Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Gene Wolfe has occasionally been accused of misogyny in his writing, or of stereotyping his female characters to the point where they rarely achieve more than two dimensions. I'm happy to report that in this new book (dedicated to his daughters, as its prequel, ON BLUE'S WATERS, was dedicated to his sons) he proves that he is indeed capable of creating female characters--not just one but three of them--with rich inner lives and distinct, appealing (not altogether appealing--this is Wolfe, after all) personalities. All three are young, apparently between 13 and 19, and all three become in some sense Horn's daughters. This is the same--well, not quite the same--Horn who raped Seawrack, to whom he also stood in loco parentis, in the last book; he is still atoning for that act. As well he might, says this reader--but his compassionate and heroic actions in this book have led me to forgive him and then some.

Horn is the first of Wolfe's series heroes ever to change and mature within the series; this makes him the most interesting and human of them. I disagree with the reviewer here who found IN GREEN'S JUNGLES to be a "link" book. To me it seems much richer, both in imagery and emotion, than the first one, and it opens up the series to such a degree that I find myself regretting, well in advance, that there will be only one more book to explore these worlds. Wolfe changed his mind once before, adding a fifth book to the original New Sun quartet. Maybe he will do it again!

This year my experience of our trip to Vancouver was enriched by the first two volumes of The Book of the Short Sun, the sequel to the Book of the Long Sun, which I had re-read in preparation. Its certainly a vivid story  weeks later I can still picture myself sitting on the balcony in Strathcona looking out on the lake while at the same time visiting the steaming jungles on Green, and the rotting city of the Inhumu there. Its a pretty amazing effect to be in two places at once  thats what happens when you are reading a good book. Put it down, check on your surroundings, take care of a little business, then pick it up again  and you are suddenly transported to another place and time: vividly, viscerally. You see it all in your minds eye.

The long sun whorl is the interior of a hollowed out asteroid hundreds of miles long, converted to the generational starcrosser, Whorl. Inside, Wolfe creates a mysterious and evocative world in four volumes, centered on the city of Viron, nearby Lake Limna and the many tunnels that run through the shiprock below, populated by an attractive cast of characters led by Patera Silk, augur of the Sun Street manteion, who was recently enlightened with a spiritual epiphany by one of the minor gods, the Outsider, opening a floodgate of theophanies of all sorts. The Gods, who have been absent for more than a generation (occupied in Mainframe), unexpectedly begin appearing in the Sacred Windows all over the city, communicating with and possessing key people from all walks of life, thieves, priests and whores, while civil war breaks out between the establishment forces of the Ayuntmiento, (both bios and chems) versus Silks friend General Mint and her loyalists and troops, many of them children and commoners. Finally, the Gods make it known that the Whorl has reached its destination.

The Book of the Long Sun is a tour-de-force, a truly great extended novel of eerie beauty and wonder, and while totally different in narrative style (first person vs. third) the Homeric Book of the Short Sun is an admirable extension of it. After 300 years, the Whorl has reached its destination, and landers take hundreds of colonists at a time to either of the two planets in this star system. The fortunates land on the earth-like planet Blue, while the unlucky end up on Green, likely to die quickly in its jungles or be enslaved by the vampiric Inhumu.
This is the story of Horn, just a boy in the first series, who is now a man with grown children of his own, who leaves his wife and sons on Lizard Island in search of his mentor, the legendary Silk. Like much travel writing the story jumps back in forth in time, from the present (his surrounding time and place as he is writing) to the past events he is trying to recount.

The story is amazing. I called it Homeric, because it is clearly inspired by The Odyssey, yet it is just as clearly Wolfes own, populated by familiar characters like Mucor and her grandmother the blind chem Maytera Marble (who is also inhabited and inspired by her sib the late bio sybil Maytera Rose), but also by dozens of new, vividly-drawn people, neighbors, gods, animals and inhumu across a multi-hued palate of the worlds Blue, Green, and (in the third book) Horns Return to the Whorl. Wolfe is even able to tie everything back to giant red sun of the dying Urth in The Book of the New Sun, because the ancient metropolis of Nessus is shown to be the origin of the Whorl. It is a lot to think about. Devour these books and, like the fearsome alzabo of old Urth (who mimics the voice of its prey after devouring it), you will hear Wolfes voice and see his worlds for a long time to come.

Horn feels obsessed with the need to find Silk, the missing hero of his people. Silk led his followers to the planets Blue and Green, but vanished not long afterward. Now Horn believes it is his lot in life to search the vast universe in order to locate the lost legend and savior of his people.

As Horn battles with monsters and visits strange societies on weird planets including that, which might be Urth of the dying red sun, he discovers an interesting power that he possesses. In a nanosecond or less, Horn can travel between his home planet of Blue and another world Green that Silk safely led his people to settle on. As Horn moves back and forth between the two planets, his body changes with each transport until his own family fails to identify him as Horn because he now looks more like Silk.

