Caldé of the Long Sun

The Book of the Long Sun #3

by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe's Nightside the Long Sun launched the magisterial four-volume The Book of the Long Sun. Now the great tale continues in Caldé of the Long Sun. The young, god-inspired Silk, caught in a bloody web of politics and revolution, must fight against the machinations of the shadowy group that rules the city of Viron. The forces of other cities of the great spaceship, The Whorl, become involved. And the mysterious gods start to manifest themselves on all sides, a dysfunctional family of superpowerful beings each of whom can take possession of anyone at any time.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Novels, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook

384 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Gene Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic. He was a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the field.

While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement was a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He was also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe

Reviews

[Yórgos St. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well that was unnecessary! Nothing really happened in those, almost, 300 pages. While the previous two books of the series were great this one was, in some parts, unbearable (those damn tunnels). The good news is that the fourth book seems to be more into the direction of the first and second book. Hooray !

2019 edit: The tunnel scenes are really important. Those scenes are difficult and lengthy but they are crucial for the development of the characters. Every time a character goes underground he or she emerges transformed.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how people review Wolfe's books, typically. The stories themselves resist summation. The craft is exquisite. The reader who connects with him leaves happy but never really satisfied.

I'm mostly glad I put in the effort.

[Nikola Pavlovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pet zvezdica ovaj put, i to samo zbog kraja koji je nerealno realan.
Jedan od Volfovih najvecih kvaliteta kao pisca i jeste taj sto je tako cesto brutalno zivotan i dobro prenosi ljudske emocije i reakcije proistekle od njih kroz najneverovatnije karaktere.
- Spojler: Krv slucajno saznaje da je njegova majka Majtera Mermer (Ruza) ubila njegovog ljubavnika Mosusa. Nasrce na nju medjutim Svila ga ubija. Dok jeca nad svojim sinom Majtera Svili daje azof (mac) govoreci mu da ga uzme pre nego sto ga upotrebi na njemu. -
Pa realno da vam neko spase zivot tako sto bi vam ubio dete kako bi se osecali.
Mnogo mnogo mnogo strasnih i divljih emocija prozima sva dela Dzina Volfa.
Tesko ga je citati, ali po meni visestruko se isplati.

[Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is where the books of the Long Sun really start to fall apart for me. Up to this point I can take the amount of Patera Silk that Wolfe is dishing out, but Calde presents me with a brick wall. Wolfe has an annoying habit in most (all?) of his books of presenting mundane aspects of his characters lives in nauseating detail and then completely skipping over the "fun stuff" (basically any battles, action bits, or really important and revealing conversations) and then referring to them second-hand and in piecemeal flashbacks. Sometimes I can deal with this, but in the Long Sun books it just becomes too much for me. Patera Silk just annoys the hell out of me and the secondary characters aren't really enough to keep me fully engaged (as they often are in other Wolfe books). I mean, how can you take a generation starship story with digitized people turned into gods, robotic armies, political revolution, bodysnatching psychotic teenage clones, and vampiric, shapeshifting aliens and make it boring? Wolfe somehow manages it here.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third volume of The Book of the Long Sun is a strange one.

Somehow slow and plodding, at times I felt as though nothing has been happening in the book at all. Yet despite that, looking back I realize exactly how wildly much really HAS happened in it's pages.

So many important events happen off the page so to speak, and are only talked about at length later. It's a familiar tactic in Wolfe's writings but here it feels like it's been stretched to it's limits.

I have a sneaking suspicion that much like Shadow of the Torturer, I'll come back to re-read this sometime and realize exactly how incredible the book really is, but on a first read I must say I have left it underwhelmed.

[Ints · Rating 4 out of 5]

Īsti pat nezinu kādēļ turpinu lasīt šo sēriju, laikam ieradums. Silk piedzīvojumi turpinās, nu viņš ir revolucionāru vadonis, kas tikai ārēji tēlo paklausīgu vietējā panteona kalpu. Nekas tā neattīsta ateismu, kā sastapšanās ar dieviem aci pret aci. Whorl dievi Garās saules pasaulē ir vairāk mākslīgais intelekts, iespējams reiz bijuši pasaules būvētāji nu ir tāda kašķīga ģimenīte, kura viens otru zūmē.

