Bill Kerwin's Reviews > The Claw of the Conciliator

People tell me that Gene Wolfe’s tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is a fantasy masterpiece, but after completing the first two volumes, the jury—at least this particular one-man jury—is still out.

In my review of the first volume, The Shadow of the Torturer, I praised the superb prose, the vivid descriptions, the realistic evocations of a pseudo-medieval world, and the tantalizing possibility that it may be the culmination of a great civilization (possibly ours) in decline.

All this is equally true of The Claw of the Conciliator, and it has been more than enough to keep me reading. But there is something about the studied guardedness of Severian, protagonist and narrator, that wearies me. I like a hero who, however flawed, I can identify with and root for, and the chilly precision of Severian’s voice—frosty even in his frankest revelations—prevents me from fully committing myself either to his story or his fate. And, not being fully committed, I have come to view Severian’s journeying—however unfairly—as picaresque meanderings, not a quest. (Besides, an event I’d looked forward to—Dr. Talos’ play—disappointed me. I understand it is founding myth, and a commentary on the characters, but it was very long, and I have concluded (pace Gene Wolfe) that Dr. Talos is a very poor writer.)

Still, there are plenty of individual scenes that pleased me here, scenes that remain in the memory: Severian’s interview with the green man from the future: our hero’s use of the Claw to fend off the man-apes, while something leviathan stirs the waters below; a midnight supper with Vodalus, where Severian consumes a lover’s flesh and enters into a kind of communion; the notules, small things that fly through the forest air and try to suck the life-force from Severian; the grotesque diminution of the gorgeous Jolene after the single bite of a blood-bat; and the final spectral dance in the streets of an ancient stone town.

As I said, my jury is still out. Well, let the deliberations begin again! On to The Sword of the Lictor!