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I've just finished Sword of the Lictor, and I also read The Knight. I had felt a bit like I was slogging through book one and two of Book of the New Sun, and I just stopped reading it after book two. I then kept wondering what I wanted to read next, but something drew me into trying The Knight. I got halfway through it and stopped again. Later I was at a public library and saw a Gene Wolfe novel on the recommended shelf. I read through it for a while and felt drawn in. I finished the Knight and Sword of the Lictor, and while I was reading these Gene Wolfe just suddenly clicked for me. I'm planning on re-reading the whole Book of New Sun series sometime fairly soon, and I want to read a lot more of his books. Maybe this is addressed in book four, but does anyone know why Baldanders was travelling around and doing plays? It didn't seem that odd until the reveal at the end of Sword of the Lictor that he is the man in the castle and was much more than he seemed.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:58
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I live in Florida so I can't read New Sun until I move to a colder climate
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May 19, 2014 21:01
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Is it bad that every time I see this thread get bumped I get scared that Gene Wolfe died 
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Jan 13, 2015 18:43
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so hosed up
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Jun 16, 2015 16:02
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I read all of Wizard Knight and kind of got into it. I tried to read Soldier of the Mist and I just could not focus on it. Every time I tried to sit down and read it I felt sleepy. To me it had some of the worst "Gene Wolfe" stuff going on, meaning just completely random stuff happened out of nowhere. I think I stopped reading when he randomly decided to "wrestle" someone in the middle of an inn or something. The fact that he forgot everything every day made Latro feel like he had no real characterization to me.
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Dec 13, 2016 21:59
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I'm close to done with Fifth Head of Cerberus and will post about it when I'm done. Trying to come back to Wolfe. I can't decide if I want to re-read New Sun first or just go ahead and read Long/Short Sun. I never feel more hosed up from being on the internet all the time than I do when I'm trying to read Gene Wolfe. It's like the level of attention-span required to read his books is badly badly harmed when you are tempted to check twitter or whatever
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Sep 11, 2017 18:36
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I found a podcast that did a really in-depth reading of Fifth Head of Cerberus if anyone is interested. I'm listening to the first ep they cover it and it's pretty good: http://alzabosoup.libsyn.com/
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Sep 13, 2017 18:56
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I've listened to most of their episodes on the first novella on Fifth Head now: One of them does have a "nerd voice" but it's not THAT bad. I think they go a little bit slower than I'd prefer. They go into a bit more depth on references to plays and poems than I'd prefer, but then again it usually does fill me in a lot on references I didn't catch myself. They do a very good job drawing the line at reasonable analysis, meaning they dismiss the kind of "Gene Wolfe Fan Theories" that go way deeper and crazier than Wolfe ever could have intended to go. I had more trouble following "A Story" than I did Fifth Head, so hopefully their episode on that can be more useful to me. Either way I've found it pretty enjoyable, though you do have to spend a lot of time listening to it since they go into so much detail for even 10-15 pages.
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Sep 17, 2017 04:08
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Speaking of Alzabo Soup, their readthrough of BOTNS continues to be excellent
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Nov 26, 2017 03:42
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The Alzabo guys do the virgin/whore thing as "this is how Severian sees women due to his upbringing." When they talk about Dorcas, they specifically mention stuff like "This challenges Severian's ability to keep her in the 'virgin' category when she puts his hand onto her breasts, but he can write it off because..." They mention several times that this is how Severian sees things, not Wolfe and not them.
