Gene Wolfe (1931–2019)

I tried to read this about two years ago and didn’t make it past the first few chapters. I picked it up again recently and couldn’t put it down. Because of that, I feel almost obligated to add a warning that as much as I find this to be an incredible book now, I would only recommend it to a very specific branch of readers; those that value the writing itself above everything, and the plot, or romance, or whatever else existing only to provide the means for the author to write more.

With show more that out of the way, this is a masterpiece. The plot meandered, and this is stylistically something that won’t resonate with many different types of readers, but I found it quite possibly one of the—if not the—greatest book I’ve yet read. The world you’re thrown into is unexplained and intrinsically odd, with the reader being left to pick out meaning from terms and cultural expressions that almost align with a futuristic parallel of some humanities future (take “Urth” in place of Earth). I loved that, and therefore loved this book, but can see how polarizing and unapproachable that may be to a casual reader. This is something that should live on any fantasy reader’s shelf, in perfect reach for when the right moment and right mood align, even if that’s years from when it’s originally purchased. show less

What I love most about this book is how the language makes my brain feel entirely re-wired for the duration. I think I must have re-read it 6 times in a row just for the sensation until I was able to list the incidents in the plot one after the other - and considering how bad my memory is that takes a bit. Through the last half of 2004 I kept coming back to it. Somehow it takes familiar elements and produces something so new. Young boy finds himself in the body of a grown warrior, what show more surprises could that have for someone who's read Fantasy since the 1950s? show less

This is an odd review for me to write. I've read this book three times now. It's the final volume in a four-book cycle. And I haven't reviewed any of the previous books, but I have reviewed the series as a whole. However, I'm trying to review every book I read this year (wish me luck!) so here goes:

The Citadel of the Autarch is the final volume of Gene Wolfe's career-defining masterpiece, The Book of the New Sun, which I've read every December (sometimes carrying over into January) for the show more past three years. It's a dense, mysterious, powerful, bewildering, and moving saga that rewards rereads like nothing else this side of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. If you haven't read it before, (A) do it!, and (B) I feel compelled to warn you that this review contains spoilers.

Following from the end of the last volume, The Sword of the Lictor, this book sees Severian heading north from Lake Diuturna, where he comes face-to-face with the war against the Ascians. I've long considered this book (along with the previous volume) as the weaker half of TBotNS, with the flight from Thrax (in Sword) and the war in this book being—to me—fairly uninteresting affairs. I had to reconsider that opinion when I recently reread Sword, and ran into the same situation with Citadel this last time through.

Severian approaches the war obliquely at first, encountering a dead soldier who appears to be resurrected by the Claw of the Conciliator, then accompanying said soldier to a lazaret where the war's victims are being treated. At this point in the narrative, Severian transcribes a collection of tales heard during his time in the lazaret. During my first read, I was irritated with the break in the narrative that these stories created. The second time, I knew it was coming and was able to hunker down and power through, as it were. This time around, I found myself looking forward to the stories, especially "The Armiger's Daughter", which I read a couple of times, I love it so much now. When Severian leaves the lazaret (all too soon) he is thrust into the war proper, and though this section of the book is still one of the most confusing in the entire Book, it's far shorter than I remembered. His direct involvement in the war over, he goes through a series of encounters with old "friends", culminating in his becoming the Autarch of the Commonwealth (not a spoiler; he reveals this at the end of the second chapter in the first book.)

After that, there are a handful of chapters devoted to tying up loose ends or clarifying a select few of the sequence's mysteries. For me, this is part of the big payoff of the series, but only part; most of the payoff is actually going back and reading it all over again to try and make sense of everything with a new perspective. As Severian says in the final chapter:

"Have I told you all I promised? I am aware that at various places in my narrative I have pledged that this or that should be made clear in the knitting up of the story. I remember them all, I am sure, but then I remember so much else. Before you assume that I have cheated you, read again, as I will write again."

I can think of little else to say other than that this is a powerful conclusion to a SF masterpiece, almost a religious experience, with a scope of overwhelming extragalactic magnitude, but which also—viewed through Severian's eyes—reaches down and touches at an intimately personal level. 5 out of 5 stars for this final volume, and 5/5 for the Book as a whole. show less

I first read this book (in the four individual volumes) many decades ago in my early teens. In 2007, I picked up this omnibus edition with the intention to re-read it, and quickly acquired most of the other volumes in the larger Solar Cycle, which resulted in a large prospective reading project on which I procrastinated until the thick of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Given my intention to re-read it, I had had a favorable impression of it on my initial read, but I really felt I had not show more fully understood or appreciated it then. I was correct.

