----- update 12/2/2015 -----

On this, my first re-reading, I'm stopping with Shadow of the Torturer in a "for now" kind of moment. There are some other things I'd like to read as 2015 winds down. Not sure if I enjoyed the story more or about the same this time around. Certainly not less.

----- original review -----

My first pass through Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer/Claw of the Conciliator was summed up with a status update I made about two-thirds of the way through:

Flashes of brilliance between swaths of tedium.

I did not dislike the book, and I expect to re-read it and enjoy it even more some day; but it did not strike me thus. Not on this first reading.

Aerin said it well:

Reading these books is like trying to watch a foreign movie without subtitles - from two miles away with a crappy set of binoculars, and the audio coming over a fuzzy radio frequency, mixed with three other simultaneous broadcasts. [...] most of the time you're just watching incomprehensible things happening, thinking if you could only see things a little more clearly and understand what the hell people were saying, this might be a really interesting story.

And (and Aerin hints at this, as well) -- there is this tendency to wink-and-nudge your way through a book like this. There's some High Vocabulary, and there is an Intricate Plot, and recognizably Epic Characters. And you know for a fact that Gene Wolfe is no dummy; he is a talented storyteller and a gifted author. And who wants to be left behind? Wolfe is gifted and talented and this is a great and convoluted-and-complex-but-epic story and so... it must be brilliant. Who wants to admit that they're left behind? that they didn't get it? that they were frustrated by it, even as they enjoyed it? (Or at least wanted to enjoy it?)

And that's where I landed with this one. I wanted to enjoy it, and I believe that there is an enjoyable novel in there--but unless you're going to give it the extra effort on the first pass (or unless you're a preternaturally brilliant ascetic), expect to be a little frustrated on that first pass.

I can understand why people rave about this book, and I can see why people hate it, too. I thoroughly enjoyed most of it, though there were a few factors that churned my stomach a bit.

First the positive: This was a dense, intense, vividly written and imagined universe. It's Earth, a long time in the future, as we're approaching the death of the sun. A mythology has grown up around the dying sun, in fact, complete with prophecies of a New Sun that will herald the dawn of a newer and brighter era, hence the name of the tetrology. The world is rich and well-rendered. Wolfe has managed to capture the atmosphere just right, using lovely archaic words and hinting at aspects he never fully fleshes out. However, the reader is able to glean (from geography, some of the legends, and a glorious glimpse of a maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus, the first I've ever encountered in a novel) that the story takes place (or at least begins) somewhere in South America, near the Amazon River.

The story follows an apprentice torturer, Severian, as he makes a series of decisions that drastically change his life. In the process, he has a series of remarkable adventures, but he's certainly no assistant pig keeper. This book is much darker than your average hero quest. Of course, given Severian's vocation, this isn't a surprise. All the sex and the blatant sexism was a bit of a surprise (though it's hardly the first overtly sexist SF classic).

Here is a list of all the females, above the age of puberty, that Severian met on his travels and did not immediately fall in love with/lust after: . There you go. That says a lot. All the women are beautiful, though of course in different ways, and Severian spends a lot of time ruminating over how their beauty differs and what different feelings each woman engenders in him. I get the feeling these are meant to be deep, insightful inner monologues, but they're shockingly sexist, shallow, and they really alienated me from Severian, who I otherwise pretty much liked. He has sex (sometimes quite upsetting, only questionably-consensual sex) with as many women as possible, as quickly after meeting them as plausible. All this coupling got in the way of the otherwise engaging story and plot.

People have complained about the vocabulary and, while I understand their complaint, I don't agree with it. I loved all the old words, looking them up was fun, and they went along way to creating the haunting, alien, dissonant atmosphere that made the book so intense.

Occasionally, the plot would take an inexplicable turn that seemed to make sense to Severian, but never really did to me. However, I'm fine being a little lost at points in a book. I rather enjoy it. Someone said this wasn't a good beach book; I completely disagree. The perfect beach book is one that is dense, absorbing, intense, and fully transports you to a completely alien world where you have to puzzle out everything that's going on around you.

I will certainly read the next two books, though I hope Severian maybe begins to interact with women as if they are actual human beings at some point.

Severian is a manly man. He travels Urth one foot in front of the other. The book doesn't explain the background or setting except in small asides, so I am still in the dark about many a thing. I do know he has a cloak that shrouds him in darkness and a mighty sword, matching well with his profession as an executioner.

Love struck, curious and dedicated, he is inspired by a lady from the Glass House of the Aurtarch, one Chatelaine Thecla. He meets quite an interesting band of characters along his journey, learning of the outside world as he goes. He has a near photogenic memory, and thus this book is his journal of the past.

Lofty spoken word and well elaborated environments paint a once glorious yet still thriving place. So much to still learn, I'd say I am in for the next book.

This wasn't an easy book to read. While it wasn't as tough as a classic, Wolfe's style is quite involved. Things require re-reading, and I had to go back and re-skim whole scenes to make sure that I had gotten the gist. I stopped myself from looking up any unexplained plot threads, however - I'll leave that until I tackle the sequel.

The book also has an interesting relationship with women, who are largely sidelined as accessories, foils, or antagonists to our lead - this, again, may change. One could also argue that we are always seeing through the eyes of Severian, and his experience of society's attitudes towards women.

That being said, the story itself is brilliant. The world is an enthralling medieval-level fantasy one, with some minor variations - which quickly become major when you consider that Severian's Urth is, in fact, our own. The shadow of our world haunts this one. Early in the first book, Severian looks on a canvas that, through clever description, Wolfe reveals to be a picture of Neil Armstrong on the moon. That's the kind of book this is.

