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Jan 11, 2012

Keely rated it:

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 rarely trust the popular market to single out good authors, but it's usually safe to listen to the opinions of other writers (especially an assemblage of Nebula and Hugo winners in their own right). More...

22 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Korynn rated it:

A strangely unemotional narrator who seems to sleepwalk through events, Severian is by training meant to be unemotional. His love for his captive, Thecla seems to mark his doom, forcing him to leave the only life he has known or understood. Random events are introduced, to give a sense of realism, rather like a diary entry...they do not reappear. The environment is lush, well-described, as much a character in the story as the narrator. Characters appear, motives are subscribed, foolish things oc More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2009

Willa rated it:

I'm not really into books with the word "torturer" in the title, but my oldest son is reading this New Sun series because he heard it was by a Catholic and contained some interesting philosophy and linguistics (examples I've come across so far: "nenuphar", "badelaire"). It's well written and apparently was one of those pivotal series in fantastic fiction. I am very squeamish and found even the atmosphere of the torturer's guild hard to take. However, the details More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2007

Tracey rated it:

found all 4 parts of The Book of the New Sun at a used book store after seeing it listed on the Top 50 SF & Fantasy books as listed by the Science Fiction Book Club. I'd never heard of Gene Wolfe & thought I'd give him a try. An online friend said she'd just started this book early last week, so I thought I'd join her in the reading.

We follow the story of Severin, as he recounts his history, beginning as an apprentice torturer. Severin is by turns incredibly naive and extremely ambit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2008

Ryan rated it:

Okay, like many an SF book, this plunges us into a nebulous world not wholly rendered--in a grave yard no less. Now that's a good start: the protagonist encounters rebels in the graveyard robbin' bones and then goes back to his guild. The Torturer's Guild, mind. From here, the book drags like a fucking stone weight around your brain as our would be torturer becomes obssessed with a captive and eventually leaves to find some other destiny. I got to the end after hundreds of pages and realized not More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Ryan rated it:

Though the fantasy genre is known primarily for entertaining, it sometimes aspired to a higher level of artfulness. The Shadow of the Torturer is such a book. Set in a far distant future, when Earth's sun is fading and human society has lost much of its technological aptitude, Wolfe's novel has a haunting, elegiac quality. It's written in a voice reminiscent of 19th century writers like Poe or Dickens, which adds to the melancholy beauty. Fortunately for the squeamish, though torture is part of More...

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Jun 05, 2011

Ulrich rated it:

I wanted to give this four stars, however Wolfe did not succeed in a basic storyteller's area--empathy for the main character. If some black knight had run Severian through with a lance halfway through the tale, I would not have lamented his death. Most others will disagree as to the quality of Shadow of the Torturer. I only discovered it after perusing a list of the best fantasy/science fiction novels on a site that featured some high quality choices. This is the first book by Gene Wolfe which More...

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Mar 10, 2011

Nick rated it:

Check out these money quotes from the best fantasy novel of the 1980s. Severian, a torturer exiled for the crime of showing mercy, gets involved in a crypto-catholic quest to restart the dying sun.

"I know little of literary style; but I have learned as I have progressed, and find this art not so much different from my old one as might be thought." ... this begins an even better passage, maybe the best passage, where Severian compares the art of writing to his torturer skills. More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 21, 2011

Jared rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 25, 2010

Steve rated it:

See the far more intricate and verbose review by Keely for a lot of good points that I agree with, but I'll touch on a few key points here.

When a book is billed as "The best sci-fi novel of the century" it had better represent that in some way, and I just didn't feel that here.

The first few chapters with Severian wandering about in his role in the Guild were admittedly interesting and enjoyable. Severian's POV as the narrator is somewhat awkward, but generally More...

