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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim. The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 to discover the awesome power of an ancient The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim. The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny. The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weeklyand "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. How many people like me loved The Shadow, but were disappointed by The Claw-- especially by the text of the Dr. Talos' play which made no sense whatsoever? Andronikos I found the Claw gripped me for longer than the Shadow, especially once you get to the House Azure. I will admit the play frustrated me; I had to take …more I found the Claw gripped me for longer than the Shadow, especially once you get to the The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 Azure. I will admit the play frustrated me; I had to take out my machete and just hack right through the thing, but the payoff in Sword of the Lictor and Citadel of the Autarch is worth it. That section's a bit more like a puzzle of foreshadowing for the rest of the series; while it interrupts the narrative, reading it closely should give you some cool reveals down the line. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I didn't quite read it closely enough, and instead managed with some other peoples' explanation of it. In any case, while it's not the most exciting portion of the book, I found the House Azure and the surrounding plotlines sufficiently fascinating to remember Claw fondly. Edit: Woops. This is a year old. Do the remaining books wraps anything at the end, or they just keep coming with new, unexplained and unexplainable events? Philip Magnier Yes, the five books bring the journey of Severian to an end and he changes with all his adventures and trials. He does gain in profoundity and wisdom. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Sep 24, J. Keely rated it it was ok Shelves: reviewedamericafantasydying-earth. Wolfe has an almost legendary 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". You can The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 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 of Nebula and Hugo winners in their own right. I will give his fans Wolfe has an almost legendary 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". I will give his fans one concession: Wolfe is an author who defies expectations. Unfortunately, I was expecting him to The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 remarkable and interesting. This book had been sitting on my shelf for months, along with other highly-praised works I've been looking forward to, but I bade my time, waiting for the mood to strike. Few live up to their reputation, but most at least deliver part of the promise. I would expect any author mentioned in the same breath as Peake to have an original and vibrant style, but I found Wolfe's writing to be simple without being elegant. His language and structure serves its purpose, only occasionally rising above mere utilitarianism, and then he rushes to florid flourishes that fall flat as often as they succeed. Sometimes, it is downright dull. The prose of the second book is stronger than the first, but its plot and characters are more linear and predictable. I appreciated his 'created language' more than most fantasy authors, but I didn't find it particularly mysterious or difficult, because all of his words are based on recognizable Germanic or Romantic roots. Then again, after three years of writing stories about Roman whores in Latin, I had little problem with 'meretriculous'. Even those words I wasn't familiar with seemed clear by their use. The terms are scattered throughout the book, but rarely contribute to a more pervasive linguistic style, as might be seen in The Worm OuroborosThe Lord of The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 Rings, Gormenghast, or The King of Elfland's Daughter. Wolfe's terms pepper otherwise and unremarkable modern style, which hardly helps to throw us into a strange world. He is better than the average fantasy author, but he resembles them more than he differs from them. His protagonist started off interestingly enough: an apparently weak and intelligent man, which made it all the more disappointing when he suddenly transformed into a laconic, wench-loving buttkicker who masters sword-fighting, finds the Super Magic Thing and follows the path of his Awesome Foretold Fate. Again, I must agree with Nick Lowe : Wolfe's plot owes more to magic and convenience than good storytelling. It relies on the same tricks over and over: any time a character is about to give important information to us, there will be a sudden attack or other interruption, as convenient and annoying as the moment when the dying man says "I was killed by. We also get problems solved by divine intervention whenever things start to slow, which doesn't leave the characters much room to be active. He also seems to suffer from the same sexual discomfort that plagues so many fantasy authors. There is an undercurrent of obsession with women and their sexuality, complete with the sexualization of rape and murder. It's not so much a case of misogyny as it is an inequality in how characters behave. The women always seem to end up as playtoys for the narrator, running around naked, desiring him, sparring with him coyly, but ultimately, conquered; and the camera pans away. They always approach him, desire him, pretending they don't want him, then give themselves up to him. It's the same old story of an awkward, emotionless male protagonist who is inexplicably followed and harangued by women who fall in love with him for no given reason, familiar to anyone who's seen a harem