The Book of the New Sun: A Kirkus Style Review

Wolfe, Gene
THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
Orb Books
(416 pp. (first half); 416 pp. (second half)
$17.99 (first half); $18.99 (second half)
Oct. 15, 1994
ISBN: 978-0312890179 (first half);
978-0312890186 (second half)







An exiled torturer adventures around Urth (Earth) in the far-distant future where the Sun is dying, until he becomes the world’s leader destined to save the solar system.

When we first meet Severian, both the narrator and protagonist of the novel, he is a boy in the torturer’s guild, who will inevitably be tasked to learning the skills of becoming a master executioner. Despite his numerous claims of having eidetic memory, it is clear that he is a remarkably unreliable narrator. As such, the reader will recognize that there is much more depth to the story than what Severian offers as testimony. As an apprentice who has never left his guild’s grounds, Severian falls in love with a prisoner and shows mercy. Once this happens, he is expelled from the guild into the foreign city of Nessus where his adventures begin and his repulsive traits with women and violence become even more noticeable. He joins the rebellion against the world’s leader: the Autarch. He comes into the possession of the Claw of the Conciliator, a gem that mysteriously gives him the power to raise the dead. Following meeting several people who join him as companions as he travels the dying lands of Urth as a journeyman executioner, he lands the position of executioner for the city of Lictor. However, he loses his comfortable situation after showing mercy (once again for a woman), and barely survives with his life. In full Don Quixote style, Severian finds himself in numerous misadventures: fighting monsters in the mountains, encountering a long-dead monarch, and befriending a young boy he calls Severian. The seemingly random, yet encaptivating side stories lead to a war that pulls most of the ironic side stories together as a cohesive whole and demonstrate the truth regarding Urth and the dying Sun, and begins to paint the larger picture: humanity left Urth for distant planets, settled them, but returned to their dying home world. By the end, Sevarian becomes Autarch, returns to Nessus, and the guild who expelled him, with the tools and will to save humanity. Wolfe’s magnum opus is as much bildungsroman as it is speculative “dying Earth” science fiction with a new language, with Sevarian being a sometimes childish protagonist who accepts his faults and his responsibilities.

A Quixotic and intelligent novel of immeasurable depth that is spellbinding, yet strenuous.