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The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly, and "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Sword & Citadel brings together the final two books of the tetralogy in one volume:
The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.
The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will forever alter the realm known as Urth.
"Brilliant . . . terrific . . . a fantasy so epic it beggars the mind. An extraordinary work of art!"-Philadelphia Inquirer
"The Book of the New Sun establishes [Wolfe's] preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping."--The New York Times Book Review
- Sales Rank: #40853 in Books
- Published on: 1994-10-15
- Released on: 1994-10-15
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.20" h x 1.12" w x 5.52" l, .83 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Review
“Outstanding...A major work of twentieth-century American literature.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Wonderfully vivid and inventive...the most extraordinary hero in the history of the heroic epic.” ―Washington Post Book World
“Brilliant...terrific...a fantasy so epic it beggars the mind. An extraordinary work of art!” ―Philadelphia Inquirer
About the Author
Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by The Washington Post. A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I
Master of the House of Chains
“It was in my hair, Severian,“ Dorcas said. “So I stood under the waterfall in the hot stone room--I don’t know if the men’s side is arranged in the same way. And every time I stepped out, I could hear them talking about me. They called you the black butcher, and other things I don’t want to tell you about.”
“That’s natural enough,“ I said. “You were probably the first stranger to enter the place in a month, so it’s only to be expected that they would chatter about you, and that the few women who knew who you were would be proud of it and perhaps tell some tales. As for me, I’m used to it, and you must have heard such expressions on the way here many times; I know I did.”
“Yes,“ she admitted, and sat down on the sill of the embrasure. In the city below, the lamps of the swarming shops were beginning to fill the valley of the Acis with a yellow radiance like the petals of a jonquil, but she did not seem to see them.
“Now you understand why the regulations of the guild forbid me from taking a wife--although I will break them for you, as I have told you many times, whenever you want me to.”
“You mean that it would be better for me to live somewhere else, and only come to see you once or twice a week, or wait till you came to see me.”
“That’s the way it’s usually done. And eventually the women who talked about us today will realize that sometime they, or their sons or husbands, may find themselves beneath my hand.”
“But don’t you see, this is all beside the point. The thing is…” Here Dorcas fell silent, and then, when neither of us had spoken for some time, she rose and began to pace the room, one arm clasping the other. It was something I had never seen her do before, and I found it disturbing.
“What is the point, then?” I asked.
“That it wasn’t true then. That it is now.”
“I practiced the Art whenever there was work to be had. Hired myself out to towns and country justices. Several times you watched me from a window, though you never liked to stand in the crowd--for which I hardly blame you.”
“I didn’t watch,“ she said.
“I recall seeing you.”
“I didn’t. Not when it was actually going on. You were intent on what you were doing, and didn’t see me when I went inside or covered my eyes. I used to watch, and wave to you, when you first vaulted onto the scaffold. You were so proud then, and stood just as straight as your sword, and looked so fine. You were honest. I remember watching once when there was an official of some sort up there with you, and the condemned man and a hieromonach. And yours was the only honest face.”
“You couldn’t possibly have seen it. I must surely have been wearing my mask.”
“Severian, I didn’t have to see it. I know what you look like.”
“Don’t I look the same now?”
“Yes,“ she said reluctantly. “But I have been down below. I’ve seen the people chained in the tunnels. When we sleep tonight, you and I in our soft bed, we will be sleeping on top of them. How many did you say there were when you took me down?”
“About sixteen hundred. Do you honestly believe those sixteen hundred would be free if I were no longer present to guard them? They were here, remember, when we came.”
Dorcas would not look at me. “It’s like a mass grave,“ she said. I could see her shoulders shake.
“It should be,“ I told her. “The archon could release them, but who could resurrect those they’ve killed? You’ve never lost anyone, have you?”
She did not reply.
“Ask the wives and the mothers and the sisters of the men our prisoners have left rotting in the high country whether Abdiesus should let them go.”
“Only myself,“ Dorcas said, and blew out the candle.