Cilvēki viņiem ir otršķirīgi un, ja godīgi, tad šīs izjūtas ir abpusējas. Interesanta ir kiborgu un bioloģisko cilvēku mijiedarbība. Tā arī vēl neesmu sapratis, ka no cilvēka šajā pasaulē kļūst par kiborgu un kurš izdara izvēli. visādi citādi biezas grāmatas trešā daļa, kura nez kāpēc nopublicēta kā atsevišķa grāmata. Pat beidzas pusvārdā tāpat kā iepriekšējā. 8 no 10 ballēm.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

** 2.7 STARS **

Calde of the Long Sun was an incredibly dull read.

I just don't have much of anything to say about this book; I've forgotten parts of it already. It was such a slog. Everything I thought might happen, after finishing the previous book in the series, probably happened, just not on the page, or at least, not in real-time.

Gene Wolfe has great prose, that's a given, but his storytelling, at least in this book, is pretty bad. I just can't think of any positive thing to say about it...
"Good Bird"
"Oh yes, sorry Oreb."
I did like Oreb, the night chough bird.

I just hope the finale, Exodus from the Long Sun, is better.

[iSamwise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, maybe should be 5 stars. Probably will be on a reread.

[Nathan Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with other Wolfe tetralogies, I will likely do a fuller review of the entire sequence once I'm finished with Exodus from the Long Sun.

Long Sun is incredible and how Wolfe managed to pull off what he did, so consistently, was nothing short of miraculous.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

The tunnels... oh, dear god, the tunnels.

[Hossein · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much for a simple story, eh?

[Romppy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very difficult to rate this book compared to the others that came before. The ending to this book felt like it should be the finale, yet there are so many questions left unanswered. The ending is also classic Wolfe. He subverts your expectations at every turn. The moment you think you know what is going to happen he hits you with another curveball. Masterful writing once again as well. Wolfe just has such a way with words that makes the words melt together into a hazy, yet beautiful picture. I found myself highlighting more than ever throughout. My biggest question is of course surrounding the pantheon of gods. The way Wolfe has intertwined elements from New Sun into an entirely new religion while also feeling very Grecian is incredible. At first the gods seem so far away and uninterested at all in the humans affairs, yet get more and more involved over time. Can't wait to read the finale to this amazing series. Thank you Wolfe. *spreads the sign of addition*

[Ryan Swart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably my least favorite Wolfe book

[Tom Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two books of Long Sun are relatively straightforward - the focus is on Patera Silk, his religious awakening (awkward this, since he is already a priest), and his quest to buy back his place of worship from a local crimelord. One of the ways in which this is an unusual series, though, is that Silk is both clearly the main character but that his own actions and concerns are only a catalyst to a wider political story developing rapidly in the background. The choice of the in-universe writer to tell Silk’s story means that we sometimes only obliquely see that wider picture. You can be the most important figure in a story while having not a lot of impact on how that story plays out.

The action of Caldé is where that wider story (which is still by no means the widest story playing out in Long Sun) bursts into the foreground. It’s a narrative of the civil war that brings Silk to power, a civil war which Silk himself plays almost no part in. He spends most of this book unconscious, a prisoner, or wandering around looking for Hyacinth, the woman he’s become obsessed with.

So the narrative, which had begun to fragment in the second volume, explodes into a polyphony of perspectives, all giving their viewpoint on a city collapsing into war. These viewpoints are not impartial and not complete - Silk is wounded and exhausted, and other characters are at various times possessed, altered post-possession, brain damaged, struggling to integrate conflicting personalities, or revealed to be entirely alien. Civil war is always chaotic, but Caldé doesn’t even attempt to create an over-arching narrative: it simply follows various strands and lets you join the dots and fill in large chunks yourself.