anime. I will grant that the women have more character than the average fantasy heroine, but it still doesn't leave them with much. Instead of giving into love at first sight, they fight it as long as they can, making it that much sweeter when the narrator finally 'wins'. The sexuality was not new, interesting, arousing, or mutual, it was merely the old game of 'overcoming the strong woman' that is familiar to readers of the Gor books. The sense of 'love' in The New Sun is even more unsettling. It descends on the characters suddenly and nonsensically, springing to life without build or motivation. The word never The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 up in connection with any psychological development, nor does it ever seem to match the relationships as they are depicted. More often than not, it seems love is only mentioned so the narrator can coldly break his lover's trust in the next chapter. Several times, the narrator tries to excuse himself for objectifying women by mentioning that he also objectifies ugly women. What this convolution of misogyny is supposed to represent, I couldn't say. The narrator seems very interested in this fact, and is convinced that it makes him a unique person. It made it very clear to me why the most interesting antiheroes tend to be gruff and laconic, because listening to a chauvinistic sociopath talk about himself is insufferable. Then The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 is the fact that every character you meet in the story turns up again, hundreds of miles away, to reveal that they are someone The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 and have been secretly controlling the action of the plot. It feels like the entire world is populated by about fifteen people who follow the narrator around wherever he goes. If the next two books continue along the same lines, then the big reveal will be that the world is entirely populated by no more than three superpowered shapeshifters. Everyone in the book has secret identities, secret connections to grand conspiracies, and important plot elements that they conveniently hide until the last minute, only doling out clues here and there. There are no normal people in this world, only double agents and kings in disguise. Every analysis I've read of this book mentions that even the narrator is unreliable. This can be an effective technique, but in combination with a world of infinite, unpredictable intrigue, The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 story begins to evoke something between a soap opera and a convoluted mystery novel, relying on impossible and contradictory scenarios to mislead the audience. Apparently, this is the thing his fans most appreciate about him--I find it to be an insulting and artificial game. I agree with this reviewer that there is simply not enough structure to the story to make the narrator's unreliability meaningful. In order for unreliable narration to be effective, there must be some clear and evident counter-story that undermines it. Without that, it is not possible to determine meaning, because there's nowhere to start: everything is equally shaky. At that point, it's just a trick--adding complexity to the surface of the story without actually producing any new meaning. I know most sci fi and fantasy authors seem to love complexity for its own sake, but it's a cardinal sin of storytelling: don't add something into your story unless it needs to be there. Covering the story with a lot of vagaries and noise may impress some, but won't stand up to careful reading. Fantasy novels are often centered on masculinity, violence, and power struggles, and so by making the narrator an emotionally distant manipulator with sociopathic tendencies, Wolfe's story is certainly going to resemble other genre outings. If Severian is meant to be a subversion of the grim antihero, I would expect a lot of clever contradiction which revealed him. His unreliability would have to leave gaping holes that point to another, more likely conclusion. Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #) by Gene Wolfe

The Book of the New Sun — is a series of four science fantasy novels, a tetralogy or single four-volume novel [2] written by the American author Gene Wolfe. It inaugurated the so-called "Solar Cycle" that Wolfe continued by setting other works in the same universe. Gene Wolfe had originally intended the story to be a 40,word novella called "The Feast of Saint Catherine", meant to be published in one of the Orbit anthologies, but during the writing, it continued to grow. The tetralogy chronicles the journey of Severiana journeyman torturer who is disgraced and forced to wander. It is a first-person narrativeostensibly translated by Wolfe into contemporary English, set in a distant future when the Sun has dimmed and Earth is cooler a " Dying Earth " story. Severian lives in a nation called the Commonwealth, ruled by the Autarch, in the Southern Hemisphere. It is at war with Ascia, its northern neighbor, which is The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 totalitarian. In the ocean are mountain-sized aliens that want to enslave humanity and have succeeded in controlling Ascia. InLocus magazine ranked the tetralogy number three among 36 all-time best fantasy novels beforebased on a poll of subscribers. Severianan apprentice in the torturers' guild, barely survives a swim in the River Gyoll. On his way back to the Citadel whose towers appear to be disused rocketsSeverian and several other apprentices sneak into a Necropolis where Severian first encounters Vodalus, an aristocrat who is the Commonwealth's leading revolutionary. Vodalus, along with a noblewoman named Thea and a servant named Hildegrin, are robbing a grave. Vodalus and his companions are attacked by volunteer guards. Severian