UPDATE. I am temporarily rescinding my current review a.k.a just leaving it under a spoiler tag for now. I think I may have been too harsh towards the book and I later learned that Agia's fate is more extensive than what I initially thought. I am not doing this because the Wolfe fans I mentioned in my initial review, just I should have been more calm and collected. At a later date, I will continue the series and that will reform my thoughts on the first book.

For now I will leave no stars until I read the The Claw of the Conciliator.

Spoiler

Review for Shadow of the Torturer only!

2/5 stars.

UPDATE: Apparently some Gene Wolfe fans on twitter discovered my review and called me "flighty" and said that I "talks about a lot of pointless nonsense." I appreciate being called Team Agia though.

Shadow of the Torturer is the first installment of Gene Wolfe's very far future The Book of the New Sun. It follows the childhood and early adulthood of a young man named Severian, a member of the Torturers' Guild. When he he is still a boy, he witnesses the revolutionary Vodalus and two of his cronies grave-robbing. After defending Vodalus from an attack, Severian spends his upbringing wondering what the man was up to, while at the same time wondering where he belongs in the Torturers' Guild. Soon, a young woman named Thecla (shout-out to the name of one of my favorite saints) is imprisoned by the guild because her sister is one of Vodalus' cronies and lover. Severian falls in love with her and speaks to her about theology and what the world was before. The Autarch, the ruler of this world, believes that if the guild questions and tortures Thecla then her family will reveal the whereabouts of her sister and thus Vodalus. Not wishing to reveal anything, and it's questionable if she even knows anything, Thecla wishes to take her own life. Severian helps her and smuggles her knife and she does the deed. Severian has broken an oath in the guild, and instead of executing him they send him to another city to fulfil his role as executioner.

And from there, it goes down hill.

Wolfe has some interesting worldbuilding. Remember that this is the very far future. Urth, Severian's world, is implied to be either our Earth after some sort of apocalypse and then subsequent rebuilding, or is another planet altogether as the guild's citadel is literally a derelict space ship. Wolfe sometimes just references or alludes to certain things about the world's history. Sometimes it keeps your curiosity peaked, other times it's just aggravating. There are a lot of terms that Wolfe sometimes uses--some once, some more than once--that are never explained within The Shadow of the Torturer and frankly it's annoying. I am fine with occasionally Googling a word or phrase from a book to understand its meaning; but doing this multiple times for multiple words and learning across the Internet that Wolfe never explains it is just lazy and frustrating.

However, the biggest problems with The Shadow of the Torturer lies in its pacing, narration, Severian's character, and the treatment of Agia. We'll go step-by-step here.

I mentioned this in my updates, but perhaps my problem with the pacing was the edition I was reading which was an omnibus of The Shadow of the Torturer and the second book The Claw of the Conciliator, so the print was smaller and the paragraphs were kind of pushed together. However, the pacing in the beginning of the book was fine. A little slow, but not totally unbearable. The pacing after Severian leaves the citadel is so utterly slow that I literally nearly nodded off a few times. It's burdened by thick paragraphs and a lot of people talking about a lot of stuff that sometimes didn't matter or was incomprehensible. And, according to my Internet searches, a lot revelations aren't made until the third or last book and I don't have time or care for that. It just dragged and dragged. It ties into the narration which further ties into Severian's character, but one thing at a time.

Severian is recounting all of this. He's writing after the events of the book, and I assume the rest of the series, and telling us certain things. Severian's narration needed, I don't know, something less lethargic going on in it. At times, Severian just seems so casual or even disinterested in his past events. The narration felt clinical and disinterested. Most of the book is spent wandering around the giant country-like city that it takes place in and walking from place to place almost constantly with very little else going is not an enjoyable read. Also the narration just suddenly ends. It wasn't an ending that made me go "I'm curious to read more!" Instead, it made me go "Thank God that's over!" I don't really care much else about what happens.

And so that brings us to Severian as a character. In the beginning, he is a curious boy. Curious about the guild, the world, and Thecla. It is probably the most interesting part of the narration. But after the guild as a young adult he is at worse annoying and at best uncompelling. His recorded reactions to some things and people is a very "meh" attitude, or almost like he didn't even care about what happened. And dear God! He literally falls in love with almost every woman...just because she's pretty. Thinking a woman is pretty is attraction, not love. His views of romance and woman are just so damn weird and unappealing. He falls in love with Dorcas after knowing her for like a day and they start having sex like three days into their relationship with Dorcas' only input that she likes him because he doesn't hate her like Agia does.

And thus, this brings us to his treatment of Agia...

Now, I know Agia is technically an antagonist. Her attempted seducings of Severian were probably a ruse to get his sword (no that's not a euphemism); but even before her true goals and allegiance are shown, Severian's treatment of her is horrendous. He hits her a few times just out of annoyance. One time he just hits her because she's being mean to Dorcas and leaves her on the ground with the super poisonous plant she's holding and that he needs for combat. Severian just starts to dislike Agia because she dislikes Dorcas. Sure, her disliking Dorcas was mean and unfounded, but Severian's treatment of her was extreme in comparison. Now that I think of it, Severian hates Agia because her seduction towards him and of how forward she is with her dislike of Dorcas. She isn't quite and meek like Dorcas, therefore she gets hated. I also had to search the Internet to see what was up with Agia. Like most other things in this book, there's no explanation as to who or what she is beyond being Agilus' twin sister. Also, from what I dug up, she doesn't get much of a conclusion in the later books, so I'm still peeved about.

So all in all, The Shadow of the Torturer is an interesting science fantasy, but only in worldbuilding. A weak main character, pacing, and narration unfortunately sends the rest of the book crumbling down.