by Gene Wolfe
Very dark chocolate. Blatantly part one of a quadrilogy (my copy is the SF Masterworks imprint which bundles ‘Shadow’ with ‘The Claw Of The Conciliator’) what we have here is low on action, high on characterisation, a through-the-roof central idea and much subtlety, particularly of prose. Probably a...
It took me a long time to read such a short book due to my work schedule. I often only managed to read for a few minutes at a time because I kept having to drop what I was doing at a moment’s notice. Today was supposed to be a day off (my first after 14 days), and I ended up working for most of it...
I'm abandoning this audiobook. I've read it before in print and although the narrator isn't bad, I'm bored by it. The print version was actually interesting. The audio one just doesn't work for me.
I really liked the ancient archaic feel of this book even though it is set in the far distant future. I can't wait to read the rest of the tetralogy.
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 -- showing mercy toward his victim -- and follows his subsequent journey out of his home city of Nessus. So this week may not have been the appropria...
Imagine me holding the book upside down, cocking my head to the side and squinting while gritting my teeth. That's the depiction of my bafflement.I do not know what I've done wrong with this book; I have seen Gene Wolfe showered with praises left, right and from Neil Gaiman's lips, and cornered with...
I return to this often, it's one of the few genre fictions that always rewards another visit. Wolfe is up to many games here, cloaked in his version of the unreliable narrator, one in an unfamiliar exotic world where the rules are unknown.There's plenty of action, and gore and political intrigue and...
sorry to say, but it was all over the place. The writing was hard to follow, everybody speaks in the same formal way, no matter what background. The language used is complex, doesn't flow. Paragraphs jump and overall make the story hard to read. Plus: The narrator strikes again..The main character i...
Not the easiest of books to review by itself. There is a lot to like in this book, the elegant and literate prose, the characters and settings, not to mention the unpredictable story. On the other hand there are some passages and dream sequences which go off on a tangent and are a little to follow. ...
So, I have an Internet friend who is always touting how great of a writer Gene Wolfe is. One, day, I finally asked him: “What’s a good place to start with this guy?” He suggested the Book of the New Sun, a tetralogy that begins with The Shadow of the Torturer. So, I tracked it down at the library...
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