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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Be Fooled!,
By
This review is from: Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4) (Paperback)
Some Wolfe fans find the Long Sun books disappointing. At first glance, the writing doesn't seem to be of the same beauty and complexity as that in the books narrated by Severian; the philosophical and metaphysical insights here seem less breathtaking. However, this is a Gene Wolfe novel, so appearances are expected to be deceiving. Patera Silk alone is worth the price of admission, and the plot of Long Sun is Wolfe's best yet, intimately connected to the presentation of the varied and fascinating cast of characters. THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN rewards rereading perhaps even more than most of Wolfe's work.It is nice that all four volumes of this series are back in print. THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN, now two-thirds complete, may be Wolfe's best work to date (high praise indeed), and THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN should be read before beginning on SHORT SUN.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sun of an epic, part 2,
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This review is from: Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4) (Paperback)
A couple decades ago, I remember tuning into a panel discussion show on TV because it featured Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison, two authors who I really enjoyed reading. There was also a third author on this program, who for many years, I essentially thought of as "the other guy." It would take till just a couple years ago for me to figure out that this other guy, namely Gene Wolfe, was also worth reading, in ways completely different than either Asimov or Ellison.
Epiphany of the Long Sun is the concluding half of Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. Like the previous volume, Litany of the Long Sun, Epiphany is actually an omnibus of two books in the Long Sun tetralogy: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus of the Long Sun. Altogether, the four books are over 1200 pages of complex plotting. (The Long Sun books themselves fit into the middle of a larger sequence including the Book of the New Sun and the Book of the Short Sun.) As Litany had concluded, the protagonist Silk had been elevated, almost against his will, into the position of Calde, a high-ranking position that is half administration, half monarchy. In Calde of the Long Sun, civil war erupts in the city-state of Viron, as not all people are happy with Silk's promotion. By Exodus, things stabilize a bit (although not all is settled) and the focus is more on the nature and destiny of the Whorl itself. The Whorl is the space colony/generation ship that Silk's people have inhabited for centuries. The societies that exist within this Whorl are both advanced and rather medieval, with both high-end technology alongside more primitive devices. Silk, who also acts as a kind of priest known as a patera and as an augur who sees the future in animal entrails, has become something of a prophet as well. In the Whorl, gods are worshipped and occasionally even seen, but Silk is driven primarily by an outsider god known, quite naturally, as the Outsider. I can only scratch the surface of this densely plotted story, and there's too much to really summarize well. Wolfe is a good writer, but this is not always an easy read. The Book of the Long Sun is ambitious and has a certain artistic merit to it, but for all its admirable qualities, I personally find it to not be great but merely very good, worthy of a high four stars. There isn't really anything wrong with it, but it never completely won me over either (I guess it's a chemistry thing). Do not start this book without having read Litany of the Long Sun. The two volumes are really one long story and the breaks between volumes (and the books within) are more arbitrary than conclusive. With that caveat, if you are a fan of science fiction, this is a worthwhile read.
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as "The Book of the New Sun",
This review is from: Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4) (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed "The Book of the New Sun", Wolfe's earlier epic. I bought both the "Litany" and the "Epiphany" volumes of the Long Sun, and read them together over a couple of weeks. While Wolfe can often write amazing prose, and has fascinating characters, his plot development often leaves the reader feeling confused. The "Long Sun" is more grating in this respect than was the "New Sun". Wolfe constantly brings chapters to a close with the characters in a moment of crisis. He begins the subsequent chapter by leaping forward in time, and the characters are engaged in completely different activities from where the previous chapter left them. There is eventually an explanation as to how they got out of their predicament, but we only come to know this through their intermittant discussions of what occurred. This technique was used right up to the end of the work, where vast chunks of story seem to have been excised. The reader is left only with a confused glimpse of what happened, since we are forced to interpret events through the ignorant eyes of the inhabitants of the whorl.I don't mind having to work to get through a book, if the reward is sufficient. The "New Sun" was not an easy read, either. However, it is not a compliment to the author to say that one must re-read his work several times to understand it. If that is the case, it simply means that the author is not writing clearly. And that is most definitely the case in "The Book of the Long Sun."
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