saves Vodalus's life, earning his trust and the reward of a single "gold" coin. Later Severian rescues a fighting dog that has lost a leg and names him Triskele. When Triskele leaves, Severian tracks him to a place in the Citadel called the Atrium of Time, where he talks with a beautiful young woman, Valeria, but he does not get Triskele back. In the torturers' tower, Severian falls in love with Thecla, a The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1. She is Thea's half-sister, and it is implied that the Autarch ruler of the Commonwealth has imprisoned her to use her to capture Vodalus. Severian's attraction to her is hastened by his sexual initiation in a visit to a brothel at the guild's expense. The brothel is run by a eunuch and the prostitutes are clones of noblewomen; Severian chooses the clone of Thecla for his encounter. Shortly after Severian is elevated to journeyman, Thecla The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 tortured with a machine that makes her uncontrollably suicidal so she will mutilate herself to death with her bare hands. Severian smuggles a knife into her cell. By thus letting her shorten the time of her suffering, he has broken his oath to the guild. Severian expects to be tortured and executed. Instead, the head of the guild is uncharacteristically forgiving The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 dispatches him to Thrax, a distant city which needs an executioner, also giving him Terminus Est, a magnificent executioner's sword. Severian travels through the decaying city of Nessus. He meets the hulking Baldanders and his companion Dr. Talos, traveling as mountebankswho invite Severian to join them in a play to be performed the same day. During breakfast, Dr. Talos recruits the waitress for his play with a promise to make her beautiful. Instead of participating, Severian parts with the group and stops at a rag shop to purchase a mantle to hide his guild uniform a cloak and breeches of fuligin, "the hue that is darker than black", which inspires terror in common folk; when working he also wears a fuligin mask. The shop is owned by a twin brother and sister, and the brother immediately takes an interest in Terminus Est. Severian refuses to sell the sword, shortly after which a masked and armored hipparch enters the shop and challenges Severian to a duel. Severian is forced to accept, and he goes with the sister, Agia, to secure an avern, a deadly plant that is used for dueling. He becomes strongly attracted to Agia and develops complicated feelings toward her. While on their way in a carriage, they race with the riders in a passing fiacreand they crash into and destroy the altar of a female religious order, the Pelerines. The Pelerines accuse Agia of stealing a precious relic called the Claw of the Conciliator. After Agia is searched and released, she and Severian continue their journey to the Botanic Gardens, a large landmark of Nessus created by the mysterious Father Inire, right hand to the Autarch. Inside the gardens, Severian falls into a lake used to inter the dead and is pulled out by a young woman named Dorcas who also seems to have come up from the lake. Dazed and confused, Dorcas follows Severian and Agia. Severian acquires the avern and the group proceeds to an inn near the dueling grounds. While eating dinner, Severian receives a mysterious note intended for one of the women, warning her the other is dangerous, but it's not immediately clear which is which. He meets his challenger, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives and finds that his challenger was Agia's brother. When Severian wakes again, he finds himself in a lazaret. After finding Dorcas, who he is falling in love with, and identifying himself as a torturer, he is requested to perform an execution. The prisoner turns out to be Agia's brother, who had provoked the duel expecting to win when he could claim Terminus Est. Severian executes the brother. Severian and Dorcas return to their travels. In his belongings, Severian finds the Claw of the Conciliator, a large glowing gem. Apparently Agia stole the Claw from the altar they destroyed and knowing that she would be searched, placed it in Severian's belongings. Eventually, Severian and Dorcas encounter Dr. Talos, Baldanders and a beautiful woman named Jolenta. Severian takes part in the play The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 perform, and the next day the group sets out toward the great gate leading out of Nessus. There Severian befriends a man named Jonas who is obviously attracted to Jolenta. The first volume ends with a riot or disturbance at the gate, whose nature is not immediately clear, separating Severian and Jonas from the rest of the group. The story continues shortly after the The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 installment left off. Now in the nearby town of Saltus, Severian and Jonas delay their search for the others as Severian has been hired to practice his art of execution on two people. The first was a servant of Vodalus. As the man is dragged out of his home by a mob, Severian glimpses Agia amidst the crowd. Agia flees and Severian, still attracted to and hoping to reconcile with her, follows, searching for her at the town fair. Unable to find her, he consults a green-skinned man whose master offers his services as an The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1, claiming he can answer any question. In answer to Severian's queries as to how he could know everything, the green man The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 Severian he is from the future where the sun is bright and people have photosynthetic organisms in their skin. The green man does not know where Agia can be found, but Severian takes pity on him and gives him a piece of his whetstone