the Torturer covers his adolescence in the guild, and then the beginning of his exile, when he is en route to take up a post as executioner at a distant city. At first I was wondering if the inscrutability of the book was somewhat exaggerated; sure, you have to read carefully, but that's because Wolfe has dense, rich prose, and a tendency to jump around a bit chronologically (at first; it soon settles down). The world itself is a little obscure, but I had my theories. I enjoyed these early parts a lot—a richly described world in both the macro and micro senses. The dense, traditional, circumscribed world Severian moves through is fascinating and interesting. Additionally, I always like coming-of-age stuff, and this is a good example of it.

Once Severian leaves, though, the book gets weird. It actually reminds me of medieval quest narratives, or rather my most recent example of one (it has been a long time since I was in grad school, after all), the film adaptation of The Green Knight: bizarre, weird things keep happening... that are presented so matter-of-factly and received so matter-of-factly that they thus become even weirder and bizarre. Severian is recruited into a troupe of players, and one feels that this is going to be some kind of picaresque, but then he's challenged to a duel, and now he's in a botanical garden where people live, and then he's on a carriage that accidentally smashes through a group of nuns, and then when you think the story has forgotten all about that theatrical troupe, they somehow catch up to him and they're all performing a play together!

So it's less difficult in the sense that you don't know what's happening, and more difficult in the sense that the logic underpinning the story and world doesn't seem to be the logic of story and world we know here in the twentieth/twenty-first century. Like I said, it feels like a medieval text, in that it sort of comes across as something assembled retroactively from a bunch of disparate texts about Severian: why would the theatrical troupe reappear so much later? Well, because some later scribes stuck an unrelated story about Severian's duel into the middle of the text! So captivating, but if at the end of the book you wanted me to tell you what was actually going on, I'm not sure I could have done it.

I think Shadow of the Torturer balanced on just the right side of the weirdness, and had the opening segment to keep it grounded; the story's continuation in Claw of the Conciliator was more confusing to me, more piecemeal, too disorienting. Though I liked a lot of individual incidents, there were many aspects of the story I didn't follow at all, and ultimately I struggled through this in a way I hadn't with Shadow.

Still, they say you don't read Book of the New Sun, only reread it, so I am in for the long haul I guess. There are four books, plus a coda, and they are all part of the twelve-book "Solar Cycle" so it could be quite a long haul if I am willing! In the short term, though, I think I will certainly finish out The Book of the New Sun.
  Stevil2001 | Oct 30, 2023 |
Strangest fantasy sci-fi I've read since Dune, I think. Lots of people seem to love this, which makes me feel like I'm the dafty who didn't understand the punchline. The first book was pretty good, setting out the main character's backstory and giving us someone sympathetic to root for. The second one: almost incomprehensible at times, plus our protagonist starts acting like a bit of a dick. It was a struggle to finish.

Really: lots of great ideas, let down (for me) by the disjointed narrative style and barely-understandable second volume. Greater minds than mine can enjoy this - I didn't. ( )
  ropable | Aug 20, 2023 |
The Book of the New Sun is the best thing ever written in Sci-Fi. ( )
  easytarget | Jul 4, 2023 |
Torture, place-holder characters, odd under-explained male-female relationships, and unexplained key plot points eventually wore me down. I thought I had read 69% of this, but apparently it is two separate books published together, so I don't know.
========================================
The author sprinkles the story of his created world with interesting archaic words or neologisms. Many of these are religious or medieval in origin, but, as is common in fantasy and science fiction, their meaning in the created world is not entirely clear. We infer their meaning from the word's actual former meaning here on Urth Earth. Mr. Wolfe has a knack for this. ( )
  markm2315 | Jul 1, 2023 |
very well written and an interesting plot. ( )
  Vitaly1 | May 28, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 57 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Wolfe, Geneprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Palmer, AdaIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
Dedication
First words
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.
Quotations
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly.

Shadow & Claw
brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume:
The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession â?? showing mercy toward his victim.
Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I've read in years!"
The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.
"One of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century." â?? The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied

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