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I've read almost everything by gene wolfe (haven't finished home fires and the sorcerer's house). The book of the Long sun and the book of the short sun were sort of a let-down the first time I read them: BOTLS seemed boring and BOTNS seemed like it was full of unsatisfying half-experiences (I remember being pissed that there wasn't as much talk of Green, on 'in green's jungles' as I wanted). Now I think they're great books, and I especially enjoy BOTNS, which I think is possibly the best part of the solar cycle. A few things nobody seems to have mentioned, about Silk: whether or not he's an actual clone of typhon is not really the point. I think the point was that there are many genetically engineered specimens with super powers e.g. Mucor, and the Silk clone was meant to have an aura of leadership. When the whorl arrives at the Short Sun solar system, Pas/Typhon was supposed to download his mind into Silk's clone (which was not supposed to have been activated until then). Instead, Pas and his family were at war for quite a while, and Pas was so damaged that he needed someone else's (Silk's) mind to make his personality whole again. Severian: I know there's a weird clone/replacement 'sev 1/2/3' theory but I don't really know it. What I took away from Severian being the conciliator is: The resurrection power of the conciliator (that he gets from the heirodules in Urth of the new sun) affects his past too. He has the power of resurrecting people around him. More importantly, he resurrects himself a number of times. Deaths I can think of for now: -Drowned in the river in the first few pages of the first book. -killed by the avern Urth of the new sun: -killed by some zoo escapee as he was running up the stairs. -shot by a big cannon/gun when he gets back to Nessus. I suppose this bit is explicit in the text, but: Dorcas was a corpse buried in the water of the avern lake. He touched her and resurrected her. The boatman looking for the woman may have been his grandfather. Later when Dorcas wants to die, she coughs up stones, that were used to bury her underwater. Apart from that, I think his short stories are not getting enough love in this thread. I love his short story collections! Death of doctor island and other stories and other stories, strange travellers, they're mostly great. There are the odd stories that I don't really get and never will (there's a talking bellybutton story?) but some "the monday man" will give me the creeps forever.
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Nov 28, 2012 17:55
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Lex Talionis posted:My advice, contra some of the others who have already responded, is if you don't like Wolfe then don't force it. Lots of people don't like Wolfe. It's true that many people have reported a much better experience the second time through BOTNS, but life's too short to read books that aren't for you. Agreed. I've asked about 10 friends to read his books and nobody ever likes them. I just give up and read the books they suggested in turn 
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Dec 3, 2012 23:03
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Yes. I just finished the land across and the sorcerer's house. (Sorcerer's house, I put down after buying it a couple of years ago, and have actually finished it now. I loved it!) The land across is pretty good, but I'm not sure exactly how much of it I understand (what a surprise). The sorcerer's house seems like a better book but they're definitely both better than an evil guest which I disliked. The land across seems to be written by a dumb young (I'm guessing early 20's, but at first seems to be 30ish) guy. I'm not exactly sure how much to believe about the story he tells, and it's not been out long enough for the fandom to go crazy with weird theories. I haven't re-read it yet, not sure when I will. There are some weird theories about how he writes his book, but it reads like a slightly-dumb guy writing a book rather than anything else, e.g. one theory says that he's not english speaking and it's been run through google translate or something which I think is a dumb idea.
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Feb 16, 2014 00:35
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Oh, hi everyone. I am a really big fan of Gene Wolfe. I find that a lot of his books seem disappointing on the first read, and then I love them after the second. All of the books in the solar cycle are amazing but I think they start off great (new sun) and get better and better: Long+short sun together are my favourite of all of his books, and probably my favourite books ever. Has anyone here read the Dying Earth books by Jack Vance? The book of the new sun was Gene Wolfe's take on those. The middle two books of Dying Earth (Cugel's two books) are loving amazing. I made a thread about them a few years ago but few people seemed to care.
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Dec 9, 2015 00:47
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Safety Biscuits posted:-Severian borrows four books for Thecla but only describes three of them in detail. The last is a small green book. I read somewhere once that the fourth book is the same book we have read: the book of the new sun. It's probably the copy he hurled into space. I don't remember any of the stuff backing that theory up. anilEhilated posted:Speaking of late Wolfe, how is The Land Across? I generally don't have problem with his less-connected stories (by which I mean I liked both Home Fires and The Borrowed Man) but it's got a very, very slow start. I don't know if it's me getting bored or the book projecting oppressive atmosphere but I have very little desire to read on... Does it get better? I didn't totally understand it: It seems at some point that the guy visiting the country might actually be from there, or a government agent from there, already. There's also count dracula in it. The end really didn't make a lot of sense. I did enjoy it more as it went on, everything seemed to come together in the end.
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Jan 2, 2017 17:50
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Looking forward to his final book, interlibrary loan, which comes out in June!
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Apr 27, 2020 08:31
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Short sun is my favorite Gene Wolfe series by a long way. Don't read Gene Wolfe if you can't handle not getting exactly what you want.
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Jul 16, 2020 02:22
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