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Title: Exodus from the Long Sun (Wolfe, Gene. Book of the Long Sun, Bk. 4.) by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0-312-85585-0 Publisher: St Martins Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.36 (14 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: No surprises here, mostly a disappointment
Comment: If you're already a Gene Wolfe fan, you may like this series. If this is your first Gene Wolfe series, you may never read his work again after this series. I've read his "New Sun" books and enjoyed them very much because, while it's heavy reading - you really have to pay attention - there are some stunning surprises. Unfortunately, in the Book of the Long Sun, there are no surprises. You already know when you read the back cover of the books that the people are on a "generation starship". Figuring out who the "gods" are and the meaning of "Mainframe" isn't too difficult either. By the end of the fourth book, there really isn't anything special that is revealed that you couldn't figure out long before. Another major problem with this whole series is that seemingly trivial events are often covered in pain-staking detail, while more important things are glossed over entirely. At the end of this volume, the long-awaited visit to Mainframe is dealt with in less than a chapter. All in all, quite a disappointment.

Rating: 5
Summary: A beautifully-drawn portrait of a beautiful man.
Comment: We've all read "genetic superman" type books before, from Dune to Stranger in A Strange Land to The Stars My Destination, but Gene Wolfe (arguably the finest living writer in SF&F or any genre, including mainstream Lit) really achieves it here, with a portrait of a moral as well as physical and mental "superman" in Patera Silk. More overtly religious in tone than even Wolfe's masterpiece Saviour-of-the-Earth series "The Book of The New Sun", this is the story of a young pagan priest's coming of age, following his enlightenment by the Christian God, in the fantastical enVirons of a decrepit generation ship ruled by computer program "Gods" who don't want the passengers---who're unaware there's anything artificial about their Whorl--- to disembark once it reaches its destination. Besides the fascinating cast of characters, subtle plot twists and multilayered levels of meaning we've come to expect from Wolfe, this is mainly the story of A Beautiful Man. Patera Silk is a believable, moral man, gentle and peace-loving and Christian in nature without knowing Christ, who sees the best in all people and is STILL a genetic "superman", with unusual strength, stamina, reflexes and healing abilities and a facile mind. You ponder out the logical solutions to the many mysteries that await you in this book with him, often arriving at the same logical but WRONG conclusions that the vast body of misleading information leads you to, and love every minute of it! This series is not only highly entertaining and outre, as all Wolfe's work is, but also serves as a valid political commentary of the power structure of a typical human city and a beautifully-drawn portrait of a truly Beautiful Man, of which I haven't read many! My only negative about this fine series is the abrupt, unresolved ending (apparently to be continued in the Books of The Short Sun) and the revelation of a first person narrator, who is not the main character, near the end of the last author-omniscient third person narrative. Still, flawed Wolfe (and this means flawed in comparison to his perfect Book of The New Sun series) is better than 99 percent of all other writers in any genre. As always with Mr. Wolfe, read it and be enriched.

Rating: 1
Summary: Huh?
Comment: I loved the first three installments of The Book of the Long Sun. But this . . . I could not believe it was supposed to be a part of the same series. And worse than that, it was of very poor quality. Nothing was resolved or explained, and the plot took a ninety-degree turn that was jarring in the extreme. I personally prefer to excise this book from my memory and pretend that the series was never finished.