* * *
Thrax is a crooked dagger entering the heart of the mountains. It lies in a narrow defile of the valley of the Acis, and extends up it to Acies Castle. The harena, the pantheon, and the other public buildings occupy all the level land between the castle and the wall (called the Capulus) that closes the lower end of the narrow section of the valley. The private buildings of the city climb the cliffs to either side, and many are in large measure dug into the rock itself, from which practice Thrax gains one of its sobriquets--the City of Windowless Rooms.
Its prosperity it owes to its position at the head of the navigable part of the river. At Thrax, all goods shipped north on the Acis (many of which have traversed nine tenths of the length of Gyoll before entering the mouth of the smaller river, which may indeed be Gyoll’s true source) must be unloaded and carried on the backs of animals if they are to travel farther. Conversely, the hetmans of the mountain tribes and the landowners of the region who wish to ship their wool and corn to the southern towns bring them to take boat at Thrax, below the cataract that roars through the arched spillway of Acies Castle.
As must always be the case when a stronghold imposes the rule of law over a turbulent region, the administration of justice was the chief concern of the archon of the city. To impose his will on those without the walls who might otherwise have opposed it, he could call upon seven squadrons of dimarchi, each under its own commander. Court convened each month, from the first appearance of the new moon to the full, beginning with the second morning watch and continuing as long as necessary to clear the day’s docket. As chief executor of the archon’s sentences, I was required to attend these sessions, so that he might be assured that the punishments he decreed should be made neither softer nor more severe by those who might otherwise have been charged with transmitting them to me; and to oversee the operation of the Vincula, in which the prisoners were detained, in all its details. It was a responsibility equivalent on a lesser scale to that of Master Gurloes in our Citadel, and during the first few weeks I spent in Thrax it weighed heavily upon me.
It was a maxim of Master Gurloes’s that no prison is ideally situated. Like most of the wise tags put forward for the edification of young men, it was inarguable and unhelpful. All escapes fall into three categories--that is, they are achieved by stealth, by violence, or by the treachery of those set as guards. A remote place does most to render escapes by stealth difficult, and for that reason has been favored by the majority of those who have thought long upon the subject.
Unfortunately, deserts, mountaintops, and lone isles offer the most fertile fields for violent escape--if they are besieged by the prisoners’ friends, it is difficult to learn of the fact before it is too late, and next to impossible to reinforce their garrisons; and similarly, if the prisoners rise in rebellion, it is highly unlikely that troops can be rushed to the spot before the issue is decided.
A facility in a well-populated and well-defended district avoids these difficulties, but incurs even more severe ones. In such places a prisoner needs, not a thousand friends, but one or two; and these need not be fighting men--a scrubwoman and a street vendor will do, if they possess intelligence and resolution. Furthermore, once the prisoner has escaped the walls, he mingles immediately with the faceless mob, so that his reapprehension is not a matter for huntsmen and dogs but for agents and informers.
In our own case, a detached prison in a remote location would have been out of the question. Even if it had been provided with a sufficient number of troops, in addition to its clavigers, to fend off the attacks of the autochthons, zoanthrops, and cultellarii who roamed the countryside, not to mention the armed retinues of the petty exultants (who could never be relied upon), it would still have been impossible to provision without the services of an army to escort the supply trains. The Vincula of Thrax is therefore located by necessity within the city--specifically, about halfway up the cliffside on the west bank, and a half league or so from the Capulus.
It is of ancient design, and always appeared to me to have been intended as a prison from the beginning, though there is a legend to the effect that it was originally a tomb, and was only a few hundred years ago enlarged and converted to its new purpose. To an observer on the more commodious east bank, it appears to be a rectangular bartizan jutting from the rock, a bartizan four stories high at the side he sees, whose flat, merloned roof terminates against the cliff. This visible portion of the structure--which many visitors to the city must take for the whole of it--is in fact the smallest and least important part. At the time I was lictor, it held no more than our administrative offices, a barracks for the clavigers, and my own living quarters.
The prisoners were lodged in a slanted shaft bored into the rock. The arrangement used was neither one of individual cells such as we had for our clients in the oubliette at home, nor the common room I had encountered while I was myself confined in the House Absolute. Instead, the prisoners were chained along the walls of the shaft, each with a stout iron collar about his neck, in such a way as to leave a path down the center wide enough that two clavigers could walk it abreast without danger that their keys might be snatched away.
