Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' Author: Gene Wolfe | Language: English | ISBN:
B008S0E77Q | Format: PDF
Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' Description
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 Weekly, and "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume:
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.
Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I've read in years!"
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.
"Arguably the finest piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced [is] the four-volume Book of the New Sun."--Chicago Sun-Times
"The Book of the New Sun establishes his preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping."--The New York Times Book Review
At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
- File Size: 765 KB
- Print Length: 416 pages
- Publisher: Orb Books; 5th edition (October 15, 1994)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B008S0E77Q
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,138 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #53
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Genetic Engineering
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I've read some of the reader reviews of "Shadow and Claw" and come to the conclusion that the book needs an introduction. Many of the negative reviews, I think, come from readers who weren't familiar with Gene Wolfe's writing style, which is understandable. So let me say for Wolfe that you cannot by any means read "The Book of the New Sun" the way you would ordinarily read a book. This mostly stems from the fact that the book is supposed to be an autobiography, and the writer, Severian, really can't be trusted to describe things accurately. A pretty good example would be the first woman Severian becomes interested in, Agia. He tells us that she was the most unattractive woman he has ever been attracted to. Fine, but the way that he becomes somewhat obsessed with her at a glance would suggest otherwise, and the way she treats him would account for his recalling her as being ugly. This is a minor example, to be sure, because it is a matter of Severian's perspective. There were other times in the book that I got the impression that Severian was telling flat-out lies. It's confusing, but it makes the book extremely interesting to read, simply because you are able to figure out much of what actually happened. Another thing to keep in mind, as somebody said in a quote on Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," (I forget who, and don't really care to find out, mostly because I'm lazy) is that Wolfe is "a master of the casual revelation." Which is to say that Severian will out of nowhere mention some vital piece of information, apparently assuming that we already knew about it. And we probably would know were we from his world, as he assumes we are.
Like thousands of teenagers, I came of age with *The Lord of the Rings*. The rather ugly Bakshi movie was the first one I went to see without my parents, and the novel was virtually the first one I ever read that was not a children's book, except for Jules Verne's *Mysterious Island*. Just like many Tolkien fans, I became a lifelong devotee of the fantasy genre, and explored the more promising of the other Middle-Earths, from Lankhmar to the Dark Shore, Lyonesse, Majipoor, Amber, Earthsea and the world of the Hyborean Age.
But of all the fantasy series I ever read, the only that ever compared to Tolkien's masterpiece in my opinion was Gene Wolfe's *New Urth* tetralogy. The others were fun, imaginative, full of action and adventure, but they either failed to maintain throughout the literary and spiritual power I had found in *The Lord of the Rings* or to equal the richness of its world-building.
Interestingly enough, however different Tolkien's and Wolfe's epics might be, they share two profound similarities. First, both were written by Catholics and infused with their author's faith. With Tolkien, all the trappings of religion are evacuated from the world itself while the story is saturated with religious symbolism. With Wolfe, on the contrary, Christianity is still very present but transformed, as if through layers and layers of rewriting, into a distant shadow of itself. There is only one God, Pancreator or Panjudicator ; an almost legendary ?Conciliator? walked the earth eons ago and is still venerated by the order of the Pelerines ; and priests, rituals, sacred items and guilds abound, as in the Golden Age of Christianity.
The other similarity between the two sagas is the spiritual nature of their ultimate magical item.
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