Customer Reviews

Return to the Whorl: The Final Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun'

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Gene Wolfe has done more for the potential of speculative fiction than anyone else. After I read this book for the first time, I was impressed, but I wasn't sure if there was as much beneath the surface as I expected from a Wolfe book.
After re-reading it and pondering it at great length, I think that Wolfe has done such a good job making supposedly secret things obviously hinted at in the text that we stop looking for the right questions to ask because we THINK we know all the answers. If you think you have figured out everything on one reading of this text about the changes in an individual and in a home that render it impossible to go home again, here are some questions that I have found the answers to (at least, I think so)on a close re-reading (I wouldn't advise reading these questions unless you've read the text at least once):
When exactly does the majority of Horn's essence leave the narrator to go ride a beast with three horns? (and what is that beast?)
Why are plant genetics important to the story?
Why does the narrative technique and tone change so drastically between On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles? Why is that island on Blue made up of big trees, and why is it important? Who and what are the vanished people, and why do the animals with doubled limbs seem so similar to the ones we have on earth? Why does the narrator travel (a debatable word) to Urth, and what is the REAL importance of the secret of the inhumu, which is no secret at all? How many fair young girls in the text are spies? What is the fate of Urth? What really happens to Horn when he falls in the pit, and why do the Vanished People appear to him at that particular time? Why is the fact that Urth's sea is saltier than Blue important? How can we know that there will probably be no more New/Long/Short Sun books? What does the Cummean have to do with the inhumu and the vanished people? Is Chenille really stuck in Sinew's basement on Green? Why does Babbie look more human than Cillinia (Scylla)in the narrator's "dream" travel?
The didactic message of this text has been exposed on the surface, but the real conflict has been hidden by the master. You have to learn to look for the right questions (as with any Wolfe story) to ask the text (I've tried not to spoil this fine work; but I feel it is impossible to spoil a Wolfe book.) Remember to ask why, and you will find that Wolfe makes much more sense and has plotted out his universe with far more reason and surprising skill than the surface message would indicate.
I have managed to answer all of the above questions to my satisfaction (but perhaps not to everyones) and hope to find more of the right questions to ask of this masterpiece, Gene Wolfe's best work since The Book of the New Sun (and I believe it MIGHT even contend with that as my favorite book). Never stop asking the text questions, and it will not fail you; believe me.

It's quite possible that RETURN TO THE WHORL may turn out to be Gene Wolfe's last book. If so, it's one of the most awe-inspiring valedictory performances ever written. At an age where most writers have retired, died, or reached the point of self-parody, Wolfe has concocted a towering and dizzyingly impressive fiction about family, love, God, and the act of writing itself. The multiple narrative threads in ON BLUE'S WATERS and IN GREEN'S JUNGLES lay as thick as kudzu by this point, but Wolfe ties them off one after another with (we imagine) a sly smile and a magician's flourish. For longtime readers, this will come as no surprise; what is surprising is the sudden, deft, and skillful resolution of many questions left over from GW's other two long masterpieces, THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN and THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN. RETURN TO THE WHORL is the capstone to the edifice that is Wolfe's life's work, and anyone who bears a deep and abiding love for reading -- science fiction or otherwise -- will find much in this book to profit from. Good fishing!

Gene Wolfe has always asked a lot of his readers. This conclusion of his current Book of the Short Sun trilogy is just about his most demanding work. But I feel that it is one of his most rewarding also. You won't really be able to access this work unless you've read its predecessors: On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles. And perhaps you need to have read his Book of the Long Sun quartet, a direct prequel; as well as his Quintet of Urth books that are connected as well. Reading all of these works is one of the most rewarding voyages in contemporary genre fiction and contemporary "literature".

I've been a Wolfe fan since the 60's and each year I am more impressed with his imagination, erudation, and writing skill. This new work blew me away. Many questions posed by the preceding works are answered; while some remain as puzzles for the reader to ponder. I was greatly moved by the human events in the life of the novel's principle narrator. Moved to tears a couple of times by his friendship with Pig and Pig's long sightless quest for vision along the length of the giant starship; followed by the narrator's donation of an eye combined with the transfer from Pig to the narrator of Silk-In-Mainframe.

Maybe I have always been a (...) for talking animals... But I especially enjoyed the talking night chough Oren's part in this complex story.

This is a specialized work for a specialized audience. It can be hard going for the unititiated. But work put in by the reader on Wolfe's fiction rewards much more than work put into other author's work. This is a true adventure in reading and I urge you to read all the preceding works if you are intrigued to do so.

I cannot claim to understand it fully as I write, only having finished the book a few minutes ago, but I can assure you that RETURN TO THE WHORL is one of the finest things Gene Wolfe has ever written.

An occasional complaint against the richness of Gene Wolfe's prose and the complexity and strength of vision that inspires his created worlds is raised: there is a distancing, a lack of truly human character, a slight hint of purely intellectual chill in the devious puzzles Wolfe weaves for the careful reader. It is not so here, even if it is true elsewhere. Gene Wolfe is still making labyrinths, it is true, but at the center is heartbreak, and wonder; and, most importantly, love. The narrator of the three volumes of THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN is that rarest of literary creations: a beautifully good man. The maze we travel to reach him is built of wisdom, joy, and pain.

