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Title: The Urth of the New Sun : The sequel to 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0-312-86394-2 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 November, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (18 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: This book was 'merely' quite good.
Comment: I should start out by mentioning that the first four books of this series are among my favorite books of all time.
I was one of those people who eagerly awaited the publication of each new book in the series, who has re-read the series several times looking for further clues to the eventual outcome of the series (which is left as something of an exercise to the reader) and who never hesistates to recommend these books to friends and family.
Which is part of the reason I found this book somewhat dissapointing.
While filled with the same brilliant concepts, and stunning prose as the first four books, I found it lacking in the sorts of mysteries that made its predessors so wonderful. It struck me as rushed, and almost had a 'contractual obligation to the publisher' feel to it.
Plus it does a good job of answering a lot of questions about the original series, but those questions were a big part of why I loved the books in the first place.
Now having said all that, I think these things stand out only because the first four books were so carefully crafted, so unrushed and so clearly a labor of love.
Overall, I recommend this book. But I can't recommend it with the same wholhearted enthusiasm as the first books in this series.
Rating: 3
Summary: Okay follow-up
Comment: I read Gene Wolfe's four-volume "Book of the New Sun" when I was in high school. Even though I read indiscriminately in those days, I knew that these books were something different, something special. What originally drew me to them was the unconventional employment of his hero, Severian, who we meet in the first book as an apprentice torturer. I was a big fan of fantasies with someone other than the orphan farm boy who turns out to be the long-lost prince (my high school favorite being, of course, the leper and unbeliever, Thomas Covenant). But what kept me reading was the language. Wolfe's style in those books was a complex baroque--what we read as fantasy, in the strictest Arthur C. Clarke definition, is really only far future science, Wolfe was saying. And what is old (especially in language), becomes new again, with a strangely reminiscent quality. Wolfe's books were set so far in the future that the sun is a dying star.
When you write a masterpiece, as Wolfe did, it is hard to top it, and, although The Urth of the New Sun attempts to be that fifth book that provides a seamless integration with the four before it, something is missing. It could be that Severian has finally risen too high (literally) for us to follow; it could be that the metaphysics of the New Sun become too convoluted. Or it might just be that I waited too many years between the tetralogy and this book to be able to pick up the narrative thread. I know that in the first four books Severian engages in remembering instances that occurred earlier, but it seems endemic to this novel, taking seemingly forever for something *new* to happen.
But you don't read these for the plot. It is Gene Wolfe's genius for making obscure words and ancient terms seem like the language of a new world that leaves you spellbound. This might frustrate some who do not have an OED handy or a grasp of foreign roots, but most SF readers are used to trying to understand new words in context. To use a fairly simplistic example: you know that a falchion is a sword- like thing when it is used to chop someone's head off.
Wolfe took some years off before returning to this world in the 1990s in the Long Sun books. I'm interested in how they compare, hoping that he was able to capture more of the original spirit there than in this novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: It reveals the Conciliator
Comment: I disagree with many of the other reviews; simply put, this wraps the glorious Book of the New Sun up wonderfully with terrific experiences of non-Euclidean, non-Einsteinian time.
I glimpsed worlds beyond any human's comprehension.
It tells the story of the Conciliator, humanity's trial, and the end of the world- the Coming of the New Sun. For Yesod!
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Title: Sword & Citadel : The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0312890184 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Shadow & Claw : The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0312890176 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Litany of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 1 and 2) by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0312872917 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4) by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0312860722 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 04 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: On Blue's Waters : Volume One of 'The Book of the Short Sun' by Gene Wolfe ISBN: 0312872577 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 02 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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