The result is a book which is frustrating the first time you read it but was enormously rewarding for me on a second go, where I was paying closer attention. Some things still eluded me but a lot didn’t. And a huge amount happens here - there’s a resolution to the Manteion plot which has driven the series so far; major characters meet their end and there are big status quo shifts for others. It’s not perfect - we can add gay characters to the list of things Wolfe doesn’t have a great handle on, for instance - but the obscurity and narrative jumps aren’t one of the flaws. Vanilla narrators seem like thin fare after an extended soak in Wolfe’s puzzle-box storytelling.

[Simon Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mystery and insurrection! Wolfe continues to keep me on my toes turning page after page to find out what happens next. I can’t get enough of his style where sci-fi is written in a way that feels more religious fantasy than lasers and space battles. Can’t wait to continue the series!

[Stephanie Fachiol]

2B: I imagine you can spare a few of these supplies to fix your leg?

Supply Trader: Yeaaaaah… no.

2B: Why don’t you tell us what’s really going on?

Supply Trader: See, it’s my left leg that’s all busted up. And my left leg is the one that’s fully original. I’ve repaired this ol’ body of mine a hundred times over during this war. I’ve swapped parts in and out so many times I can’t even keep track. But this leg? This left leg? It’s never been touched. So if I go and replace that, what happens? I mean, would I even be ME anymore? Or would I just…

2B: …

Supply Trader: Anyway, it’s my own problem. Didn’t mean to trouble you with it.

— Nier:Automata, “The Supply Trader’s Request”

“Calde” features the dark side of the human soul. It is the part of the Hero’s Journey where the protagonist delves into the Underworld; in fact, Chenille and Auk do so quite literally, trapped in ouroboros-like tunnels where they encounter the Blind God Tartaros. They emerge from the tunnels with their sense of self repaired. Silk, meanwhile, has been losing track of himself: he dreams of the Outsider without glimpsing His face; he fears and chases love in equal measure; he cannot reconcile the role of the priest with that of the people’s longed-for Calde.

Slower in plot compared to its prior two volumes, absolutely navel-gazing, it’s nonetheless a thrilling journey. I say “navel-gazing” intentionally; as Platonists believed the appetitive part of the soul, the epithemitikon, resided in the umbilicus, so do we see Blood’s true origin reflecting his avaricious adult personality. Amid the science fiction body-hopping and possession and genetic engineering is a crisis of identity: Maytera Marble, like the Supply Trader, has found a confusion of selves occurring as a result of a simple repair; Maytera Mint and Chenille both find their minds affected, arguably inextricably, by encounters with the false divine; how much more so is Silk changing before the true Divine!

BOTLS has a plot, sure. It’s ostensibly about a civil war. I could tell you all the steps taken towards that end in about three sentences, one per book. It’s not the plot that dominates in this volume. After the tsunami of political upheaval in “Lake,” perhaps it’s for the series’ benefit that “Calde” takes a moment to breathe, and incorporate that new air into the pneuma of the characters. The symbolism appears Jungian at first glance; it refuses to rest on Jung’s simplifications.

P.S. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me the Outsider’s face is never described, even as we know much of Kypris and Echidna and Scylla and others. As Tartaros says, we see what we expect to see in the sacred mirrors, but how can we truly imagine the Divine’s appearance? The Outsider is not faceless, but has a face so perfect that it cannot be imagined or seen with our limited human eyes…

[Bart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned about 60 pages before the ending. I liked the previous 2 books in this series, but this one dragged, and ultimately I couldn't connect with the characters anymore. These books are hard work - both their prose as Wolfe's tendency to be opaque about the story - and I didn't feel like investing the effort anymore.

Add to that the fact that the overall story has become clear by this point in the series - it's rather underwhelming compared to New Sun - and that killed the urge to explore this book and the final installment any further.

I'm hoping Wolfe's Soldier series and Wizard Night series will connect with me, as The Book Of The New Sun is one of my favorite literary experiences ever.


