The Book of the New Sun
This four volume series by Gene Wolfe is looking to be one of my favorite discoveries this year. Of course, I can’t take credit for “finding” them since Brent both recommended and loaned them to me but I am quite enthralled. Volume one (The Shadow of the Torturer) makes a slow start to the series but Volume two (The Claw of the Conciliator) picks up and Volume Three (The Sword of the Lictor) blew me away. I am already a few pages into the final book (The Citadel of the Autarch) and hope it fulfills the promise of the previous books. Wolfe incorporates rich Christian theology into his fiction, which is the best vehicle for communicating theology. I think the third book is better than a sermon series and certainly better than most church’s “statement of faith”. Wolfe refers to man as the spoken word of the “Increate” (God), clearly illuminates the false dichotomy between Free Will and Predestination and works within the mytho-poeic realm quite richly. These just might earn a place on my shelf next to Lewis’s Space Trilogy…