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…
August 7th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
GASP! It deserves such a place of honor?! I may have to read them myself …
August 7th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Brent was thrilled to find out you liked them as much as he did. We'll have to get together so you can adequately discuss them.
August 8th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I remember back when my perfectly nice boyfriend tried to get me to read this series as well as The Left Hand of Darkness. I was so resistant to science fiction and fantasy then. I finally read LHOD last year, so can Wolfe be far behind?
September 30th, 2009 at 7:38 am
[...] recommend Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. I posted about the tetralogy this summer here and I just finished the follow-up volume Wolfe’s publisher insisted on: The Urth of the New [...]