Visit Weighing A Pig for longer, in-depth speculative fiction reviews.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Giving the book two stars seems to be a bit unfair considering how I actually feel about it, but going by Goodread's words for two stars "It was OK" I'd have to stick by it. I gave the second volume of this series three stars and liked this one slightly less. I still am enjoying Wolfe's created world and his style, and will see this one through to the end. I found this volume to be a lot more disconnected and confusing, and many of the character situations and motivations more questionable. There were many times in the story where characters would be in some kind of immediate danger or in the midst of a crisis or hurt to the point of being on the brink of death, and would choose that moment to have a lengthy conversation filled with tangential digressions and out-loud sleuthing. These were just really weird methods to move the plot forward and explain other past missing puzzle pieces that really removed me from the story in their clunky execution. I have a feeling that this is not going to improve in the fourth installment, but the story is compelling enough that it will carry me through. Despite the clunky conversational expositions, Wolfe still creates a great balance between what he gives the reader and what he forces the reader to connect on his own.

[malrubius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread January 2018. So complex, so insane. No matter how many times I read this, I always learn something new.

Reread September 2011.

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A-/A

God I love this series so much. That being said, we spend way too much time in the tunnels over the course of the series, and in this book in particular. Also, Silk is a bit too much of a Mary Sue. As always with Wolfe, it’s quite easy to skim over key details (especially when listening rather than reading, as I have been doing).

Read (listened) to this alongside the Alzabo Soup podcast for this reread.

[Kate Sherrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be the most exciting of the quartet, but it's actually a bit on the dull side, with every quotidian scene pointing to a more interesting one that is taking place or has been taking place offscreen, as it were.

[Monique]

This is in the running for worst series I've ever read in my life, just in terms of reading experience alone. its like wes Anderson dialogue if it were written by an early LLM. yet somehow I'm 75% done.
wheat pack mentioned in previous two books came to nothing. very mysterious. Wolfe's Wheat Pack. Chekov's Gun. I tried so hard & got so far but in the end it doesn't even maaaatterrrrr. im in tears i hate this so much

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewed under exodus as a bound volume.

[Zane Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caldé mostly makes good on the excellent setup of Nightside and Lake, but the ending felt a bit rushed and contrived.

[Jendy Castillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“That was the way life was, the way death was. A man lived as long as you hated him and died on you as soon as you began to like him”

This was an interesting book but it moved away from Silk in a lot of moments, more so than any book I’ve read of Wolfe with a prominent main character but also it was also very emotional with the characters throughout. Taking Auk and his mental battles while he Bustard was accompanying him to even Silk being sympathetic towards Musk being killed, Maytera Marble integrating with Rose, this has a lot of grieving and questioning over the dead spread throughout the story. I personally enjoyed that a lot and don’t think of this as just a set up to get us to the end of Long Sun.
We also see Silk in this seeming like a pseudo-Caldé, being crowned as one by everybody else but still feeling a bit hesitant and even wincing at times when he’s called so, to having to embrace and knowing that politics has reached out to him. Silk is also using that leverage as Caldé to get him out or maneuver his way through certain situations, while still sticking to his ideals and his characters which is really cool to see.
Gods in The Whorl show us in this book how powerful people cling to religion and how much that motivates them in order to take action and for their general way of life. Maytera Mint going from a shy chem to leading an army and becoming a General in this fight vs the Ayuntamiento.
Silk’s reunion with Hyacinth was such a cathartic moment, man. I was genuinely happy seeing him actually able to enjoy himself and forget about everything going on for just a second. There’s also some stuff going on with Chenille and Silk that I’m curious to see where it goes but I like Chenille a lot, her character is definitely very layered with her multiple possessions and has shown us that she is one of the more interesting characters.
That’s about all I can think of to say for right now. Wolfe is very great with not giving us all of the info and giving his readers agency and we see that more and more if not through his allusive prose but by omission of certain info or dialogue at times which can make it feel disjointed at points if you’re not paying attention to the characters and their behaviors, etc. Im very ready for Exodus and seeing how this gets wrapped up.

“You’d been raised by your mother, and we could see how you missed her.”
“I still do,” Silk admitted.
“Don’t feel bad about that, Patera. No one should ever be ashamed of love.”

[Simonfletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOOOOW, what. great part 3 to the Long Sun cycle.