Plot summaries appear above, and in the inner jacket of RETURN TO THE WHORL. They are fairly useless. Surely no one will read this who has not read ON BLUE'S WATERS and IN GREEN'S JUNGLES, and those who have will know some of what is to come. The rest should be a surprise and a revelation, although the bald statement of "what happens" does not begin to unfold the greatness of this book. Suffice it to say that the search for Silk begun in the first volume continues, and the parallel lines of narration draw to their close--old friends are met again, and new ones are made. The truth is told, and told well.

There are now twelve volumes in the SUN series. This is very possibly the best of them. Together, they make up one of the most extraordinary artistic creations of our time, and I would not hesitate to claim for them a high place in the literature that does not concern itself with any one age. That we are alive to welcome its arrival, and to express our gratitude to Gene Wolfe for having given it to us, is surely not the least of the blessings we have received from the Outsider.

I've always felt such assignations should be witheld for the cream of the crop. This book majestically finishes what I've taken to refering to as a, "trilogy of series," to those not in the know.

A completely realized review calls for a brief synopsis of the books I suppose, so here is a brief one: Horn -- He is a character from Long Sun, is featured as a main character. Led to what seems to be a terrestrial world by Silk, he later journeys to what seems to be a version of Hell as the planet Green, before finally visiting what might be seen as Heaven in the Long Sun Whorl up above. Along the way he has massive adventures and, true to Mr. Wolfe's form, has an identity crisis.

As in all of Mr. Wolfe's works the issues of religion and the true meaning of humanity and identity as a human are explored in detail. These books are decidedly not easy reads. For some people, such as myself, that is a good thing. Reading a book is more an experience than pasttime for me. Also I do tend to read more slowly than the rest of my family, affording me more of an opportunity to delve into my material. For some this level and complexity is a bad thing. I don't mean to imply any haughtiness on my part. Different people are into different things, and for those not keen on diving into a text to wring the most they can out of it this book could prove difficult.

Still if one is patient and wants to learn what good writing is, these are the books. It was actually Shadow that indoctrinated me into more difficult novels in the first place, and I have never forgiven her for it... :)

One more remark and I'll be finished. Horn is my favorite character from the three series. Severian and Silk are wonderful but too perfect in comparison to Horn. You have the feeling that Severian and Silk can do anything and get away with anything, but Horn will leave you doubting. I love this about him. There were times I felt so moved by our unlikely hero's situation that I had to shut the books tightly and stare at the walls. Enough of my babbling. Begin Shadow and read three of the most marvelously crafted adventures the world has seen. You won't regret the journeys.

Gene Wolfe has published the last book in his _Book of the Short Sun_ trilogy, _Return to the Whorl_. This is a very intense book. I found it quite extraordinarily moving. I think it's the best SF novel of 2001, so far. It might be difficult to discuss it in detail without spoilers for all three "Short Sun" books, though on the other hand I'm not sure those spoilers are at all important to the books' reading experience. At any rate it answers a central question: the identity of the main character, though I don't really think any reader of the first two books will be surprised.

One set of chapters of _Return to the Whorl_ is written, as with the first two "Short Sun" books, by "Horn", continuing the story of events on Blue after he has returned from his visit to the Long Sun Whorl, where he went to search for Patera Silk. But "Horn", it has become clear, much resembles Silk, and doesn't resemble his old self at all. He is approaching his home of New Viron, in the company of one of his twin sons, Hide, and the person he calls his daughter, Jahlee, who, we know, is an inhuma that he rescued in Gaon, the first place he came to upon his return to Blue. Also, of course, he is accompanied by the night chough, Oreb, who was Silk's bird as well. They are arrested on the word of a corrupt merchant when they reach the town of Dorp. This strand of the story tells of their imprisonment in Dorp, of Horn's realization of the corrupt nature of the government of that town, and his eventual fomenting of a revolution there. (Thus continuing a theme which became apparent in the first two books.)

The other set of chapters is told in third person about a man always called "he", who calls himself Horn but is called by others Silk, on the Long Sun Whorl. "He" meets up with a blind giant named Pig, and with a man named Hound, and makes his way to Old Viron, the hometown of both Horn and Silk. There, as he looks for "Silk", he meets again Horn's father, the old manteion, a strange chem girl named Olivine, and finally his beloved General Mint and her husband, Bison, who is now Calde, Silk having resigned some years previously. "He" has promised to find eyes for his old chem sybil Maytera Marble (back on Blue), and he also promises to help Pig find medical help to restore his "een", as Pig calls them. And he is instructed by a godling to tell the people of the Long Sun Whorl to stop leaving the Whorl to go to Blue -- enough have gone, and now they wish to repair the Whorl and travel to another star system.