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Jul 29, 2010

Aileen rated it:

This book (series) was so traumatizing for me I wish I had quit reading it sooner. I tried it on recommendation of many good reviews, the author's reputation &etc. To be fair the prose was amazing. It also didn't male much sense and often read more like a terrible, brain-on-drugs nightmare than a story worth telling. I tried valiantly to stick it through as I am a speedy reader but the more I read the worse it got until I finally quit. I have that Stockholm syndromish desire still to know if the More...

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May 02, 2010

Zach rated it:

After suffering through the verbal flagellation of The Name of the Wind, I was really jonesing for some literary fantasy, if such a thing existed. A friend at work (where people ought to know about such things) tipped me off to Gene Wolf and told me to start here.

Gene Wolfe is indeed a literary author: it's clear that significant thought was given to the characters, story arc, linguistic style, and thematic elements before he began writing this four-part story. It's a post-historic More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2010

Aerin rated it:

The Book of the New Sun, of which this book is the first of four parts, is supposedly the GREATEST SCIENCE-FANTASY BOOK OF OUR TIME. Which I'm having difficulty buying, because I didn't love this book. Maybe it gets better? A WHOLE LOT better?

There were a couple of things I liked:

1) Wolfe's style is very engaging and easy to read. This is an important thing for me when reading science fiction or fantasy (this book is somewhere between the two - reads like fantasy, but More...

30 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2010

James rated it:

The Book of the New Sun is regarded as Gene Wolfe's masterpiece. He is unlike any other author I have encountered in the fantasy genre (or out of it for that matter). The setting is marvelous and the description of the far future world is at the same time tragic and full of wonder.

The begining of book one is gripping as Severian describes his apprenticeship in the Torturer's Guild. It then starts to seem a little dis-jointed as the book progresses. However, with Gene Wolfe the story More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 25, 2009

Angela rated it:

This is an incredible imagining of a far future Earth in a time when the sun is starting to fail and civilization is in decline. The world in the New Sun series so far in the future as to be unrecognizable, with people who have forgotten how to manage technology that once took them to the stars coexisting on an Earth inhabited by exotic life forms from other worlds. Wolfe did a brilliant job creating this distant future. He has definitely earned all the comparisons to Tolkien with his fantast More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2009

Mark rated it:

I have very strong memories of this book. I picked it more or less at random years and years ago when I used to have the time to wander aimlessly through a bookstore and explore new titles and authors. The chronicles of Severian (there are four books in this series, I think) were so unlike any kind of fantasy book I'd read that I was really haunted by them, especially the first book. There are images in it, scenes, that actually live up to that word that is so overused now: "surreal." More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2009

Thomas rated it:

So, I have an Internet friend who is always touting how great of a writer Gene Wolfe is. One, day, I finally asked him: “What’s a good place to start with this guy?” He suggested the Book of the New Sun, a tetralogy that begins with The Shadow of the Torturer. So, I tracked it down at the library and started reading it.

That was about three months ago.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a large part of the reason why I’ve been slow-going with my reading, but dang i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 31, 2009

Ethan rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Sep 20, 2011

Derek rated it:

I really hate it when other authors are used to sell a "not so great" book. In this case it was the tagline that read "Neil Gaiman says this is the best sci-fy book of the century." I should have known better.

My primary issue with this book is that the prose vacillates from extraordinarily dense to flippantly light with esoteric vocabulary sprinkled throughout. On the plus side I can now use anacreontic in a conversation... if I ever need to refer to a poem that More...

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Feb 23, 2011

Nicholas rated it:

I'm really not sure what happened here. I like to think of myself as moderately well read, and certainly quite familiar with the essential works in my genres of choice...but both this book and this author were totally off my radar. I'd not really had any knowledge of this series until there was a mention of it in the introduction to the new collected Viriconium I picked up last year; and then an editor I trust made a passing mention in a blog post last month that compared it to a cross between More...

