Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$22.05$22.05
FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 23 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: temex llc
Buy used: $7.49
Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
92% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
99% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' Paperback – October 15, 1994
Purchase options and add-ons
The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly.
Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume:
The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim.
Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I've read in years!"
The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.
"One of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century." -- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 15, 1994
- Dimensions5.82 x 1.14 x 8.17 inches
- ISBN-100312890176
- ISBN-13978-0312890179
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.Highlighted by 549 Kindle readers
That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.Highlighted by 521 Kindle readers
It was in this instant of confusion that I realized for the first time that I am in some degree insane.Highlighted by 520 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
This is the first-person narrative of Severian, a lowly apprentice torturer blessed and cursed with a photographic memory, whose travels lead him through the marvels of far-future Urth, and who--as revealed near the beginning--eventually becomes his land's sole ruler or Autarch. On the surface it's a colorful story with all the classic ingredients: growing up, adventure, sex, betrayal, murder, exile, battle, monsters, and mysteries to be solved. (Only well into book 2 do we realize what saved Severian's life in chapter 1.) For lovers of literary allusions, they are plenty here: a Dickensian cemetery scene, a torture-engine from Kafka, a wonderful library out of Borges, and familiar fables changed by eons of retelling. Wolfe evokes a chilly sense of time's vastness, with an age-old, much-restored painting of a golden-visored "knight," really an astronaut standing on the moon, and an ancient citadel of metal towers, actually grounded spacecraft. Even the sun is senile and dying, and so Urth needs a new sun.
The Book of the New Sun is almost heartbreakingly good, full of riches and subtleties that improve with each rereading. It is Gene Wolfe's masterpiece. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
Review
“The Book of the New Sun establishes [Wolfe's] pre-eminence, pure and simple....The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within...once into it, there is no stopping.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Magic stuff...a masterpiece...the best science fiction I've read in years!” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“Arguably the best piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced.” ―Chicago Sun-Times
About the Author
Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.
A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Shadow & Claw
The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'By Wolfe, GeneOrb Books
Copyright ©1994 Wolfe, GeneAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312890179
I
Resurrection and Death
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.
“The guard has gone.” Thus my friend Roche spoke to Drotte, who had already seen it for himself.
Doubtfully, the boy Eata suggested that we go around. A lift of his thin, freckled arm indicated the thousands of paces of wall stretching across the slum and sweeping up the hill until at last they met the high curtain wall of the Citadel. It was a walk I would take, much later.
“And try to get through the barbican without a safe-conduct? They’d send to Master Gurloes.”
“But why would the guard leave?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Drotte rattled the gate. “Eata, see if you can slip between the bars.”
Drotte was our captain, and Eata put an arm and a leg through the iron palings, but it was immediately clear that there was no hope of his getting his body to follow.
“Someone’s coming,” Roche whispered. Drotte jerked Eata out.
I looked down the street. Lanterns swung there among the fog-muffled sounds of feet and voices. I would have hidden, but Roche held me, saying, “Wait, I see pikes.”
“Do you think it’s the guard returning?”
He shook his head. “Too many.”
“A dozen men at least,” Drotte said.
Still wet from Gyoll we waited. In the recesses of my mind we stand shivering there even now. Just as all that appears imperishable tends toward its own destruction, those moments that at the time seem the most fleeting recreate themselves—not only in my memory (which in the final accounting loses nothing) but in the throbbing of my heart and the prickling of my hair, making themselves new just as our Commonwealth reconstitutes itself each morning in the shrill tones of its own clarions.
The men had no armor, as I could soon see by the sickly yellow light of the lanterns; but they had pikes, as Drotte had said, and staves and hatchets. Their leader wore a long, double-edged knife in his belt. What interested me more was the massive key threaded on a cord around his neck; it looked as if it might fit the lock of the gate.
Little Eata fidgeted with nervousness, and the leader saw us and lifted his lantern over his head. “We’re waiting to get in, goodman,” Drotte called. He was the taller, but he made his dark face humble and respectful.
“Not until dawn,” the leader said gruffly. “You young fellows had better get home.”
“Goodman, the guard was supposed to let us in, but he’s not here.”
“You won’t be getting in tonight.” The leader put his hand on the hilt of his knife before taking a step closer. For a moment I was afraid he knew who we were.
Drotte moved away, and the rest of us stayed behind him. “Who are you, goodman? You’re not soldiers.”
“We’re the volunteers,” one of the others said. “We come to protect our own dead.”
“Then you can let us in.”
The leader had turned away. “We let no one inside but ourselves.” His key squealed in the lock, and the gate creaked back. Before anyone could stop him Eata darted through. Someone cursed, and the leader and two others sprinted after Eata, but he was too fleet for them. We saw his tow-colored hair and patched shirt zigzag among the sunken graves of paupers, then disappear in the thicket of statuary higher up. Drotte tried to pursue him, but two men grabbed his arms.
