Gene Wolfe

In a thoroughly decadent world of the future, Severian the torturer is cast out from the torturer's guild when he falls in love with one of his victims and allows her to die

The Shadow of the Torturer

Tobias V. Langhoff

I’m a much bigger fan of sci-fi than fantasy, but this was a fantasy book I enjoyed – perhaps because, although it’s ostensibly a fantasy story, it is in time revealed to be a sort of sci-fantasy. It seems to take place in the far future of our world, in an age where humanity has been to the stars but those excursions have taken on the nature of myths and legends, not unlike the video game Destiny. There is seemingly magic, but perhaps Clarke’s Third Law applies here: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The sun is dying and the world with it. Our hero, an unreliable narrator who is chronicling the story in first person, apparently omitting and changing information as he sees fit (although it’s not clear if or why he is doing this), is a young apprentice from the Torturers’ Guild. The guild, which actually bears the Orwellian name “Seekers for Truth and Penitence”, carries out the centralized justice of the bureaucratic regime of a mysterious ruler called “the Autarch” (whom it is hinted at that the protagonist will meet and/or usurp at some point before he writes the book). The setting reminds me dimly of the video game Dishonored, in that it is a kind of cyberpunk sci-fi/fantasy world consisting of different guilds and professions. The feeling of the world also reminds me of Dark Souls.

There’s a lot of world building here, and the reader is left to their own devices in figuring the world out. The civilization consists of genetically engineered people, and they utilize alien animals carried back from the stars for work. Arcane and strange vocabularies are thrown around.

The story has a weird build-up. We follow the protagonist on a journey, and he encounters people, dangers, conflict and politics along the way in a haphazard manner. The structure reminds me a little of children’s fairy tales, like The Wizard of Oz. This book is the first in a series of four that together comprise The Book of the New Sun, itself one long book/omnibus/novel in a series known variously as the Urth, Solar or Briah Cycle, so I assume the structure will make sense as we go on. There are at the very least a lot of unanswered questions.

Cody Degen

4+, reserving the right to rerate this later on because it feels incomplete w/o more of the series. really enjoy it but definitely not getting a full understanding of it w/o listening to a companion podcast

Thought this was great. Well written, dreamlike, a bit weird, things hinted at that I'm excited to find out about - the old sun being a bit rubbish so they're getting an upgrade, trees on the moon, travel between worlds done with like, mirrors or something, I don't know. A real Gormenghast feel to the early chapters of the book and anyone who knows me knows I LOVE that. 

Took it all at face value - I believe what happened is what the words in the book said what happened. To this day I don't have an English GCSE because I never actually fully understood what subtext was, and I thought it was a bit strange to assume what the author meant, outside of the words on the page. Well, I mean, that's not the only reason, I didn't do any coursework either but you see what I'm getting at here. Maybe later books will reveal something more obvious. If so, I can't wait to find out! I'm very excited to read the next entry in the series.

Gavin

Wonderful. Rivals Earthsea as the wisest and subtlest Fantasy, for people who don't like Fantasy. Fast-moving, full of ironies, antimonies, and ambivalent symbolism - the kind which doesn't hit you over the head (I'm thinking of Gandalf changing colour hmmmmmm). 

There's a dozen memorable characters in 300pp (Gurloes, Thecla, Agilus, Agia, Talos, Ultan, Inire, Eata, Baldanders, the man himself), even though many appear for just one scene. And there's a very unobtrusive frame narrative which deepens and undermines things. 

And under all that: the beautiful post-post-apocalyptic layer: New Sun is actually science fiction, about what happens when the great project, Progress, collapses; what happens after thousands of years of decay. 

   those who dig for their livelihood say there is no land anywhere in which they can trench without turning up shards of the past. No matter where the spade turns the soil, it uncovers broken pavements and corroded metal; and scholars write that the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because flecks of every colour are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded by aeons of tumbling in the clamorous sea.


It is Clarkean: The book is unconcerned whether strange events are due to obscure high technology, psychological trickery, or bonafide supernatural force.

Because Wolfe is a bit difficult, it's not too incongruous to bring up Grand Narrative now: sure, the French theorists were wrong to suggest that such ideas are dead in our time (or bad, if alive) but they certainly could die, and Wolfe explores what that'd be like. Nessus has no master idea - not even god, not even family, not even order. (Or maybe it's class again.)

  "Severian. Name for me the seven principles of governance."
 A foreboding grew on me; I sensed that if I did not reply, some tragedy would occur. At last I began weakly, "Anarchy . . ."
 "That is not governance, but the lack of it. I taught you that it precedes all governance. Now list the seven sorts."
 "Attachment to the person of the monarch. Attachment to the bloodline or other sequence of succession. Attachment to the royal state. Attachment to a code legitimizing the governing state. Attachment to the law only. Attachment to a greater or lesser board of electors, as framers of the law. Attachment to an abstraction conceived as including the body of electors, other bodies giving rise to them and numerous other elements, largely ideal."
 "Tolerable. Of these, which is the earlier form, and which the highest?"
 "The development is in the order given, Master," I said. "But I do not rrecall that you ever asked us before which was highest."
 Master Malrubius leaned forward, his eyes burning brighter than the coals of the fire. "Which is the highest, Severian?"
 "The last, Master?"
 "You mean attachment to an abstraction conceived as including the body of electors, other bodies giving rise to them, and numerous other elements, largely ideal?"
 "Yes, Master."
 "Of what kind, Severian, is your own attachment to the Divine Entity?"
 I said nothing. It may have been that I was thinking; but if so, my mind was too much filled with sleep to be conscious of its thought. Instead, I became profoundly aware of my physical surroundings. The sky above my face in all its grandeur seemed to have been made solely for my benefit, and to be presented for my inspection now. I lay upon the ground as upon a woman, and the very air that surrounded me seemed a thing as admirable as crystal and as fluid as wine.
 "Answer me, Severian."
 "The first, if I have any."
 "To the person of the monarch?"
 "Yes, because there is no succession." 



