In Green's Jungles: The Second Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun' [Hardcover]

Gene Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Series: Book of the Short Sun | Publication Date: August 5, 2000

Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles is the second volume, after On Blue's Waters, of his ambitious SF trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun. It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest from his home on the planet Blue in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Now Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft in orbit that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien inhumi. There, he led a band of mercenary soldiers, answered to the name of Rajan, and later became the ruler of a city state. He has also encountered the mysterious aliens, the Neighbors, who once inhabited both Blue and Green. He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. At some point, he died. His personality now seemingly inhabits a different body, so that even his sons do not recognize him. And people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. In Green's Jungles is Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, building toward a strange and seductive climax.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gene Wolfe has stymied and delighted smart science fiction readers for years. His complex, multilayered narratives, untrustworthy narrators, and puzzle-box characters send those of us who like that sort of thing into paroxysms of thrilling speculation, re-reading, and just plain guessing what it all means. In Green's Jungles is the middle book of Wolfe's opus trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun (the first is On Blue's Waters). It is by no means necessary to start with his other series, The Book of the New Sun and The Book of the Long Sun, in order to enjoy what is most likely the final examination of the universe Wolfe has created. But critics and fans are mostly in agreement that they are best read in order, and that the Short Sun series is the best of an astonishing bunch.

In Green's Jungles follows narrator Horn as he voyages to the planet Green (Blue's companion) and to the abandoned generational starship known as the Whorl in search of the godlike Patera Silk. As Horn recounts his adventures, his own identity becomes muddled, and we find out his interactions with the vampiric inhumi of Green and the strange alien Neighbors were deeper than we knew. In fact, Horn may not be himself at all anymore. Tantalizing story details drip slowly from Wolfe's pen:

Through the ring a Neighbor saw him, and she came to him in his agony.... she said, "I cannot make you well again, and if I could you would still be in this place. I can do this for you, however, if you desire it. I can send your spirit into someone else, into someone whose own spirit is dying."

So who is Horn? Has he become Patera Silk--it seems so, for people begin mistaking him for the heroic leader. Is he the warrior king Rajan, or is he something entirely new, formed by the strange places and people around him into a savior of worlds? Identity, love, and faith weave through the themes of In Green's Jungles, and Wolfe has added another masterpiece to a shelf full of them. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

In 1980, Wolfe published The Shadow of the Torturer, the first volume in his now classic Book of the New Sun, which was eventually followed by his much-praised Book of the Long Sun sequence. Whereas the former series was set on the decadent planet Urth, the latter took place within the Whorl, a hollowed-out asteroid whose inhabitants knew nothing of the universe outside their failing world. At the end of the second series, the charismatic Cald Silk led his people to the planets called Green and Blue and then disappeared. For years it had been rumored that the two novel sequences were somehow connectedDand here the rumor is substantiated. In this second volume in The Book of the Short Sun (after On Blue's Waters), Horn, the narrator of the Long Sun books, is on a quest for the lost Silk. Although he engages in numerous adventuresDleading an army, slogging through a monster-inhabited jungle, touring several exotic societiesDthe specifics of the plot are almost inconsequential. What counts is Wolfe's gorgeous prose, the brilliant dialogue and the dazzling way that reality shifts from one paragraph to the next. Horn soon discovers that he has the seemingly magical power to travel instantaneously between Green and Blue, though his body and those of his compatriots undergo strange changes with each shift. Eventually, they visit a world with a dying red sun that may be long-lost Urth. Oddly, Horn also discovers that he has begun to physically resemble Silk. Like any middle volume in a series, this novel leaves mysteries unsolved and plot threads hanging, but that really doesn't matter. It's the sheer strangeness of this masterful tale that counts, and the glorious sense of unknown wonders to come.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (August 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312873158
• ISBN-13: 978-0312873158
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,149,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gene Wolfe is winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and many other awards. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He lives in Barrington, Illinois.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Short Sun Continues Brilliantly, July 20, 2000

By 

Alex D. Groce (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Green's Jungles: The Second Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun' (Hardcover)

The Short Sun series is shaping up to be the best thing Wolfe has written since THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. This second volume continues the narration of the quest to recover Silk.

Lupine surprises and unanswered(?) questions abound, and to discuss the events relayed in this middle volume would be to spoil the joy of discovery for other readers--besides, until the final volume is published and we've reread the whole thing a few times, we probably won't fully know the story. Wolfe's work, like life and unlike so much fiction, grows richer with each return; like old friends, his novels reward attention and familliarity breeds delight rather than contempt (born out of boredom).

The manner in which the story is presented is, as in ON BLUE'S WATERS, complex even for Wolfe--multiple time frames and threads of narrative are blended expertly. The way Wolfe works his magic through the guise of a "rambling" and "unskilled" narrator is truly beautiful. One of the best things about this book is its extended use of a device employed with great skill in THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH: Wolfe transforms what might be an artifical narrative technique into a moving commmentary on that most fundamental of human activities, the telling of a story.