“We have to find him. We won’t rob you of your dead.”
“Why do you want to go in, then?” one volunteer asked.
“To gather herbs,” Drotte told him. “We are physicians’ gallipots. Don’t you want the sick healed?”
The volunteer stared at him. The man with the key had dropped his lantern when he ran after Eata, and there were only two left. In their dim light the volunteer looked stupid and innocent; I suppose he was a laborer of some kind.
Drotte continued, “You must know that for certain simples to attain their highest virtues they must be pulled from grave soil by moonlight. It will frost soon and kill everything, but our masters require supplies for the winter. The three of them arranged for us to enter tonight, and I borrowed that lad from his father to help me.”
“You don’t have anything to put simples in.”
I still admire Drotte for what he did next. He said, “We are to bind them in sheaves to dry,” and without the least hesitation drew a length of common string from his pocket.
“I see,” the volunteer said. It was plain he did not. Roche and I edged nearer the gate.
Drotte actually stepped back from it. “If you won’t let us gather the herbs, we’d better go. I don’t think we could ever find that boy in there now.”
“No you don’t. We have to get him out.”
“All right,” Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers following. Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last volunteer swing the gate closed behind us.
A man who had not spoken before said, “I’m going to watch over my mother. We’ve wasted too much time already. They could have her a league off by now.”
Several of the others muttered agreement, and the group began to scatter, one lantern moving to the left and the other to the right. We went up the center path (the one we always took in returning to the fallen section of the Citadel wall) with the remaining volunteers.
It is my nature, my joy and my curse, to forget nothing. Every rattling chain and whistling wind, every sight, smell, and taste, remains changeless in my mind, and though I know it is not so with everyone, I cannot imagine what it can mean to be otherwise, as if one had slept when in fact an experience is merely remote. Those few steps we took upon the whited path rise before me now: It was cold and growing colder; we had no light, and fog had begun to roll in from Gyoll in earnest. A few birds had come to roost in the pines and cypresses, and flapped uneasily from tree to tree. I remember the feel of my own hands as I rubbed my arms, and the lantern bobbing among the steles some distance off, and how the fog brought out the smell of the river water in my shirt, and the pungency of the new-turned earth. I had almost died that day, choking in the netted roots; the night was to mark the beginning of my manhood.
There was a shot, a thing I had never seen before, the bolt of violet energy splitting the darkness like a wedge, so that it closed with a thunderclap. Somewhere a monument fell with a crash. Silence then…in which everything around me seemed to dissolve. We began to run. Men were shouting, far off. I heard the ring of steel on stone, as if someone had struck one of the grave markers with a badelaire. I dashed along a path that was (or at least then seemed) completely unfamiliar, a ribbon of broken bone just wide enough for two to walk abreast that wound down into a little dale. In the fog I could see nothing but the dark bulk of the memorials to either side. Then, as suddenly as if it had been snatched away, the path was no longer beneath my feet—I suppose I must have failed to notice some turning. I swerved to dodge an oblesque that appeared to shoot up before me, and collided full tilt with a man in a black coat.
He was solid as a tree; the impact took me off my feet and knocked my breath away. I heard him muttering execrations, then a whispering sound as he swung some weapon. Another voice called, “What was that?”
“Somebody ran into me. Gone now, whoever he was.”
I lay still.
A woman said, “Open the lamp.” Her voice was like a dove’s call, but there was urgency in it.
The man I had run against answered, “They would be on us like a pack of dholes, Madame.”
“They will be soon in any case—Vodalus fired. You must have heard it.”
“Be more likely to keep them off.”
In an accent I was too inexperienced to recognize as an exultant’s, the man who had spoken first said, “I wish I hadn’t brought it. We shouldn’t need it against this sort of people.” He was much nearer now, and in a moment I could see him through the fog, very tall, slender, and hatless, standing near the heavier man I had run into. Muffled in black, a third figure was apparently the woman. In losing my wind I had also lost the strength of my limbs, but I managed to roll behind the base of a statue, and once secure there I peered out at them again.
My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. I could distinguish the woman’s heart-shaped face and note that she was nearly as tall as the slender man she had called Vodalus. The heavy man had disappeared, but I heard him say, “More rope.” His voice indicated that he was no more than a step or two away from the spot where I crouched, but he seemed to have vanished like water cast into a well. Then I saw something dark (it must have been the crown of his hat) move near the slender man’s feet, and understood that that was almost precisely what had become of him—there was a hole there, and he was in it.
The woman asked, “How is she?”
“Fresh as a flower, Madame. Hardly a breath of stink on her, and nothing to worry about.” More agilely than I would have thought possible, he sprang out. “Now give me one end and you take the other, Liege, and we’ll have her out like a carrot.”