(Dune occupies the same SFF feudalist netherland as this, but is much clumsier, occasionally contemptible.) 

 How do you write a truly immoral sympathetic character? (In this case, the most immoral: who does the worst thing you can do.) I think the answer is simple: detail. Make it first-person and simply show the ordinary range of interests, foibles, enculturation, passions. The reader does the rest. (Compare Lolita, Private Memoirs of a Justified Sinner, Wasp Factory, Crime and Punishment...)

  Gurloes was one of the most complex men I have known, because he was a complex man trying to be simple. Not a simple, but a complex man's idea of simplicity. Just as a courtier forms himself into something brilliant and involved, midway between a dancing master and a diplomacist, with a touch of assassin if needed, so Master Gurloes had shaped himself to be the dull creature a pursuivant or bailiff expected to see when he summoned the head of our guild, and that is the only thing a real torturer cannot be. The strain showed; though every part of Gurloes was as it should have been, none of the parts fit... He ate too much and too seldom, read when he thought no one knew of it, and visited certain of our clients, including one on the third level, to talk of things none of us eaves-dropping in the corridor outside could understand. His eyes were refulgent, brighter than any woman's. 


Severian is completely cold-blooded about violence while still being notably heroic and sentimental. (view spoiler)[(Ok he doesn't actually torture anyone.) (hide spoiler)]

  By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow - so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy...


The heroism is natural and plausible, because he dooms himself in the middle of the book, so everything that happens is a bonus to him, so he takes bandits and duels and unlikely undertakings in his stride, which is an enviable attitude.

One of many lovely details: all the Latin is subtly wrong: 'terminus est' taken to be 'this is the line of division' rather than 'this is the end'; 'felicibus brevis, miseris hora longa', 'Men wait long for happiness'. But most of the rest of the jargon is historically accurate: 'hydrargyrum' for mercury, 'hipparch' for cavalier, 'archon' for lord, 'carnifex' for butcher, 'matross' for junior soldier, etc.

 The second half, the quest with Agia and Dorcas, reminds me of 'Before Sunrise', of all things: glittering words exchanged by the young and instantly intimate. The writing is so fine and uncliched that it pulls off unreconstructed romance in the midst of post-apocalyptic feudalism. In general, the feudal trappings justify Wolfe's ornate prose well. Severian often says things that are wise to us, and the things which aren't make sense in brutal context:

  the pattern of our guild is repeated mindlessly (like the repetitions of Father Inire's mirrors in the House Absolute) in the societies of every trade, so that they are all of them torturers, just as we. His quarry stands to the hunter as our clients to us; those who buy to the tradesman; the enemies of the Commonwealth to the soldier; the governed to the governors; men to women. All love that which they destroy.


Nietzsche on the wheel:

  Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it.



Probably 5/5 on re-read.



PS: I can't decide if this or Fall of Hyperion has the lower quality-of-book : awfulness-of-cover ratio.

Brianna

All love that which they destroy.


A wonderfully gothic, brooding tale. Only qualm is that the women always miraculously loose their clothes.

Christopher McCaffery

This is the most rewarding science fiction book I have ever read, and the most sacramental. Very medieval in its allegory.

Sunyi Dean

On the book itself, I doubt I will be able to say more than others have (certainly I won't say it any better). There are reams of deconstructive groups, books, essays, etc. 

What I will say is this - Gene Wolfe is everything that modern readers are being taught to hate - subtle, thoughtful, introspective, unusual. He breaks all the rules because most of the rules probably don't matter; you really can do what you like as long as you do it well, in writing.

Increasingly the writing advice I see being given to authors and editors alike is to basically write/edit everything in super active phrasing at the expense of actual prose, and to create a series of hooks with an incoherent plot (ie Frozen, Tomb Raider in films; Name of the Wind in Patrick Rothfuss) because this sells better despite a total lack of payoff. But hey, who cares, because you sold a million copies and you're the next Dan fucking Brown or 50 Shades of Shite.

I respect Gene Wolfe for not treating his readers like they're incurably stupid, and being self-assured enough to not worry that at times he provokes a bit of a marmite reaction. To the book itself - I loved it, even if I'm not clever enough to get every reference, or to follow every argument.

Jeffrey Pillmann

The way Gene Wolfe writes women is nothing short of aggrivating. To me it really takes away a lot from a world that otherwise is rather interesting.

Adam

I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of Shadow, only to be confused by the direction later on. The story itself and the characters were interesting -- meandering without a focus as Severian wanders.

The Shadow of the Torturer

Reviews