Yes! So now I've finished the first half of a science fantasy series from the 80s that had interested me for a little while, Gene Wolfe's "Shadow & Claw".
The story follows a young apprentice of the Guild of Torturers Severian, on the world of Urth, is exiled from his home for committing one sin of his profession, showing mercy toward his victim. And now he takes on a quest that will lead to the discovery of the power of an ancient relic and the truth of his hidden destiny.
So this another Tor Essentials ( I have another that has the first three novels of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish cycle) and this one collects the first two books of Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, "The Shadow of the Torturer" and "The Claw of the Conciliator".
This turned out to be an incredibly interesting series! The world I'm introduced to is full of fantastic wonders and weirdness, with a good amount of complexity. And filled with some of the most interesting, colorful and bizarre characters.
Severian, who narrates the story, is an extremely enigmatic character, providing bits and pieces of much bigger puzzle. And there are a lot times I wonder if he's telling the truth or not. But he truly is an interesting character.
There's a second volume that contains the last two novels that I simply must get! This is a very engrossing series and would love to see how it ends!
by i-the-muso-1968
3 Comments
I have to read this again, the prose is great, but I have more or less no idea what was going on.
I love this series so much. Truly upended how I thought about fantasy. I read it every few years and get different things out of it every time. Wonderful.
I love the casual offhand mention of things that are truly Deep Time. Like the green moon, whose towering forests date back to the Dawn of Man, or fossilized buildings sticking out of a mountain, beach sand was the result of billions of years of colourful ancient glass being ground into tiny jewelled grains, or the Earths core has gone cold. Very cool stuff.