Author: Gene Wolfe

The first book of The Book of the New Sun, the series hailed by countless people as the greatest science fiction of all time. A few years ago when I first saw it mentioned by some Redditors, I was immediately intrigued by it because of its badass name. However, it has no Chinese translation, so I just left it on my maybe-one-day list until I picked up reading in English again a few months ago.

I have no idea what to review. The ending was so abrupt, like all of the sudden I’d come to the appendix, and the story was as obscure as it possibly could be.

So the protagonist Severian was banished by his torturer clan because of giving a sexy woman prisoner a swift death, then tricked into a death match by another sexy woman then fell in love with a cute girl that took care of him, and then joined a circus while searching for “Pelerines”, when talking to a stranger in “The Wall” his gf was struck. The end.

I’ve read some of the one-star reviews on Goodreads, and all of them are spot on.

Then I watched a one-hour-long youtube video talking about this book, and realized that I have missed so many things! I was in constant struggle with the text that I was not able to pick up the subtle clues.

• I didn’t know the torturer guild lives in a spaceport
• I didn’t know there was a Neil Armstrong photo (did know it from so many reddit comments before this video tho)
• I didn’t know Severian ultimately became an Autarch
• I didn’t know the claw he got was how he was revived
• I didn’t know Dorcas was dead and was the mother of the dude giving them a note
• I didn’t know Dorcas was revived by Severian’s claw
• I didn’t know Dr. Talos was a robot
• I didn’t know Severian and Thecla had sex
• I didn’t know Agia and her brother had sex
• I didn’t know Heather was a spaceship sailor and had a sex robot
• I didn’t know there were aliens and sapiens living in the ocean

I even discovered a podcast talking about each chapter for over half an hour. Really makes me want to reread book 1 before continuing on book 2.

Quotes

But you must recall, Severian, that when a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

I could no more resist her than I could have resisted the blind greed of Urth if I had tumbled over a cliff.

A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart.

Reading Log

The Book of the New Sun is so hard to read. The words are simple, but the whole text is as obscure as it can be. You have to read like 3 times to kind of know what it’s talking about.

This book reads like a fever dream, but of the opposite style of Philip K Dick’s. It’s like recalling a fever dream. You have no idea how the events and the logic in the world work, no matter how hard you try to understand it.

My reading speed is also halved, have to go through each sentence slowly, word by word, sometimes (oftentimes) a few times.

There are many archaic words, and you’ll miss a lot if you read on a paperback instead of Kindle where you can look up their definition instantly. Most of the time it’s okay, just normal words being twisted in a strange way. But sometimes it would be like dixwhjdvjfkbd cijvhejdj of sjehhdjdbf and fjjfidjenbfbxhdjdnbf like man wtf are you talking about?? And no I’m not looking up every single word of that sentence (but you still did).