so that he can free himself by grinding through his chains. Severian returns to town and executes the two prisoners. Eating dinner with his friend Jonas that evening, he finds a letter that seems to be from Thecla but is actually from Agia asking him to meet her at a nearby cave. In the cave, Severian barely escapes a group of man-ape miners. The light from the Claw stops the man-apes' attack, but it also seems to wake a gigantic unknown creature deep below in the cave, which is only heard and not seen. Severian escapes, only to be attacked by Agia and her assassins outside the cave. One of the attackers is killed by one of the man-apes, who had his hand cut off by Severian in the battle in the cave. The ape gestures its stump at Severian, wanting him to do something with it, but Severian does not know what. Severian prepares to behead Agia, but still unable to hate her, lets her go. He returns to Saltus, where he and Jonas are captured by Vodalus's rebels for executing one of its members. Severian recalls to Vodalus that he saved his life some years past, so Vodalus allows Severian to enter his service. Severian and Jonas attend a midnight dinner with Vodalus, where they eat Thecla's roasted flesh, which, when combined with a substance from an alien creature called an alzabo, lets the eaters experience her memories. For Severian the experience is permanent; Thecla lives again in his mind. Given the task of delivering a message to a servant in the House Absolute, the Autarch's seat of power, Severian and Jonas set off to the north. They are attacked by a flying creature that feeds on the heat and life force of living beings and escape only by tricking the creature into attacking and killing a nearby soldier instead. Severian feels guilty and, having come to suspect the Claw has healing powers, uses it to bring the soldier back to life. He and Jonas are captured by guards of the House Absolute and thrown into an antechamber where prisoners are held indefinitely. Severian's Claw heals a wound Jonas receives during the night they spend there; then the pair escapes some unknown horrible creature by using a pass-phrase drawn from Thecla's memories to open a secret door. As they walk the corridors of the House Absolute, Jonas is revealed to be a robot who once crash-landed on earth and has been repaired with human parts as prosthetics. He steps into a mirror and disappears, promising to return for Jolenta when he is healed. Severian is lost and eventually encounters Vodalus's spy, who is the androgynous brothel-keeper. After the androgyne opens and then closes a portal to someplace with a giant winged alien, Severian swears service to him. In the subsequent conversation, he realizes that the supposed spy is the Autarch. Talos, and Baldanders, who are preparing to perform the play they performed in the first book. Severian participates again, but the play is cut short when Baldanders flies into a rage and attacks the audience, revealing that aliens are among them. Talos and Baldanders part ways with Severian and Dorcas at a crossroad, Severian heading toward Thrax, and the giant and his physician headed toward Lake Diuturna. Jolenta tries to have Talos take her with him, but he has no more use for her now that the plays are no longer necessary, and Severian takes her. As they head north, Jolenta is bitten by a "blood bat" and falls ill. Severian realizes that she had been scientifically altered by Dr. Talos to be gorgeous and desirable, but is quickly becoming sickly and unattractive. Soon the trio meets an old farmer who tells them they must pass through an enigmatic stone city to get to Thrax. In the ruined city, Severian sees a pair of witches initiate a dream-like event in which ghostly dancers of the stone town's past, The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 in a ritual by a teacher named Apu-Punchau, fill The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 area and fight with the witch's servant, who is Vodalus's lieutenant Hildegrin. The book ends with Dorcas and Severian emerging The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 a stupor in the stone town, Jolenta dead and revealed to be the waitress whom Dr. Talos had promised to make beautiful, and the witches and Hildegrin went. Severian takes up his position as the Lictor of the city of Thrax. His lover Dorcas falls into depression, in part because of her position as the partner of a reviled and feared figure in a strange city. She is also becoming increasingly upset by her inability to remember her past and convinced that she must unravel its secrets, however disturbing they may turn out to be. Mapping a Masterwork: A Critical Review of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun – Ultan's Library

By Jonathan. On 28 August The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 Memorial Award in Critics and reviewers were unrestrained. In short, it became a publishing event, the repercussions of which The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 felt in fanzines, journals and mainstream publications alike. It was acclaimed widely for its imaginative fertility, its formidable characterisation, its controlled and meticulous style, and the craftsmanship of its construction. Certainly it does not present some of the problems of interpretation that The Fifth Head of Cerberus has posed for wary and unwary alike. Conversely, Algis Budrys was expressing a growing scepticism as the tetralogy saw print. I am in the presence of a practitioner whose moves I cannot follow; I see only the same illusions that are seen by those outside the guild [of writers]. I know the cards are up the sleeves somewhere, but there are clearly extra arms to this person. Second and third readings are indicated. The feeling of having been duped by Wolfe led Baird Searles