All is resolved, quite satisfyingly. There are more visits (in astral form) to the "Red Sun Whorl": that is, Urth at the time of the beginning of the Book of the New Sun. There is plenty of action, and even more talk. Such events as the eventual restoring of sight to both blind characters, shown indirectly, are subtly and remarkably moving. And at the end, the most remarkable thing Wolfe has done, to my mind, is to have portrayed, over seven books (including _The Book of the Long Sun_), a character who is complex and fully human and often foolish but also as purely "good" as any character I have encountered in SF: Silk. It is a great book.

Mr. Wolfe ties up a number of the infinite series of mysteries in this poignant, elegiac finale and, in doing so, writes some of the most heartbreaking scenes in the history of literature (Horn's encounter with the ghosts in Ermine's, the old Sun Street manteion, his father's shop, etc.), but the ending is so abrupt that the end result is unfulfilling. And, yet, unfulfilled Wolfe is better than his contemporaries' finest works. Such is the power as a writer and depth of insight into the human condition as a man that Wolfe possesses. Horn does indeed make it back to his home and succeed in his epic quest in a way that Wolfe has, in some senses, telegraphed to the astute reader and, yet, the "shock ending" is a deeper mystery revealed concerning Horn's blurred identity than one might suspect! To say anything more would be to reveal the Book of the Short Sun's central conceit, but readers of the "prequel" series The Book of The Long Sun will find bittersweet irony in the fate of Horn, the young boy who lived his life in conscious imitation of his teacher, Patera Silk. Silk, after all these years and changes, still comes across as a Truly Beautiful, Good Man, guilt-stricken and heartbroken, but doggedly pursuing noble purposes through the savage landscapes of the newly-colonized planets and the decrepit Whorl spaceship, and of the human heart. The puzzles that are addressed are well-handled, but loose ends remain---though with a writer as deep and subtle as Wolfe, the reader must always wonder if these loose ends are not answered in some subtle way upon which he/she has failed to pick up. This series is not only for the scholarly Seeker For Truth and Penitence, but can also be read by the casual reader who will enjoy the surface level of a deeply-felt story well-told. Taken together, the Book of The Short Sun in its 3 volumes is one of the most poignant, trenchant and enchanting works of modern fiction and Wolfe's best since The Book of the New Sun tetralogy.

Every work of Gene Wolfe's that I read further increase my admiration of his writing. _The Book of the Short Sun_ (I feel the three volumes are best read as a single novel) is easily the most thought provoking piece of fiction I have read in years. RETURN does not explicitly answer many of the questions that have been raised throughout the trilogy, but the questions themselves are what is important.
Even direct statements from Horn (the narrator) are often nothing more that guesses or even self deception. This book doesn't simply tell a story. What it does is provide half of a conversation. If there are answers, then they are for readers to determine for themselves. If this sounds needlessly philisophical, I can only say that I am still fresh from turning the last page of this extraordinary work and under it's spell.
Within the next year or so I plan to set aside a large chunk of my free time to re-read all of the "Sun" books (The Book of the New Sun, The Urth of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun) to give myself the full impact of the entire sequence. Anyone who looks down on the genre of science fiction need look no further that the works of Gene Wolfe to have their preconceptions blown away.

I cannot recall any novel that has moved me to such tears and silence. Perhaps it is the cumulative power of a great imaginative epic superbly told--the NEW/LONG/SHORT SUN Books. Perhaps it is because Wolfe continues to grow and challenge us as a writer, to take us places we've never been before. Perhaps real genius is beyond explanation. I'm sorry I can't say this any better. RETURN TO THE WHORL is unspeakably beautiful.

As I was reading RETURN TO THE WHORL, the final volume of the Book of the Short Sun, I wondered how the ending of this work and the wrapping-up of a 12-volume cycle would come across in a... review. Perhaps, I thought, it would be like Dante's vision of God in the Paradiso; the poet's sight is too filled with beauty to communicate what he saw to those below.

It isn't like that at all. I can't communicate the beauty of this book not because it cannot flow through words but because I don't have a handle on its core essence yet. Wolfe's splendid work ends elusively, causing me not to feel like I have seen the height of his vision, but rather that I have only begun the contemplation that will bring me to understanding Wolfe's view of God. RETURN TO THE WHORL offers closure, certainly, but it also causes one to *think*. Questions are left unanswered, so it seems, but they can be resolved through the subtle clues in the text. What continues to involve the reader after the book is finished is meditation on how the Outsider is present both in Wolfe's world and in our own. Gene Wolfe is a superb writer, and his work appeals to people due to many different things, but I've always found his work to wonderfully reinforce my belief in Catholicism. Yes, reading Wolfe can be a religious experience.

RETURN TO THE WHORL is an excellent conclusion to the Sun books because of its circular nature. At the end of RttW, the reader can go through the protagonist's return to Blue all over again from the final chapters of RttW to the first chapter of ON BLUE'S WATERS. Or, one can go back to a foggy evening in the Citadel of Nessus, where the Book of the New Sun and our whole saga began.

After this, 12 books of excellent writing, I echo the same sentiments many fans do, why don't people realize Wolfe is the greatest writer alive?