To say that Gene Wolfe is a difficult author is both a compliment and a knock. In Shadow of the Torturer, the first in a four book series known as The Book of the. The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume of the four-volume “One expects any book from Gene Wolfe to be a classic — and here it is. Gene Wolfe’s science fiction is neither operatic nor scientifically accurate; his In the early part of the first novel, “The Shadow of the Torturer,”.
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I know most sci fi and fantasy authors seem to love complexity for its own sake, but it’s a cardinal sin of storytelling: You are commenting using your Twitter account. Also, we earn referral fees when you click our sponsored ads.
Wolfe also takes his time despite the size of the novel in wolfr where he wants the character and the audience to go.
Thanks, John, for the suggestion! As Clarke’s Third Law says: He goes on to perform a couple of executions, meet a mysterious troupe of travelling players, escape underground man-apes who have mutated from their human origins through “eons of struggles in the dark” and take part in a cannibalistic ritual which confers the substance of a dead person’s mind to the eater.
The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
Agia takes him under her wing for the day, escorting him to the Botanical Gardens, where he can pick the avern, and then to the Sanguinary Field for the duel. I held back from giving this 5 stars only because there are a lot of philosophical musings and other physical mysteries of the world that went right over my head.
Into Severian’s hands falls also the miraculous gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, whose powers promise to lead him to zhadow very throne of the House Absolute.
Yes, there’s plenty of odd words — “fuligin” for black, “carnifex” for torturer, “destriers”, which are sort of super-horses. You can rarely trust the popular market to single out good authors, but you’d think it might be safe to listen to the opinions of other writers especially an assemblage gen Nebula and Hugo winners in their own right. Once he begins to remember his life, he cannot forget anything being blessed!?! Wolfe complicates the medievality by allowing glimpses of, for instance, the fliers owned by the rich, which zip through the air like silver tears.
Much of the power of this novel comes from the sense that there is world-building and symbolism on a massive scale here, but that explanations and revelations for the reader would just cheapen it and remove the pleasure that comes from the experience of discovery. Human psychology and politics are fraught enough without deliberately obfuscating them.
Sick world, boring characters. My lack of enjoyment reading the first book will likely mean that I never get into a position to understand this series, but I do understand that I’m disliking something partly because I don’t fully tirturer it.
The pf that Severian will not only survive, but will become a ruler, doesn’t at all detract from the suspense; it makes us even more curious about how he will get there and what he experiences on the way. TolkienMervyn Peakeetc.
I would recommend this book only to seasoned fans of the genre and it will probably require multiple readings to fully grasp what is hiding beneath the surface. It’s a fantastic story, that paints him in a good light. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did.
I have read the series annually for more than 20 years and each year wonder at the efficiency Wolfe achieved whilst conveying a great depth to the character and setting. Get to Know Us.
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It’s enormous fun picking away at Severian’s ideas about the past of his far future Urth, at the mysteries of his companions Jonas why does he have a mechanical hand? What can she do when the very thing that produced her new name left her scarred in far more ways than They were each very useful, both in regards to Wolfe’s archaic vocabulary and in helping to parse some of the more obscure moments in the text where implications are made that are not immediately obvious.
It was all understated and slipped in so gently that we the readers were delightfully focused upon the ghe long enough to be surprised by the full weight of the world.
tue I will warn most readers that this isn’t a light and easy to read fantasy. Yes it is, and I loved all the old incorporation of alien life, our dying sun, quantum physics extrapolatio I was awash in strange expectations and assumptions before picking up this book, and after coming out the other side, I’m happy to say that this thoughtful novel pleased me.
I would describe the style as Joseph Conrad meets Charles Dickens.
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For 38 years I was under the belief that I had read this book and just couldn’t remember much about it. Not to clap my hands to my tortkrer and get orgasmic because the writer ths so genne talented and smart. I suppose it is normal as this geje only the first book of the series but still, by the end of it, I ended up having more questions than answers. Wolfe has an almost wolff status amongst fellow authors; Gaiman called him ‘a ferocious intellect’, Swanwick said he’s “the greatest writer in the English language alive today”, and Disch called this series “a tetralogy of couth, intelligence, and suavity”.
The torturer is concerned to maintain dignity for all, there is no degradation, but there is also no exceeding or mitigating the sentence handed down. I am a little puzzled as to why he uses so many Latin terms, even though he includes an unnecessary appendix at the end of the novel explaining that the book is translated from a future manuscript in a language that he doesn’t know?? This site uses cookies.
Severian and Dorcas leave the lazaret that evening, prudently forestalling any reprisal from Agia. Download one of the Free Kindle apps to start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, and computer.
It turns out that my assumption was wrong and there are no more gruesome torture scenes. She survived the mission, the drop; the fall. Secondly, there are sentences, paragraphs, and whole sections of this book that are gorgeously written.