The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, 1) [Hardcover]

Gene Wolfe (Author), Don Maitz (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671253255
• ISBN-13: 978-0671253257
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,947 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

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shamefully overlooked masterpiece..., March 8, 2005

By 

Viking (Los Angeles USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Shadow of the Torturer (Paperback)

Seriously: This is one of the great overlooked Fantasy/Sci-fi adventures of all time.
And to be honest, I hate even putting it into a genre category; it's just a damn good read.
After having read tons of sci-fi/fanasy in my youth, I had reached a point where I was embarrassed to read any more of the stuff; almost all of it was trite, Tolkien- or Arthur C. Clarke-derivative, and, frankly, just plain juvenile. It was as if being a Fantasy writer meant that your standard of writing quality didn't have to be as high as that of straight fiction, as long as your characters included a busty warrior girl and a talking dragon. Then I picked up Shadow of the Torturer...
With The New Sun series, Gene Wolfe did to Fantasy what William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson did to Sci-fi; raised the bar for the genre and told a story that adults could read without feeling embarrassed. This is an epic up there with Lord of the Rings and Dune. It's that good.
Be aware that the negative reviews here (and most of the luke-warm ones as well), miss the point entirely. The "made-up words" and "anachronisms" they mention, for example, make complete sense if you actually pay attention, and the people who call Gene Wolfe's writing "rambling and incoherent" simply aren't doing that; he's one of the smartest fiction writers alive today, just don't expect to be spoon-fed everything.

In short: This is actually literature (big word, I know...), not just another spin on the same recycled themes.

My only question is: why haven't more people read this?! (Not to compare the two, but it's criminal that a predictable teen sci-fi book like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game has over 2000 reviews and this one has only 13)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Especially for lovers of words (and Latin!), June 9, 2005

By 

John Bonavia (Needham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, Vol. 1) (Paperback)

What an amazing saga of Earth ("Urth") perhaps millions of years into the future - the sun is weakening, there has been a major glaciation, but somewhere in the southern hemisphere exists a complex civilization, rich in hierarchy and tradition, and still using some of the ancient artefacts whose power source is almost inexhaustible. (In the top of the Matachin Tower - which we realize is actually a spaceship that has not moved for millenia - voices occasionally speak out, in forgotten tongues, to whomever is present, or to the other "towers". . .) But the residues of technology are secondary in interest to the wanderings of Severian, initially an apprentice in the order of Seekers After Truth and Penitence, commonly known as the Guild of the Torturers...

Inside the back cover of my copy, at one of my readings, I listed the dozens of words that Wolfe invents or modifies to suit his needs. . .many based on Latin or Greek, all with a phenomenal rightness to what they identify or - often - suggest. Badelaire, lansquenet, amchasphand, chrisos, orichalk, pinakothek, salpinx, ephor.. . . .And the tricky thing is that every now and then one of them is a real word . . did you recognise lansquenet and salpinx? Wonderful wordcraft.

Do read the four books of the series in order (this is the first). Otherwise you will certainly be confused, especially after Severian's encounter with the alzabo (the hideous animal that feeds on corpses and for a while thereafter posesses some of the dead person's ability and can mimic his/her speech: not a good voice to hear at your door in the middle of the night).

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most sophisticated genre series ever written, June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, 1) (Hardcover)

The Book of the New Sun, starting with the Shadow of the Torturer (its first volume), is the most sophisticated work in the Science Fiction stable, and one of the most beautifully written of all modern novels - set in a far, far future, where technology has evolved and degenerated to become almost Baroque ornamentation, it seems to describe a feudal or Medieval world. However, one of the many pleasures in this book is the way that our assumptions are taken and re-combined, giving the whole thing much of the intruige and fascination of the most intricate detective story. The characters are vivid, immediate and haunting - their problems believably distant but painfuly immediate - and the written style of the novel is always seductive and a pleaure. Everybody, everywhere, should read this - if only as one of the best example of "post-modern" fiction of all time.