Anyone who has followed science fiction over the past two decades will probably agree that Gene Wolfe belongs on the short list of the top three genre writers. His second novel in "The Book of the Short Sun" is a brilliant tale that although a transition book pays homage to the diversity of the universe. Using eloquent and intelligent prose, Mr. Wolfe states nothing is new under the solar umbrella. Anyone who has not read Mr. Wolfe before will want to read the first book ON BLUE'S WATERS while impatiently waiting for the next novel RETURN TO THE WHORL. Newcomers and some of us old-timers will also return to the related "Book of the New Sun" and "Book of the Long Sun" series that prove Mr. Wolfe deserved his Life Achievement and other awards.

Harriet Klausner

This was the first Wolfe hardback I bought, and I wasn't disappointed at all. I had bought Robert Jordan's Winter's Heart the day before, sped read it, was thoroughly disgusted with it, and returned it, using the money to purchase this gem instead. I should've never veered from Wolfe. Wolfe delivers his mysteries upon mysteries and stories within stories. This is Wolfe: sharp, feral, brilliant, and sagacious. Bend time and space with Horn as he continues his quest for Silk (Ho Oreb!), plays Rajan, and pursues his risky relationships with the inhumi. Wolfe is not for the mere SF reader: he is for the SF thinker.

Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer. The best thing for me about his work is that his books can be read many times. There is a always a lot to think about and often the story is told in such a subtle way it is almost a puzzle. I usually enjoy a Wolfe book even more on the second reading than on the first. I haven't reread green yet so I don't know how high it will reach but the first reading ranks with Peace, Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of the Mist and that is the highest praise I can give.

I'm certainly glad I wasn't reading these as they came out or else I would have been very confused in trying to remember exactly what was going on. I don't think Wolfe writes series as much as a long sustained novel with defined breakpoints, thematic or otherwise, which makes reading the entire trilogy straight through a much easier prospect than over the period of a few years.

This is more pronounced here than in the previous Long Sun series, which while intricate, was nothing like this in terms of complexity. That narrative was mostly straightforward, ornate as it was, while here it bends and twists and redefines itself constantly by giving us new information and altering what we already knew. It follows the tone set by the first book, we still have Horn searching for Silk and we still have the first person narrative, we still have Blue and Green and the Whorl . . . and yet it's all gone different, like Wolfe said to everyone "Okay, you think you got the first book? That was just kid's stuff, now the real fun starts."

With Horn still narrating, things become much more elusive, even as he's telling you exactly what is going on. He's on Blue and then he's on Green and maybe he's not actually there but just thinking about it. He's starting to look like Silk or people start mistaking him for Silk or maybe he's switched bodies. The story starts to unfurl in multiple time periods at the same time, with the two parts echoing each other, Horn telling you what just happened and using that as a launching point to tell you what happened previously. The story swoops to certain points and dodges away at the last second before returning there later to deepen the significance of it. Identity becomes an open question, not just of Horn but it seems that every character starts to have more than one name and appearance, and with each change they are perceived differently, even if they haven't really changed.

Wolfe still has the sometimes frustrating (and exciting) habit of making you work for your revelations, with important events happening offscreen and the outlines of it being sketched later, sometimes much later, so that you have to be constantly putting small pieces together to make the bigger picture. And yet we probably won't get the largest picture until the next book is over, and even then it will probably take a sustained reread through everything if you want to have the hope of fitting it all together.

But as complex as it all is, Wolfe makes it work due to the precise and unhurried nature of his prose, the consistency of Horn's voice and the way he can make Green and Blue feel both real and dreamlike at the same time, how the shapeshifting feels more solid and right out of some buried myth, the legends always present and not simply made up. There's a level of thought behind this that is kind of staggering and drags you along with it, if you're willing to be dragged. I wish more SF was like this but not every book (I think my brain would get tired) because it just preserves how unique Wolfe is in the field and how unique a writer he is overall.

Gene Wolfe can be a frustrating writer: his prose is often elliptical, his plots and characters unusual, his text obscure and dense. He's a master of indirectness: he'll leave out what for other writers would be "important plot points".

In this second volumn of Book of the Short Sun, we spend most of our time *not* in Green's jungles, but the intersecting plots and deft, subtle interplay of the different characters leave us with both a clear picture of the main character's (Horn/Silk) time there. We get crumbling cities, in-human (and human) monsters and other trappings of, say, a good Burrough's Barsoom tale presented entirely as backstory to the current events in which the lead character has become embroiled.

On Blue's Waters (the first volume) was a beautiful work, marred (I thought at the time) by the overly obscure ending. But this novel (a lot clearer to follow, with a more conventional linear story) actually improves the first book. I can't wait to read the final volume now...