The Shadow of the Torturer is a masterpiece of fantasy, a dark and lyrical journey of honor and betrayal. Severian is an apprentice torturer in the Citadel, a boy being inculcated into the mysteries of his guild and the service due their "clients" when he falls in love with the nobly born Thelca. Just after his ascension to the rank of Journeyman, the young Severian makes a key decision, forclosing the torture due his love by handing her a knife. Dishonored, he is sent out into the world with the legendary sword Terminus Est to make his way to the far city of Thrax where he will take up the profession of headsman. He meets strange and dangerous people along the way, falls in love, fights, is betrayed, and so on.

Proper fantasy seems defined by a certain sense of unreality, the idea that "so above so below", and Wolfe's language captures the dreamlike sense that the story is a psychological mirror of his protagonist, while also maintaining the dense detritus of the post-apocalyptic, high-tech, dying Earth setting. There's a particularly gripping moment where Severian finds himself facing a picture of a man wearing a golden helm, a gray desert reflecting in it, and you realize this is a photo from the Apollo program, reduced to nothing more than myth. It's beautiful, and strange, and terrifying.