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After reading Book of the New Sun a while back and feeling most of it go right over my head, this thread got me to go and pick up Urth of the New Sun. I'm liking it more because I know to expect something dense and meandering that gives you clues and leaves you to work out their significance. I'm only at the second chapter and there's already things that feel very Wolfian: the amazing image of Severian shooting up through the huge masts and sails of the spaceship, and that already something important happened that I had to reread and think about before I figured it out. Severian overshoots and is floating out into space. He throws out the lead box full of his memoirs, and then "at once my destiny seized me and flung me back." It took me a minute to figure out that it was the momentum of throwing the box that made him move in the opposite direction. It's funny how his seemingly straightforward descriptions obscure things. I'm kept off balance because I never know whether something he talks about is in fact an invention, like the necklace that gives him a "suit of air" to protect him from the vacuum of space, or something familiar, like the picture someone mentioned that he describes as the knight of a dead world and is in fact the moon landing.
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Oct 26, 2012 10:44
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:37 |
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I just finished Urth of the New Sun, and I have a couple questions about the ending I'm hoping people can shed some light on: It seems like it's a really odd and random place to end, with Severian walking toward "where the other gods sleep." Is there significance here I'm not getting? The last appendix about the miracle of Apu-Punchau talks about how Severian held back the dawn (which I hadn't even realized he'd done, drat it Gene Wolfe). It mentions the possibility of an eclipse, with something coming in between Urth and the sun, and says "the thoughtful reader will find little difficulty in advancing at least one plausible speculation." I must not be thoughtful because heck if I can figure it out.
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Dec 4, 2012 13:21
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Neurosis posted:The ship. Oooh. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.
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Dec 5, 2012 10:38
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