Tobias Langhoff > Recent Status Updates

Four

Three

Two

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

One

It's interesting how Dantès ceased to be the sole focus of the plot (and narrative voice) after he became Count. It allowed so many interesting subplots to emerge.

Plans within plans

The plots thicken! Mercédès! Villefort!

Interesting to suddenly see the older Dantès from the viewpoint of a completely new character.

This is not as slow a burn as the page count indicates, but there's still a lot of filler and repetition (perhaps because it was originally serialized?). For example, the reader has so far been told (at great length) the truth of Dantès's betrayal three times: Once when it occured, once when deduced by the Abbé Faria, and now once when recounted by Caderousse.

How Edmond finds out how he was betrayed feels like kind of a deus ex machina

This very long book doesn't waste much time in setting up the main plot!