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Severian is sent on a mission to retrieve a mysterious item known as “The Claw of the Conciliator,” which is said to have the power to heal the sun. Along the way, he encounters a diverse cast of characters, including a band of rebels, a group of heretics, and a powerful ruler known as the Autarch.
Another aspect of the book that makes it so important is its richly detailed world-building. Wolfe creates a fully realized, believable universe that is both strange and familiar. He populates it with a wide variety of cultures, religions, and technologies, each of which is unique and detailed. This gives the book a sense of depth and realism that is rare in the genre. As they look for an inn, Dorcas asks if he misses Agia and Severian says he hardly knew her and he would be dead if she had had her way. Dorcas wonderingly says, “But the leaf did not kill you” and Severian is forced to confront the thought that he has been avoiding – that he should be dead. Drotte moved away, and the rest of us stayed behind him. "Who are you, goodman? You're not soldiers."The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), the first of the four books that comprise Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterpiece The Book of the New Sun, is a rich, moving, and challenging novel. Just in the first few chapters we learn that narrator Severian (who is writing his life story) was an orphan apprentice of the guild of torturers (the Seekers for Truth and Penitence) in the Citadel of sprawling Nessus (the City Imperishable) in the far future of Urth (earth?), under a dying sun; that the towers of the Citadel are long-derelict spaceships; that Severian has an eidetic memory; and that his youthful encounter with the rebel leader Vodalus set in motion events that will lead him to betray his guild, become an exile, and sit on the throne. My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. I could distinguish the woman's heart-shaped face and note that she was nearly as tall as the slender man she had called Vodalus. The heavy man had disappeared, but I heard him say, "More rope." His voice indicated that he was no more than a step or two away from the spot where I crouched, but he seemed to have vanished like water cast into a well. Then I saw something dark (it must have been the crown of his hat) move near the slender man's feet, and understood that that was almost precisely what had become of him—there was a hole there, and he was in it.
A man who had not spoken before said, "I'm going to watch over my mother. We've wasted too much time already. They could have her a league off by now." Fresh as a flower, Madame. Hardly a breath of stink on her, and nothing to worry about." More agilely than I would have thought possible, he sprang out. "Now give me one end and you take the other, Liege, and we'll have her out like a carrot." Concerning the tone of the story, the audience is reminded from time to time that these are essentially memoirs of the main character, which does take away from the narrative tension. In effect, you are reading a story knowing the ending beforehand, which I think is an admirable decision on the part of the author. By placing the ending of the story in the beginning, Wolfe has essentially challenged his audience to come along for the ride just to see how the lead character gets to where he is. Severian claims to possess not just an eidetic memory but a perfect memory and as such any contradictions on his part as the narrator are deliberate obfuscations. I will be listening to work that has critical literary acclaim, rather than relying on cult success.
The Shadow of the Torturer won the annual World Fantasy Award and British Science Fiction Association Award as the year's best novel. Among other annual awards for fantasy or science fiction novels, it placed second for the Locus (fantasy), third for the Campbell Memorial (SF), and was a finalist for the Nebula (SF). [6] [7] [8] Limited edition [ edit ]
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