This review is for the whole thing, The Book of the New Sun Volumes 1 -4, including Shadow & Claw, because, really, it is one big story.
Now I realise This review is for the whole thing, The Book of the New Sun Volumes 1 -4, including Shadow & Claw, because, really, it is one big story.
Now I realise that for many people this is not even close to being the most important consideration, but I have to address the question: is it Fantasy or is it Science Fiction? I'm a sucker for classifying, categorising, and defining, so this is the kind of question I take great pleasure in. If you don't, feel free to skip on down the paragraphs.
I'm nailing my colours to the mast: it's definitely fantasy.
Now a lot of people say it's science fiction. At first the story appears to be set in your typical fantasy cod-medieval Europe. The sort of setting well-beloved in the fantasy genre: witches, emperors, swords, spears, horses, whores, men with muscular bared chests. But a little attention soon shows that it's actually a far-future society: feudal people living in the ruins of a formerly advanced civilisation. This isn't part of the Twist. It's clear very early when Severian describes the Matachin Tower, mentioning that some of the rooms were formerly 'fuel chambers' and making it clear in other ways that the 'tower' is actually a rocket. Then it becomes a fun game to figure out when Severian is seeing something that we would recognise as high tech, but he just sees as so much ancient rubble. So it's a science fiction setting, disguised as a fantasy setting - and as the story progresses various science fictional aspects come into play.
But I say it's fantasy, because for me, an SF setting isn't enough to make something science fiction. Aliens, time travel, spaceships, wormholes - these are the set dressing of science fiction, but not the heart of it. The heart of SF is its subject matter. The novum, the sensawunda, rational man conquering his environment through applied intelligence. The Book of the New Sun isn't really concerned with any of these things. The SFnal tropes in this book all serve fantasy purposes: they are tools in that classic fantasy plot: The Quest. Severian's journey is primarily an internal journey, a moral journey to become a man and do the right thing. This is the heart of fantasy. And that's why this is fundamentally a fantasy story.
I love this book. I love the intricate, archaic language and the strangely familiar neologisms. I love Severian and all his neurotic monologuing. I loved the old men of the Matachin Tower. God help me, I even loved Terminus Est. This affection crept up on me so slowly that I didn't even know I was feeling it, until the fateful fight with Baldaners left me heart-broken.
Lucky me. Because there are many people who find these books something of a chore, redeemed (or not) by The Twist. The Twist (without wanting to give too much away in a goodreads review) is something that becomes apparent in the final 10% of the story, where certain information throws many earlier events into an entirely new light. Now, I enjoyed the story and I enjoyed the twist, so it's all good for me. But I have a lot of sympathy for those who did not enjoy the story, and felt that they had to wade through quite a lot of typical fantasy trash, tarted up in pompous prose, to get rewarded only at the very end. YMMV. The slow meandering story, the long digressions, the seemingly pointless diversions, are a joy for anyone who takes pleasure in world-building for world-building's sake.
I'm also a sucker for an unreliable narrator. Here's another aspect that makes The Book of the New Sun such a rich source for endless talking over with friends. Just how unreliable is Severian? Many call him a liar, and many others have defied them to point out anywhere in the text where Severian tells a straight-up lie. It can't be done, he's never explicitly dishonest, but, boy, is he the master of misdirection and subtle elisions. The description of the avern duel just doesn't make any sense until 1000 pages later when we find out what Severian omitted in his first description.
The richness of the world, the many puzzles and clues through-out the text, the heavy language, the huge dumps of philosophy and theology, The Twist, the inevitability of it all: these things make it book worth reading and rereading many times. But alas, only for those of us who enjoy the basic plot and characters in the first place.
I loved this book. I loved it because it was wholesome and puerile. Which is a bad way to begin, because I'm sure that plenty of readers will take 'whI loved this book. I loved it because it was wholesome and puerile. Which is a bad way to begin, because I'm sure that plenty of readers will take 'wholesome and puerile' as insults, and I don't meant them that way at all. This book seemed to me to have the spirit of a lively, chivalrous, teenage boy, which I found utterly charming.
Set in a fantasy world loosely based on renaissance Italy, the story concerns the peninsula of the Palm which is currently being oppressed by two opposing tyrants. Our heroes are trying to reclaim the liberty of their nation, Tigana, in the face of some fierce magical and military opposition. I say the book is puerile because it gets some credit for political complexity – but only if one finds two tyrants, instead of one, to be a wildly complex situation. Or a few assassination attempts and jostling for appointments to be devious political intrigue. It's not exactly George Smiley. But then I wouldn't want it to be. The political complexity is exactly what it ought to be for a story filled with characters who are all basically good at heart and fairly archetypical – the 'good but naïve' guy, the 'good but occasionally selfish' guy, the 'good but distraught over personal tragedy' guy, the 'good but making some hard choices as a leader' guy. There are of course, some bad characters, but these are mostly limited to faceless goons in the service of evil – and the evil guy himself, who makes a satisfying and morally clear enemy to be defeated.
The female characters fall into similarly familiar fantasy categories, being 'beautiful but tragic', 'beautiful but terrifyingly seductive', 'pretty and feisty', and 'pretty and modest'. This is the sort of thing that generally gets one railing against the sexism of making 'bangability' an important component of every female character, but I couldn't be annoyed by it. I don't know how to describe it – it would probably require some very close reading to tease it out – but the admiration of the beauty of all the women seemed so sincere and wholesome that it could not be offensive. Not compared to, for example, A Song of Ice and Fire, where one gets the unclean feeling that the characters are being described by a lecherous uncle.
The story contains many of the usual fantasy tropes: wandering bards, wizards, kings, spirits, and the quest-like structure of the pursuit of liberty for Tigana, as our heroes gather their band and fulfil the tasks necessary to achieve their goal – I'm maybe teasing a little bit here, the story is complicated enough that it is not ever so cliched. I suspect whether or not you'll enjoy this book will come down to how much you enjoy a good solid fantasy novel. It's a bit like Shakespeare – you don't mind seeing the same Shakespeare plays over and over again, because half the pleasure is in seeing the same words and story interpreted in a new way. That's how I often feel about fantasy novels. There are many of the usual tropes of fantasy here, but it is still thoroughly enjoyable to see them so skillfully deployed and creatively arranged....more
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