to suggest the origin of this critical discomfort and pose a provocative question:. The Book of the New Sun is too complex a work to evaluate on one reading. It will undoubtedly be considered a landmark in the field, one that perhaps marks the turning point of science fiction from content to style, from matter to manner. Mannered it certainly is, and stylish; [but] under all that glittering edifice of surprising words and more surprising events and characters, is there a story or a concept of any stature? Twenty years after the publication of The Shadow of the Torturer and four years after completing a Ph. Rather than engaging with the text to any meaningful degree, critics have tended to extol The Book of the New Sun for its fluidity of style, the conception of its enigmatic, alien Earth, and the depth of its characterisation. This conventional, narrow and unimaginative approach was unsatisfactory in and will remain so until readers take up the gauntlet Wolfe throws at their feet. The plot itself is apparently unremarkable. Leaving the sprawling and manifestly ancient city of Nessus, Severian begins his phantasmagoric journey north to Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms, where he is to act as Lictor to the Archon. Once in Thrax, he refuses to murder a faithless wife for the Archon and must flee ever northwards. It is here that he encounters the Autarch, ruler of the Commonwealth, who nominates Severian as his successor. The Citadel of the Autarch concludes with Severian awaiting judgement on the world of Yesod, where the Hierogrammates will assess his worthiness as the epitome of Urth. If he succeeds in his trial, Urth will receive a new sun; if he fails, he will be emasculated and condemn his world to entropic dissolution. Wolfe picks up the story at this point in the sequel to the tetralogy, The Urth of the New Sun Each of these encounters provides the reader with an indication of the story that can be reconstructed from the plot. The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex and contrived textual game that facilitates a number of methods of interpretation. Coming to understand The Book of the New Sun is like learning the rules of a game. By stimulating the reader to reject primary assumptions and existing preconceptions, Wolfe not only lifts the reader onto a level of alertness that allows for his most subtle effects, but also reveals to the more cautious reader how they ascribe meaning to a text. The literary game Wolfe constructs is most notable in terms of textual structure. However, for Wolfe, the recontextualisation is little more than a starting point for his wider concerns. He is not necessarily preoccupied with demonstrating how proficient he is as a writer. Rather, by effectively concealing his narratological sleight of hand and constructing a puzzle for his reader, Wolfe attempts to alert that reader to the level of perception required. Hence, The Book of the New Sun does not invite the reader to marvel at how clever Wolfe can be, but to marvel at his or her own intelligence in perceiving one facet of the elaborate textual game the author plays. In effect, it is a coolly intellectual denunciation of The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 reading practices, a clarion call to readers dulled by formula fiction. As other critics have noted, without realising the implications of their observations, Severian is one of the most detailed and complex characterisations found in contemporary literature. He is also the principal means by which Wolfe distracts the reader from apprehending the story of his text. Despite appearances to the contrary, Severian is an unreliable narrator — and not only because he tells lies detectable by the cautious reader. Ironically, Severian is unreliable because of the very characteristic that makes him appear wholly reliable: his eidetic memory. As a mnemonist, he is characterised by a passive-receptive attitude that precludes organised striving, by limitations of intellect concealed behind his capacity for thought and imagination, and by his tendency to be a dreamer whose fantasies constitute another world through which he transforms his everyday experiences. Accordingly, by destabilising the meaning of his signifiers, The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 ensures that his narrative can be perceived as a writerly text in the Barthesian sense of containing indeterminacy of meaning. It fractures the relationship between the stable sign and the unified subject. The reader should not be fooled, however. Not content with changing generic codes, subverting literary conventions, employing an unreliable narrator, and exploiting the deflective effect of the unfamiliar, Wolfe manipulates traditional metafictional strategies. These devices are used to create a confusing series of connections between the text and its hermeneutic circle, between the action of its heavily intertextual hypodiegetic tales and that of the main narrative. Critics have largely overlooked the metafictional aspects of the text and the purpose they serve. Where Wolfe turns his attention inward to fabricate a lengthy and involved puzzle for his reader, his critics have peered outwards from the text, searching for a point where The Book of the New Sun correlates with life itself. Accordingly, they have failed to appreciate that The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 metaphorical significance of the text its examination of faith and deception is sustained and deepened by the game Wolfe initiates with the reader. From his other fiction, it apparent that Wolfe perceives the world as an ambiguous round of perceptions and misperceptions in which the individual struggles, and ultimately fails, to apprehend the precise nature of The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1. The