Status Updates From The Urth of the New Sun (Th...

Right after Le Guin, this is rather tedious...

"Though you may walk into a house at one door and walk out at the other, you do not know all the secrets of that house."

Life.

"Whether thinking myself indestructible or already destroyed, I cannot say".

Indeed. Often feels just the same, doesn't it.

The ponderings about the nature of Zak and about animal trades are quite interesting. But that some animals like scorpions and poisonous snakes can be called 'evil'? Surely, how they act is all in their nature to survive. Perhaps this is just another example of 'lost in translation', or the definition of 'evil' quite loose (though, if that's the case, shouldn't the whole of nature then be said to be equally 'evil'?).

I'm loving the enormity of the star-faring ship.

Also, am I just imagining, or does Wolfe seem somewhat more comfortable with toying with Severian's 'dual sex' than he did in the original series? It's very subdued still, but there seems to be a bit of subtle teasing to him/her staring at 'men', presumably measuring them with Thecla's eyes (or his own), as well as more all around antrogyny / undefined genders abound.

"I'm not offended, I'm delighted! It's the greatest of privileges for me to see how you live when you live as you wish."

This might be Severian at his sweetest since when Little Severian hung around.

"She looked at me commiseratingly, her eyes as large, as dark, and as soft as any cow's."

*trololol*

"Now I seemed to myself like a ghost, or rather a man of paper, a fit husband for the paper women I had colored and paraded as a child."

Curious offhand insight into Severian's youth. The boys at the monastery of executioners played with paper dolls?

RTC

I guess this is the first time that I will actually go looking for secondary literature. While I looked up some of the names I found that they have a correspondence in the Kabbalah, a subject where I'm absolutely not familiar with.

In this book it is not as easy for me to stay in the timey wimey allegorical suspense as in the tetralogy.

When they discuss the meaning of bells ringing in the context of fate and portents I just want to shake them into sending somebody to actually have a look why they are ringing - like any normal folk would do.

And now I'm getting time travel headache.

Oh, just shut up about what you deem typical woman, Severian, and we would get along much better. ... ^^'

'In childhood, one imagines that any door unopened may open upon a wonder, a place different from all the places one knows.'

As was to be expected the first chapters I have to figure out what happens and happened ...

Well … at least I contemplated several minutes if I shouldn't fit in another book, since the tetralogy and this last sequel can be read seperately. But … Na! :D Gimme more weirdness!

Whoaaa, um, this book actually might turn out to be my favorite of the series.

“Yours is a race of pawns,” Tzadkiel told me. “You move forward only, unless we move you back to begin the game again. But not all the pieces on the board are pawns.”

On to the last (and by all accounts the strangest) volume of the Urth cycle. As if the first four weren't strange enough! I admire Wolfe like no other SF writer, but I'm going to take a break and read something straightforward next...

Finally we get a break in the action as Severian beds another woman and finds out the vaguest truth possible about what is actually happening to him. I like this slowdown in the plotting and it really makes me only wonder as to where the story is going at this point.

Holy bath salts everything has gone of the fucking rails with this one. The plot moves along at breakneck speed with almost no rumination by Severian which I miss. The big mystery here is the ship itself and while it's neat, it feels flimsy to me in a way like everything else. I am used to Sev going from one seemingly random encounter to the next, but this is getting a little out of control.

Severian....IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

No me esperaba yo que esto fuera a ser el evangelio según San Gene Wolfe.

Aunque bueno, pensándolo mejor... no lo viene siendo toda la saga entera?

No me esperaba yo que esto fuera a ser el evangelio según San Gene Wolfe.

Gets better the farther it gets from Tzadkiel

Disappointing

This is not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be

And here I thought the previous four were weird and confusing.. Little to no idea what the hell's going on :'D

Really enjoying the Wolfe twists around every corner, and the occasional humbling of Severian's know-it-all-hero-guy self. *noogie*

This series has marked a change in my reading habits; instead of leaping to whatever is new, from first volume to first volume, I have begun finishing series. I'm loving the immersive experience of New Sun.

This book explains so many of the mysteries and myths from the first four. I don't understand how Wolfe considered The Book of the New Sun self-contained, this coda is indispensable.

Severian is so much more explicitly Messianic in this book

God dang it, Dr. Talos.