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Nov 18, 2010

Zach rated it:

I bought this book, because it was written in first person and I hadn't read a novel written in first person in a quite some time; I am happy I did so. It's the first piece of sc-fi/fantasy fiction that I've read and liked in quite a while. It's grounded, meaning, it doesn't take off into florid descriptions or get lost in how fantisifal it is. Wolfe sticks with the character and little by little his world, which is very foreign to ours, is revealed to the reader. Sevarian's, the main charac More...

1 comment like

Jan 05, 2010

Jess rated it:

"Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning." -Michael Swanwick

More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 31, 2010

Ed rated it:

I enjoyed many aspects of this book, and it left me deeply curious about the universe in which it takes place, but though I was impressed by the quality of the prose, I was sometimes let down by the storytelling in the last third of the book, and that is why I hold back the fourth star.

Let's face it: some events in the second half of this novel seem random, and not in a good way. For instance, the introduction of Dr. Talos and Baldanders, two characters who seem like they will play a m More...

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Jul 21, 2010

Lance rated it:

The first time I read this book, I didn't give it the time it deserves and requires. As a consequence of this, I wrote it off as simply kinda weird and left it there. But, it is part of a series and as such, kept niggling at the back of my mind begging for a conclusion. so, I read it again in order to prep myself for the sequel. I was astounded by what I had missed. I had gotten the story, and so as far as the plot was concerned, I was up to speed. But what I had missed were the constant a More...

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Sep 09, 2011

Dan rated it:

the shadow of the torturer lives up to its hype as challenging, peculiar and elliptical science fiction. it's as much a work of surrealism as one of fantasy, and about 75% of it feels like an extended dream sequence. at the same time, wolfe isn't necessarily interested in subverting all the sword and sorcery stuff - this is genuinely a book about a dude with a cool sword who gets laid and has adventures. but it's one in which each stereotypical character has a uniquely contemplative sense of him More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 27, 2010

Gabriel rated it:

Such an interesting premise. A fantasy story told from the point of view of a futuristic Torturer as he travels due to a political conflict. We get to see interesting duels with plants (sorta, more on that later) explore vast castles and cities (well ... one), look at plays and the various cultural aspects of this society.

But!

All of this interesting ideas need a story to bind them together, and the pieces cannot be just digressions from the main plot; they need to be a More...

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Jun 05, 2011

Perry rated it:

Wow! This was undoubtedly the most impressive science fiction / fantasy book I had read when I finished it the first time, and subsequent, quick-fire re-reads only enhanced that impression. Furthermore, since then its only been beaten by some of the continuing books in this series in my opinion; and although I haven't read many fantasy books I have read 100s of science fiction books. OK, that still leaves millions more, but I can't see anything topping The New Sun!

This is the start of More...

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Oct 15, 2010

D-day rated it:

'The Shadow of the Torturer' is the first book in Gene Wolfe's 'The Book of the New Sun' tetralogy. The story is narrated by Severian who is a member of the Guild of Torturers, until he is cast out for showing mercy to a client. The setting for the story is Earth (or Urth) in the far future where civilization has regressed and the sun is red and dying.
The book is very well written, but unfortunately the story just stops without any kind of resolution. Wolfe creates an intriguing world and t More...

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Feb 02, 2011

Aaron rated it:

While Gene Wolfe's infamous 'unreliable narrator' writing technique can be difficult for a novice at first (or at least it was for me :-P) The Shadow of the Torturer is a brilliant book filled with fascinating characters, high concept ideas and bizarre turns of events.

Severian, a disgraced Torturer has been cast out by his guild to journey around the dying earth (urth in the novel) and ply his trade as an authorised dispenser of pain and death. His wanderings take him through many tr More...

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Feb 10, 2011

Braden rated it:

Gene Wolfe's writing is superb. He has a mastery of the English language like few others I've ever read. The plot, however, dragged on very slowly. I will probably not be reading the next three books in the series, simply due to the fact that the first one did not compel me to find out the rest of the story. Simply put, it was technically

0 comments like (1 person liked it)