This shaft was about five hundred paces long, and had over a thousand positions for prisoners. Its water supply came from a cistern sunk into the stone at the top of the cliff, and sanitary wastes were disposed of by flushing the shaft whenever this cistern threatened to overflow. A se...
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
The New Sun Lives beyond the 21st Century!
By Rafik
Sword and Citadel; the 2nd half the New Sun series, (both books) have no equal in literature. The better reviews (see Chris McCallister's right-on review), at Amazon are more articulate and indepth, help you appreciate the scope of this work. Written in a wonderful memoir style prose, the story proceeds with our hero, Severian (an excommunicated journeyman torturer), making an Odyssean adventure to ultimately unravel the mystery that is the instrumentality and power of the supreme ruler, known as the Autarch. Faced with the crises of the sun going extinct, the obstacles of war, unexplained phenomena and the perils of health, life and limb. Our hero unfolds to his destiny, from near death to resurrection (he is a type of Odysseus, the perfect hero for all millenia). The images and symbolism is at times indeed difficult to understand, but the story gets through. The author keeps your attention and makes you think of things you never thought of without being preachy or condescending. In Mr. Wolfe's omniverse, everything is not always as it appears to be so there is subtlety at every turn.
Sword and Citadel answers a lot of questions from the the previous book (Shadow of the Tortuer and Claw of the Conciliator). However, an epic would not be an epic if there is not something to make you look forward to. In this case, the book of the Long Sun series...
I can not say enough that these works bear repeated reading to fully appreciate them. I highly highly recommend.
Thank you Mr. Wolfe!
61 of 68 people found the following review helpful.
The Best Novel of Its Kind Ever Written
By Jacob G Corbin
What Frank Herbert attempted and only partially succeeded at in the DUNE series--a tale of theosophy and apotheosis that keeps its head in the heavens and its feet down to Earth (or Urth)--Gene Wolfe does with the apparent effortlessness of a true master. I consider myself well-read in general, but THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is easily one of the two or three most difficult texts I've ever encountered...it's the ULYSSES of science fiction.
Wolfe presents us with a cosmogony staggering in its scope and detail and challenges us, along with his narrator Severian the torturer, to puzzle out its secrets. He poses questions to us that, until we stumble across the answers, we weren't even aware were asked. The story is filled to the brim with Biblical allusions, rich metaphor, high adventure, and--at the last--revelations and insight that feel authentic rather than contrived or exaggerated. THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN makes you work for your entertainment, but what you come away with really sticks to your ribs.
Information about Mr. Wolfe is depressingly hard to come by, so I can only marvel at the kind of mind that could have produced something this compelling, truthful, and--let's not forget--entertaining.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Warning: Story may cause you to stay up all night reading
By Gary R. Bradski
A masterful work by a masterful story teller -- dangerous because you'll be tempted into fits of obsessive reading all night long even though you have a morning meeting at work (been there, done that).
THE GOOD:
(*) Somewhat in the first two books, but especially in the last two, the author gives new information about past events changing your interpretation of the story you thought you knew. This is the technique that vaults these books into the realm of good (great?) literature -- towards the end you feel as if you've lived a whole other life because you continually look back and reinterpret seminal events of your (New Sun) "past".
(*) Clever stories within stories lend texture and neat insights.
(*) As in real life, the meaning of events and information is never totally clear or totally understood -- this again lends one to feel as if one is embedded in another's life (Severian's).
THE BAD
(*) After awhile, one gets tired of Gene Wolfes' invention and use of archaic language. This "seasoning" gives one the feel of another world, but too much causes indigestion.
(*) A tad too many unresolved twists and stories -- can get tedious ("flip flip, on with the plot").
(*) A few too many amazing coincidences (does Severian really have to eventually meet every single person he's ever met again?).
But, "The Bad" things are mere piffles -- If you want a deeply engrossing escapist read and even a little wisdom along the way such as you find in only a other few books (Tolkin, Dune, Nine Princes in Amber...) this is your book(s).
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