Of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food . . . are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own.

It's not hard to imagine that this musing from Severian, problematic protagonist of The Book of the New Sun, reflects Gene Wolfe's own modest valuation of storytelling. Ironically, Wolfe's magnum opus has been questioned on the grounds of story. As Baird Searles put it in his 1983 review in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine of The Citadel of the Autarch, fourth and final volume of The Book of the New Sun, "Under all that glittering edifice of surprising words and more surprising events and characters, is there a story or a concept of any stature?"

The monumental acclaim with which critics endorse The Book of the New Sun is not mirrored popularly--the book is woefully under-read. And more tellingly, those same critics are brief in their acclamation, and with few exceptions focus solely on the work's style rather than its content. It's as if they haven't really read the book, or haven't read closely, or having read closely, find themselves unable to understand it. They obsess about the puzzles and tricks Wolfe plays with language, structure, narration, and allusion. The Book of the New Sun offers plenty of handles for adherents to popular theories, deconstructionist, post-structuralist, etc., to grab onto, but none of them seem to open any doors, and could it be because beneath all the mind-candy there isn't actually anything behind the door?

To be honest, I believe there is but I'm not sure--I'm not sure what The Book of the New Sun means to me. Most books mean a number of things as they are digested and integrated into my thinking. But this book defies assimilation. At the same time it has stretched me as a reader and enlarged my capacity. And it compels one to read further, and reread.

The second half of the tetralogy, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch, continues the journey of Severian, who now serves as Lictor in the frontier stronghold of Thrax. This period of brief stability soon ends as the monsters pursuing Severian find him, his lover Dorcas is compelled to leave in order to learn the truth of her resurrection, and Severian turns his back on his heritage as a torturer by showing mercy a second time. He flees north, through the mountains and into the jungle. He faces dark, psychologically portentous beasts besieging a family's cottage in the woods, battles megalomaniacal tyrants on the remains of their ancient monoliths, and finally falls into the bewildering hell of a soldier on the front lines. Eventually, as Vodalus promised, he is given the opportunity to destroy the Autarch, but for Severian, who has gradually constructed a personal moral framework and has only just begun to guess at the forces operating behind the scenes, destiny is a complicated thing.

Severian's growing moral awareness is part of a thaw in his personality, and he becomes increasingly accessible emotionally. (Though he still conflates love and sex, and performs the latter extemporaneously and describes it in a perfunctory tone.) At the same time, many of the bizarrely disparate elements of the story begin to fold back into place and make some sense. A good example is Dr. Talos and Baldanders, whose odd relationship and role in the story is resolved in one of the several sequences the book leaves deeply impressed on the reader's mind.

Wolfe's prose continues to work like a sherpa, freighting heavy loads up steep slopes. Allusions cloud the reader like gnats, our confidence in Severian's narration is strained, and little stories like Dr. Talos's plays, the myths Severian reads in The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky, and the delightful tales of the wounded men who compete for Foila in the Pelerines' lazaret are mounted like gems in the text.

Consistent with Wolfe's refusal to satisfy conventional expectations, The Book of the New Sun ends just as Severian learns his true purpose. The fulfillment of that ultimate mission is relegated to a sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, but depriving The Book of the New Sun of the culmination of its story arc does not make it less complete. Instead it seems proper to end here, and leave the sense of disconcerted wonder intact.

That impression of completeness irrespective of plot, that singular mood created by the book's baroque style, recalls what Severian once read about a picture "graven with such skill that the whole of it, should it be destroyed, might be recreated from a small part, and that small part might be any part." Wolfe's inestimable skill dazzles, and each part of The Book of the New Sun is a wonder. It may be that the wrapping is of greater importance than the gift, but if, as Master Ultan says, "the entire life is in each finger," it must be said that The Book of the New Sun is wholly alive.


– Panguitch


My review of the first half of The Book of the New Sun: http://www.epinions.com/content_400594275972



Recommended: Yes