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Jan 8, 2018 22:34
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I read the whole BOTNS series like 3 years ago, and I just finished book 2 of my re-read. On my first read I really liked the atmosphere and the writing, and it was just enough to hold me and keep me reading...but it was just so confusing and overwhelming that I couldn't have said I super enjoyed it. The way the plot was structured, and especially the random stories and plays thrown in were just so disorienting that I rarely felt I had any real clue what was happening. Even if I did know what was happening I didn't really know why. For my re-read so far, book 1 felt almost crystal clear to me. I could tell exactly what was happening and the plot didn't really feel so odd to me anymore. I started to pick up on stuff and really enjoy the story this time around. The play at the end didn't feel so bad this time, as it was from Severian's perspective rather than just the script thrown onto a page. Book 2 started to get harder though. I had to look up online to see if I "missed" what happened after the gate. Googling confirmed that I missed nothing, he just skipped a big chunk of narrative. Severian's whole attitude toward Vodalus doesn't really make sense to me either. He spends all of book 1 and half of book 2 trying so hard to find anyone even remotely related to Vodalus so he can serve him, and then the moment he actually finds him he changes his mind with no real explanation. You could say that the whole alzabo thing puts him off, but still it just strikes me as something where you'd expect he'd dedicate some number of words to saying how he changed his mind on this. Yes, I can infer and guess at an explanation, but this is the type of thing that is making the series into a "hard read" again even on my re-read. The ape thing attack and the House Absolute scenes were much less confusing this time around. I pretty clearly followed what was happening, though I still have no real conception of what the House Absolute is beyond "a bunch of underground rooms under gardens." I at least understood the Antechamber pretty well this time, which I did not at all on the first read. I sort of followed what Jonas was, and his disappearing made sense to me this time around. On my first read my impression was they were talking and then he just disappeared out of nowhere with zero explanation. The second play though completely lost me. I'm listening to the audiobook this time, and there was no way for me to follow it. It's a script format which makes for pretty poor reading. I lost track of every single character and had basically no idea what was happening. It feels like I'd have to get the book out and re-read the play several times just to figure out what is going on. As much as I like the book I'm not going to do that right now. The ogre story he reads to Jonas was more comprehensible this time, but it also just didn't feel worth the break in narrative. These kind of thing are why I'd find it really hard to recommend this series to other people. The end scene with the witches and the weird time travel restoring the city thing was pretty hard to get around. It was kind of cool and made a lot more sense than last time, but it also kind of lost me either way, and I feel like I need to re-read that whole part again before I start book 3, especially if he's going to time jump again to add to the confusion. I think my overall issue with Wolfe in general is still what it has always been. It's not really an objective fault of Wolfe, but the fact that I just cannot get my head around how anyone would ever write this. Almost any other author I read, I can put myself in their shoes and understand why or how they wrote the book. This includes classic literature, literary fiction, and other "dense" reading. I guess it's similar to something like Ulysses where there is just no way I can fathom sitting down and writing it. With Wolfe though I can actually get close to parsing what is going on, but I can never figure out how he possibly decides to structure his plots the way he does, or decides to intentionally obfuscate certain basic elements of what is happening. It's the kind of thing where I feel like if you could somehow submit one of his books to a publisher who didn't know it was Wolfe, they would just dismiss you out of hand because they have no idea what is going on. This is all a big part of the appeal of Wolfe though. Even when I read books and short stories of his that didn't really get most of their meanings through to me, I could tell it was good somehow, and that it was somehow my fault for not getting it. I don't know if this is just part of Wolfe's reputation, or if I intuitively felt that. Whenever I get tempted to read a new book though, I get tempted to read Wolfe again, which is what got me re-reading BOTNS.
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Jan 11, 2018 17:29
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I'm on my second read of everything, and my re-read made me understand 1 on my own, but 2 and 3 were not really more comprehensible on my re-read. I understood the first Talos play in book 1 on my re-read, but the second one was just too confusing. I feel like both of them are just too removed from the actual flow of the story for me to figure out. I'd have to re-read both of them and think really hard about it, and I just don't feel like doing it even though it's my re-read...
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Jan 21, 2018 23:54
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I finished my first re-read of Book of the New Sun a week or so ago. A lot more clicked for me this time around, and I more or less followed the entire narrative without ever feeling utterly lost at any point. I did get lost during the second Talos play, and slightly lost at the very end, but I wasn't totally lost like I was for large portions of my first read-through. I really enjoyed certain parts of the story, for instance the encounter with Typhon was really interesting to me. I almost wanted to see an alternate book where he took Typhon up on his offer, because it would have been cool to see how he would have retaken his spot as ruler of Urth after having been asleep so long. I also really liked Agia as a character this time around, and I thought it was cool that she ended up replacing Vodalus. Somehow I didn't pick that up at all on my first read. I still felt really confused about what Severian actually is and how he did all the things he did with or without the Claw. I have a pretty vague impression of it, but it just kind of slips away from me if I think too hard about it. The nature of Severian got kind of tied up to me with what the hierodules are, so that ended up feeling fairly confusing as well. Sometimes I wish the narrative would have just been a bit tighter, and all of the "alternative universe and timelines" stuff would have just been dropped, because the world is compelling enough as just "this is what things are like after the Earth is billions of years old." Having the blackhole in the sun instead of just "The sun is old and dying" feels kind of like a step further than needed to me, but without all that extra stuff it probably wouldn't be what it is. I don't really know what I'm arguing or saying, and I find it really difficult to articulate my feelings on the books after my re-read. Either way I really liked it and think it's one of the best book(s) I've ever read.
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Feb 17, 2018 23:17
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That story explains how their FTL travel works
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Mar 2, 2018 16:40
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 01:28 |
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I've read the whole BotNS twice and I agree that "Severian is unreliable!!!" is very overblown. It's worth noting and keeping in mind as you read, and there are times you catch him more or less, but it's far from the most interesting or fun thing about the book. I think just saying "He's a ruler who is telling how he came into power, and you can expect him to want to make himself look good" just about covers it. There is not really any amazingly awesome puzzle to discover beyond that. I find the incredibly weird world more interesting, and I think Severian being raised as a torturer in such a weird world is coloring his POV much more than the fact that he's "unreliable." I think he's more "unrelatable" than anything else.
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Mar 25, 2019 01:13
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