The Book Of The New Sun

 "The Greatest SF Novel of the last century." - Neal Gaiman
















  The Book of the New Sun is Gene Wolfe's masterpiece series, and taken as a whole it is easily the greatest novel I've ever read.

 This is the story of Severian, member of the guild of torturers who wanders the lands of Urth.
Yes a torturer.  When in need of money he can use his well honed skills for such as acts as public beheading, and dismemberment.  To clarify, it is never so gruesome that anyone would be put off, and their is no SM or anything like that.

 The language and prose of this novel are of the absolute highest quality, containing a lyrical beauty rarely found in even the most famous of works.

   Now, Wolfe assumes the reader is highly intelligent and knowledgeable.  He assumes your vocabulary is quite large, and even if it is, you will almost certainly have to look up some words(or just infer from the context).

   The novel is told in first person, with Severian claiming he has a perfect memory, but a careful study will show that he does at times contradict himself demonstrating that he is an unreliable narrator.  The observant reader will find many clues are embedded in the text that tell far more of Severian and his world than just his words.


 Now this IS a SF novel, not a fantasy piece.  Severian may see magic, but the reader should know better.  Severian lives in a dying world, an Earth so long gone that technology is magic and the sun is begins to burn the world.

 It was originally released as four novels, "The Shadow of the Torturer", "The Claw of the Conciliator", "The Sword of the Lictor", and "The Citidel of the Autarch".  In recent times the series has been republished in a far more respectable looking edition, comprised of the two novels shown above(each contains two of the original novels).

 This is a definitive work of the 20th century, however unknown it may be to the mainstream, and should not be missed.

10/10