senses form a barrier to understanding; the memory an unreliable recording device to which the individual must return for clues to the conundrum of life; the world a system of manipulation where in people must live as best they can according to their physical, psychological and social restrictions. Yet, it is much more than that. The Book of the New Sun reminds us of our potential and our vulnerability as readers and, in so doing, it reminds us of our potential and vulnerability as individuals. Through each reading of the text we learn not only what it is to read, perceptively and critically, but also what it is to live, perceptively and critically, in the world. Every reading is, then, an individual resurrection. An erudite and illuminating analysis of an exceptional, well-crafted and paradoxical work. This haunting novel has been in my mind for years as I have struggled to peel away the layers of the onion only to find I was holding no onion at all. I still do not believe I understand this The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 work, so must begin again, for the fourth time. Thanks for your great insight! I have been reading consistently since I was about twelve or thirteen years of age. I am twenty-six now, so you can imagine that I have read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy novels over the years. I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that nothing I have read before had affected me like The Book of the New Sun. I remember after I read it for the first time I literally could not get it out of my head for months. That has never happened to me The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1, and it has certainly never happened since. I am gearing up to read it for the second time. A splendid piece of literature by quite possibly one of the most underrated magicians in the writing world. I have lived with this book at my bedside for years, now. It, including the coda, the Urth of the New Sun, is a meditation on the deepest themes, while at the same time being a great adventure story. I find this an interesting review as Peter Wright has spent three thousand words saying how dense and wonderful the books are without providing a single example. Perhaps he wants us to find out for ourselves. The Book of the New Sun is definitely an engrossing read. It is an adventure story with some religious overtones but I hardly think that makes it a garden of monstrous delights. Thus they quote each other and show off tiny slivers of inconsistencies that could not possibly be minor mistakes in writing but must be clues to this master puzzle. Perhaps I am being uncharitable. Perhaps the elite who seek do find deep and complex meanings in the text beyond the imagination of the plebs. Imagination is a wonderful thing after all. Peter Wright wrote a Ph. I would encourage you to read those if you want the details of his argument. Thank you! I am glad I am not the only one trying in vain to find some concrete point P. Wright makes not totally shrouded in obnoxious, faux-intellectual language. The thought of reading an entire THESIS on this when this little essay has so few substantive insights fills me with dread and is an insult to the source material. I understand the space that you are coming from, and also fear, or even suspect, that some literature is revered on arguments themselves founded in little but time and the typically credible name that first uttered them. I, certainly, do not have the knowledgebase that would permit me to understand or respect the arguments alluded to frequently here not a criticism, merely acknowledging my unsure footing in understanding this article, and its cousins. However, I stay amazed and astounded by this piece. It, somehow, suggests more than it says, as do all great works of art. The suggestions allude to something unapproachable and fantastically huge, to let us get our fingers on that perfection for just an instant, because in reality it is impossible, now, to grasp it for any longer. To present it so plainly would not give The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 access to the experience, the epiphany, I think. I also believe we would read it as lofty but untrue. To provide the example you desired, we look to the end of the last book, in which Severian is forced to become humanity in totality, not just a single human, whose desires and goals would unquestionably contradict those of others and stifle the unification as a race that is fully evolved, totally just and correct. I am not sure we can say that every inconsistency that is discovered by readers was truly a well devised tool that was effectively and cleverly deployed nor can we say the contrary, mind. This comment is two years after yours, suggesting a lineararity of time. Something happens and after that another thing happens. We can speak to the hypotheses of time night and day but never perhaps reach an agreement regarding it. Your thoughts will be colored by your own thinking and inclinations as will my own. We will also be limited The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 capacities and capabilities of thought, by our own biases and in turn a limiting of thought based upon our biases. Utilizing this binary pits one against the other in a contrived battle which is only a The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw Volume 1 of your assumed position. Your articulate writing suggests you are capable of reading them, though I am not sure if you are capable of accessing them. A number of things may stand in your way of reading them, least of which your atttitude, a subjective viewpoint. Thank you for underlining those meanings for me but I am sad your self imposed limits applied to your thinking do not allow this perspective for yourself.