In fact, I am such a different reader now, and so much more capable of grasping what Wolfe has presented here, that most of this book seemed entirely new to me. I remembered the largest plot arc, by which the apprentice torturer ascends to the office of Autarch--and it's no spoiler to say so, since that framing is well established early on--but I had forgotten the smaller twists, if I ever really appreciated them, and many of the features of the setting seemed entirely new to me on this read.

There is a great contrast in the two literary backgrounds that informed each of my reads. On my initial approach, I came to the work with what I thought was the compatible experience of The Lord of the Rings and perhaps Michael Moorcock's Elric saga. I did appreciate that the described Urth was in our far future, and I had already encountered this sort of conceit in The Sword of Shannara, a highly conventional epic fantasy with various clues to indicate that it was set in a future after our civilization had been effaced by catastrophic warfare. To be fair to my younger self, I think this approach to Wolfe's books was perfectly in keeping with the publisher's packaging and expectations, and to some degree I had simply fallen for the author's intentional misdirection.

On this recent read, I was far more informed by the reading experiences I had gathered from other works in the "dying Earth" subgenre, especially the Viriconium stories of M. John Harrison and The City and the Stars of Arthur C. Clarke. And I was further prepared by reading Wolfe's own Fifth Head of Cerberus, which offers the sort of elliptical presentation that occurs throughout The Book of the New Sun, without the "epic" framing or red-herring fantasy tropes of the latter.

Wolfe personally adhered to the Roman Catholic confession, and critics have sometimes highlighted this fact as if it supplied a privileged interpretive viewpoint for the work. I remember being a little put off by the possible significance of "religious" elements in my first read--having been burned by the Sunday School allegory of Narnia and the rather dim messianism of Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books. But on this recent read, I thought the better comparandum would be the religions, cults, and mysticism of Herbert's Dune, using the grist of historical religion in the mill of speculative worldbuilding--with some genuine metaphysical rumination. For what it's worth, Wolfe's Severian is a lot more diffident about the miracles of his story than Paul Atreides was. The "Claw of the Conciliator" relic that supplies the title of the second book is present through all four, and its demystification in the fourth has the paradoxical effect of enhancing its numinosity. The "One Ring" it is not.

Some other comparisons that failed to occur to me on my initial read:
The relationship of the hierodule extraterrestrials to the humanity of Urth was like that of Childhood's End--with some additional wrinkles--and considering also the kinship of the plot to The City and the Stars I wonder if Wolfe was an active fan of Clarke. Abaia and his titanic kin seemed to be more than a little bit like Cthulhu.

The diction of this work is notable for its baroque qualities, archaicisms, and neologisms in an archaic manner. There is a rationale for these stylistic features, which are nevertheless alienating for the reader. Also alienating is the unsympathetic protagonist, who narrates the entire story on the basis of his professedly impeccable memory. A reader might (and I'm sure I once did) miss key details while simply trying to avoid getting stuck on these matters. Wolfe deliberately uses ambiguous language in his nautical and astronautical references. Spacefarers are simply "sailors."

There are wonderful uses of form and metafictional structure. I especially enjoyed the central play-within-the-play of "Eschatology and Genesis" in the second book, and the Canterbury Tales concatenation of stories told by the convalescing soldiers in the lazaret of the fourth. Despite appearances, these are not digressions from the main work, and they can be understood in part as instruction in how to read the larger text. There is a very rigorous pattern governing the whole, with a strong sense of cyclic completion. The "Citadel of the Autarch" in the title of the fourth book is the place where the first book begins, but its identification with the Autarch is the result of the events of the tale.

The titles of the four component volumes highlight the riddles posed throughout. What is the shadow of the torturer Severian? Is it perhaps the Chatelaine Thecla whose suicide he assists to his own dishonor, and whose consciousness is joined to his by the alzabo? What is the Claw of the Conciliator? The relic is despoiled by Agia, desecrated by Baldanders, and then devalued by the Pelerines who had been its guardians. What is the value of Severian's sword? Agia and Agilus would have killed Severian to obtain it. Its Latin name Terminus Est is oddly translated in the text to mean, "This is the line of division" (101)--and while it also means "It is the end," the sword itself doesn't endure to the end of the story. And what is the Autarch? At first presented as the shadowy and remote political executive of the Commonwealth, he later comes to figure as an epopt or Ipsissimus, and ultimately as perhaps the custodian of Urth. And yet some of his attendants address him as "Legion" (857, cf. Mark 5:9), and the old Autarch tells Severian, "I stand ... as you will stand ... for so much that is wrong" (889).

Reading The Book of the New Sun is not like watching a Hollywood movie or even reading a mystery novel. If you let it carry you along, you will be left wondering why you bothered. But there are amazing rewards for the reader who is alert to the increasingly distant voice of the narrator and who works to recognize the features of the story that are left tacit. Not only do I hold this work in high regard for its own sake as a literary accomplishment, it has taught me about reading and storytelling. show less