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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two of Wolfe's greatest novels in one lovely package, June 24, 2003
Having haunted used bookstores and libraries for a year or two for copies of SOLDIER IN THE MIST and SOLDIER OF ARETE, my zeal to buy this book the very day it came out was perhaps excessive but, I think, understandable.I've been a fan of Wolfe's since the fateful summer of 2000, when I first cracked open a copy of his magnum opus, THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, and through the course of sixteen wildly different novels and innumerable short stories he has only rarely disappointed me. That said, the Latro books have immediately jumped, if not to the head of the pack, right to the top two or three. The main character, Latro, is a mercenary formerly in the employ of the Persian emperor Xerxes during his ill-fated invasion of Greece in 479 BCE. Struck on the head outside the goddess Demeter's temple, Latro loses his short-term memory; like the main character in "Memento", even his recent past is a mystery to him, although Latro's window of memory is twelve hours long rather than five minutes. Captured by the Greeks, he becomes a slave, passed from one master to another and one quest to another in a series of picaresque adventures ranging from the comic to the heroic to the almost unutterably grim. The word "Latro" means both "soldier" and "pawn", and Latro, despite his native cunning and skill at arms, is a pawn indeed, used by gods, men, and monsters to further their own aims; his only saving graces are his innate stoic nobility and the diverse collection of friends he accumulates along the way. Wolfe deploys his usual stunning array of literary devices and tricks, from the de rigueur unreliable first person narrative to the more subtle possibilities allowed by Latro's illness. Several characters disappear, only to reappear in later chapters with new names and, occasionally, new faces - strangers to Latro, but not to the eagle-eyed reader, who can use the clues scattered throughout the text to discern the wheels within wheels that Wolfe has arrayed to power the plot. The prose is, of course, peerless in its elegance, diction, and intelligence; we know that Wolfe, like a silver-tongued magician, is misdirecting us, but his patter is so charming that we don't care. A few words about the setting: despite the fantastic elements that Wolfe uses in the book, LATRO IN THE MIST is a solid and powerful piece of historical fiction, and accomplishes what only the best books in that genre can aspire to: it puts us in the mindset of people who lived in that era, lets us see how they probably acted and reacted and thought and lived. We see that Latro's memory loss is merely a reflection or literalization of the times he lives in, where slow communication and inadequate recordkeeping could distort events of even recent history into myth, legend, and hearsay; and we see that the gods and supernatural beings that Latro contends with are also reflections of the times, when people saw divine agency in almost every occurence of their daily lives. Wolfe's depiction of the Greeks feels right, painting them neither as noble towers of intellect nor as superstitious cavemen, and his frank depiction of the ancient world's brutality makes us appreciate their greatest achievements (which, in the book, are still a few decades in coming) all the more.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wolfe, switching gears, August 26, 2003
By A Customer
"Soldier in the Mist" and "Soldier of Arete" feel like an exercise, Wolfe consciously attempting to develop a storyline where the protagonist and setting are as contrary to the "Book of the New Sun" as possible. Here, Latro suffers from daily memory loss, where Severian captures everything, even if he is unaware of it. Latro travels in the dawning world of our distant past, where Man is not yet master of the world; Severian proceeds on a shriveled Urth where Man's great accomplishments are long spoiled and forgotten. The link is Wolfe at his best, weaving his rich, layered, veiled and often startling prose in first-person perspective. Wolfe's imagination is so rich, and his narrative skills so great that you wonder whether these books can actually be memoirs as they are presented. If you marveled at the "Book of the New Sun", you will enjoy Wolfe effort at switching gears so completely. Latro's terse commentary may also be a welcome change from Severian's verbosity, but there are no creatures as wonderful as Dorcas here. Whether the "Soldier" books end-up as more than just an exercise to Exorcize "Book of the New Sun" really depends; Wolfe owes us two more books before we can make a full comparison.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
READ THIS EVERY DAY, October 29, 2006
This is what Latro writes on the outside of his scroll to remind himself to read over his writings every morning. He has to leave himself this note because he cannot form new memories. Sound familiar? Yes, this is very much the same general idea as the film Memento from 2000, but this novel (actually a compilation of two novels, Soldier of the Mist, 1986 and Soldier of Arete, 1989) was written well before then. According to Wikipedia another book in this series, Soldier of Sidon is due out this year (2006), although I felt that the second novel, Soldier of Arete, pretty neatly ended the story.
On to the specifics. On one hand I found it really interesting, well-written, historically engaging, and a real challenge to follow a lengthy novel when the narrator isn't much help. On the other hand, the format was at times frustrating and the whole "I forget everything" got a little tiresome, especially near the beginning when most chapters were consumed by notes from Latro to himself explaining that he can't remember anything. Gene Wolfe seems to enjoy the relationship that the narrator has with the audience, as I've found his narrators are generally unusual in some way. In the New Sun books his narrator couldn't forget a single detail that he had lived through; in the Latro books the narrator can barely remember what happened a handful of hours ago, losing the rest to time, what he describes as the mist. In many ways I found myself enjoying the task of piecing together Latro's experiences into a meaningful narrative, flipping back in the novel over and over again to see if I really remembered hearing that name or that place.
This brings me to the one thing that I think really helped the Latro books be successful, which is true of Memento as well, and that is that the medium of the work inherently causes the reader to suffer the same ailment and fate as the protagonist. Wofle's writing keeps you slightly in the dark, and his method of opening each chapter with what has most recently happened, not what you just finished reading about, before moving back in time and catching up with this new present keeps you on your toes. This is why I like reading post-modern novels and novels that share many characteristics with a post-modern novel, such as this one: the effort that the reader must give to the reading and the ability and responsibility to help create the art.
Lastly, it was interesting to read what could be very loosely constructed as an historical novel. Set in ancient Greece, Wolfe does a fairly good job of helping the reader through difficult geography and cultures without giving away the game too much. He gives us many details which are likely true (I'll admit that I'm nothing close to a Grecian scholar, but what I read of Wolfe is that he likes to bleed history into his fiction) and many rough sketches of life in Greece around the turn of the calendars from BCE to CE. These details never seem to intrude on the story, only to enhance or flush out a given moment.
Overall, I would recommend this novel to others, but keep in mind that it is not a passive read. However, I found it to be pretty rewarding. Yay for Latro.
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