Contrary to many reviewers on Goodreads, I found this novel riveting. Some of the exciting events that Wolfe allows us in this part of the story are:
- a full blown rebellion of 100,000 normal people against the authorities
- crazy revelations that Wolfe has kept from us in the first two books, which bring what has happened up to now into a whole new light
- tunnels, cannibals, blind gods, chem soldiers, possession by gods, ghosts, pits, another kingdom attacking Viron from the skies
- Great character development for Maytera Marble, for Silk, Auk, and many other characters.
- death, violence, intrigue

The narrative is deliberately jagged, its not told in exact chronological order in parts and there are big scenes sometimes skipped over and mentioned in passing by the characters as they talk. This is interesting as the whole story up until now, from book 1 to 3 has been told over a matter of a few days. So much has happened!

I must confess, I read the first novel in this series once, then put it down, only to take it up again years later. Although I loved this Whorl of the Long Sun (basically a generation ship), it certainly is hard going at time, due to so much being unexplained, so many new words, so many characters with similar names (always named for a reason, of course. This is Gene Wolfe here).

Wolfe explores some of his common themes here in detail, humanizing the android Maytera's (nuns) in a way I have never experienced before. Yes there are some flaws, some of the dialog is too 'chatty' and explainy at times, and Wolfe isn;t afraid to take his time. Yet overall this was such an excellent book.

Key themes: What makes us 'chosen'. What defines personhood. Disillusionment and belief. Rebellion - it's worth and it's dangers. Loyalty. Layers of truth.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 3 of the tetralogy "Book Of The Long Sun", "Caldé Of The Long Sun" tells the story of how Patera Silk became the Caldé, the "de facto" ruler of the city of Viron, one of the many cities that exist inside the Whorl and narrates the stories of Silk and his followers to depose the corrupt government called the Ayuntamento. On the other hand, it also reveals many of the mysteries regarding the Gods, supporting characters and the nature of the Whorl.

The previous two books were relatively easier to read than "Caldé Of The Long Sun" that due to its highly ambitious prose and the very complex depiction of timelines and point of views, made my reading more difficult.

In fact, last year I had decided to put this book on a hiatus because I was not finding it entertaining ( please pardon me Literature purists that is why I read mostly ) at all but after reading a sequence of 5 Wolfe's books I decided to resume reading it and to start again I have reread many chapters to situate myself better.

I need however to be very frank to admit sometimes the thought this book was unbearable ( yes the tunnel sequences ) surfaced at my appreciation again and and I have nearly stopped reading but something compelled me to continue, perhaps the fact I really liked the first two volumes.

Well, Wolfe's books are to be reread that is an absolute fact, but I am not sure if I will read these four books again soon so I cheated. I bought Michael Andre-Driuss's Gate of Horn, Book of Silk to help me go through. It was then sometime along the book that I ceased to have these temptations of not finishing this book, which I am now very glad I haven't.

Exodus of The Long Sun here I go!

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a re-read and I upped the rating to 5 stars. Like all other Wolfe books, there's so much to be absorbed that it's almost impossible to get it all on a first reading. This, being the third of the "Long Sun" tetralogy, further deepens the world of the massive starship that is home to the priest Silk and the other brilliant characters. Everything expands as Silk's home city threatens to rip itself apart through political coups and social unrest spurred on by the gods of their world, who make occassional revelations to the population through centuries-old computer screens. Silk attempts to fight through the chaos and personal injuries to maintain his faith in what seems to be an obsolete system of belief, needing every ounce of help from his various advisors. As with the first two of the series, this one is more straighforward than most of Wolfe's other work, but there's a beautiful understated style that really rewards close (re)readers.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third book in Wolfe's complex and wonderful Long Sun series, it's a very strong story buoyed by some exceptional writing but held back by some cultural bits that now feel retrograde. The world just isn't alien enough for the changes in culture since it was written in the 90's to not stand out a bit - just as much as the SF/F of the 60's read in the 90's. The style of the series becomes even more abstruse with little direct data but lots of conversations about apparently trivial things containing key information, cut short by outside events that are seldom clearly detailed.

For all that it is a book that demands careful attention, the writing makes giving that attention over a joy.