For, in the end, it isn't the brilliant prose or the narrative genius that makes this a great work. Rather, it is the moving, wise, and loving exploration of what it means to live and love, to feel the immense pain of consciousness and to do good and evil that justifies the elaborate machinery--to tell a lie beautifully is unfortunate, but to tell the truth with skill and beauty is to achieve greatness.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book of the Short Sun continues brilliantly, February 1, 2001

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Green's Jungles: The Second Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun' (Hardcover)

IN GREEN'S JUNGLES is the second volume of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Short Sun, which is (to put it briefly) the story of Horn's return to the Whorl to bring Silk to Blue.

The narrator's identity is again a mystery. He believes himself to be Horn, but remembers things falsely and is constantly identified as Silk. Having escaped from Gaon, where the throne was forced upon him in virtual imprisonment, the narrator comes to the town of Blanko, whose citizens believe him a magician and seek his council in their war. Thus, he is drawn into yet another bloody conflict, underscoring the need of Silk on Blue, in order to save its colonists from their fighting (and their original sin).

Unlike ON BLUE'S WATERS, where the narrator reflected happily on the first leg of his voyage to the Long Sun Whorl, Horn's remembrances here, of terrifying Green, are told shakily. Horn's death on Green, spoken of in the first book, is but the last of a series of crushing experiences on that dangerous whorl, and Horn cannot face them outright.

Other surprises await the reader. Our narrator discovers that he can astrally project himself to other worlds in his dreams. This sort of mysticism evokes fond memories of THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN. And in a tear-inducingly beautiful passage, Wolfe's Christian allusions manifest themselves with an inadvertent Eucharist, which may be the most moving thing Wolfe has ever written.

More readable then ON BLUE'S WATERS due to its gripping plot machinations and surprising developments, IN GREEN'S JUNGLES continues the satisfying trend of the Book of the Short Sun.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing and beautifully written, November 27, 2000

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Green's Jungles: The Second Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun' (Hardcover)

This latest novel is the middle book in a trilogy called The Book of the Short Sun. The Book of the Short Sun is (we are told) narrated by Horn, who was born on the generation ship called the Long Sun Whorl, and who was a teenaged boy during the events of Wolfe's earlier tetralogy, The Book of the Long Sun. At the time of this new series, he has lived on the planet Blue for something over 20 years. He has a wife and three sons, and he is a papermaker. Blue is one of two twin planets, the other called Green, to which the generation ship brought many colonists from Earth. The first of the trilogy, On Blue's Waters, told the story of his quest for the city of Pajarocu, which had a still-functional lander (a "shuttle" capable of interplanetary flight), in which he hoped to return to the Long Sun Whorl and find his beloved teacher, Patera Silk, the hero of The Book of the Long Sun, who he hopes will restore order to the decaying society of his colony city, New Viron. At the end of that book, Horn and his estranged son Sinew were on the lander, ready to take off.

As the title of the new book hints, the lander did not make it to the Long Sun Whorl, but rather was diverted to Green. Green is the home of the blood-drinking, shape-changing, inhumi, creatures who seem to take on the characteristics of their prey. (Some inhumi have infested Blue, including a young male who Horn "adopts" in the first book, but they are more numerous on Green, and they seem to keep human slaves.) Both books are narrated after Horn returned to Blue from Green, however. And the Horn who returned seems oddly different. He has all Horn's memories, but some others as well, and he has changed physically. This was clear in On Blue's Waters, but is made much clearer in In Green's Jungles, and there are many hints as to what or who Horn might now be, though no answers are given. The story in both books is told on parallel tracks: one revealing ongoing "present time" events on Blue after Horn's return, and another consisting of a book that Horn is writing as we are reading it, more or less. Especially in the latest book, the narrative is thus intricately structured, and Wolfe uses this structure to considerable effect.

Horn has left the town of Gaon, where he was acting as Rajan, the ruler, during the first book, and he has come to a town called Blanko. His appearance, and his companion, the talking bird Oreb, cause people to regard him as a strego, or magician. He is taken in by the leading farmer of this city, who is trying to prepare for an invasion by a neighbouring city. Horn befriends this family, and eventually helps prepare their defence. At the same time he is continuing to write his account, which includes some stories of his terrible time on Green, where he is imprisoned by the inhumi, but with the apparent help of the previous natives of Blue, the Vanished People, he manages to escape only to lose both his real son, Sinew, and his adopted son, the inhumu Krait, and eventually, it seems, his life. But he is not dead. This story is intertwined with tales told by his host, Inclito, his host's mother, who recalls life in the Long Sun Whorl, and by Inclito's teenage daughter Mora and her friend Fava. All these strands weave together in a complex way, answering some questions but suggesting many more about the relationship between humans, inhumi, and the mysterious Vanished People, who may still be present in some form. Horn has developed a mysterious power of "dream travel", which takes the characters to Green on occasion, and even to the "Red Sun Whorl", which a reader of Wolfe's great earlier series will recognize as Urth at the time of The Book of the New Sun.

The story is mesmerizing. It is beautifully written in the comparatively simple style Wolfe adopted for The Book of the Long Sun. The mysteries are fascinating and seem significant. But it's hard to make a final judgment, because this is only the middle volume of the story. Nonetheless, I can say that I am eagerly awaiting the final volume. This trilogy has a chance to be magnificent. Wolfe's regular readers will not be disappointed by the story so far, and as for those who have yet to discover Wolfe, do yourself a favor and give his work a try.