The woman said something I could not hear, and the slender man told her, “You didn’t have to come, Thea. How would it look to the others if I took none of the risks?” He and the heavy man grunted as they pulled, and I saw something white appear at their feet. They bent to lift it. As though an amschaspand had touched them with his radiant wand, the fog swirled and parted to let a beam of green moonlight fall. They had the corpse of a woman. Her hair, which had been dark, was in some disorder now about her livid face; she wore a long gown of some pale fabric.
“You see,” the heavy man said, “just as I told you, Liege, Madame, nineteen times of a score there’s nothin’ to it. We’ve only to get her over the wall now.”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than I heard someone shout. Three of the volunteers were coming down the path over the rim of the dale. “Hold them off, Liege,” the heavy man growled, shouldering the corpse. “I’ll take care of this, and get Madame to safety.”
“Take it,” Vodalus said. The pistol he handed over caught the moonlight like a mirror.
The heavy man gaped at it. “I’ve never used one, Liege…”
“Take it, you may need it.” Vodalus stopped, then rose holding what appeared to be a dark stick. There was a rattle of metal on wood, and in place of the stick a bright and narrow blade. He called, “Guard yourselves!”
As if a dove had momentarily commanded an arctother, the woman took the shining pistol from the heavy man’s hand, and together they backed into the fog.
The three volunteers had hesitated. Now one moved to the right and another to the left, so as to attack from three sides. The man in the center (still on the white path of broken bones) had a pike, and one of the others an ax.
The third was the leader Drotte had spoken with outside the gate. “Who are you?” he called to Vodalus, “and what power of Erebus’s gives you the right to come here and do something like this?”
Vodalus did not reply, but the point of his sword looked from one to another like an eye.
The leader grated, “All together now and we’ll have him.” But they advanced hesitantly, and before they could close Vodalus sprang forward. I saw his blade flash in the faint light and heard it scrape the head of the pike—a metallic slithering, as though a steel serpent glided across a log of iron. The pikeman yelled and jumped back; Vodalus leaped backward too (I think for fear the other two would get behind him), then seemed to lose his balance and fell.
All this took place in dark and fog. I saw it, but for the most part the men were no more than ambient
shadows—as the woman with the heart-shaped face had been. Yet something touched me. Perhaps it was Vodalus’s willingness to die to protect her that made the woman seem precious to me; certainly it was that willingness that kindled my admiration for him. Many times since then, when I have stood upon a shaky platform in some marketplace square with Terminus Est at rest before me and a miserable vagrant kneeling at my feet, when I have heard in hissing whispers the hate of the crowd and sensed what was far less welcome, the admiration of those who find an unclean joy in pains and deaths not their own, I have recalled Vodalus at the graveside, and raised my own blade half pretending that when it fell I would be striking for him.
He stumbled, as I have said. In that instant I believe my whole life teetered in the scales with his.
The flanking volunteers ran toward him, but he had held onto his weapon. I saw the bright blade flash up, though its owner was still on the ground. I remember thinking what a fine thing it would have been to have had such a sword on the day Drotte became captain of apprentices, and then likening Vodalus to myself.
The axman, toward whom he had thrust, drew back; the other drove forward with his long knife. I was on my feet by then, watching the fight over the shoulder of a chalcedony angel, and I saw the knife come down, missing Vodalus by a thumb’s width as he writhed away and burying itself to the hilt in the ground. Vodalus slashed at the leader then, but he was too near for the length of his blade. The leader, instead of backing off, released his weapon and clutched him like a wrestler. They were at the very edge of the opened grave—I suppose Vodalus had tripped over the soil excavated from it.
The second volunteer raised his ax, then hesitated. His leader was nearest him; he circled to get a clear stroke until he was less than a pace from where I hid. While he shifted his ground I saw Vodalus wrench the knife free and drive it into the leader’s throat. The ax rose to strike; I grasped the helve just below the head almost by reflex, and found myself at once in the struggle, kicking, then striking.
Quite suddenly it was over. The volunteer whose bloodied weapon I held was dead. The leader of the volunteers was writhing at our feet. The pikeman was gone; his pike lay harmlessly across the path. Vodalus retrieved a black wand from the grass nearby and sheathed his sword in it. “Who are you?”
“Severian. I am a torturer. Or rather, I am an apprentice of the torturers, Liege. Of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.” I drew a deep breath. “I am a Vodalarius. One of the thousands of Vodalarii of whose existence you are unaware.” It was a term I had scarcely heard.
“Here.” He laid something in my palm: a small coin so smooth it seemed greased. I remained clutching it beside the violated grave and watched him stride away. The fog swallowed him long before he reached the rim, and a few moments later a silver flier as sharp as a dart screamed overhead.
The knife had somehow fallen from the dead man’s neck. Perhaps he had pulled it out in his agony. When I bent to pick it up, I discovered that the coin was still in my hand and thrust it into my pocket.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.
Thus I knew nothing, as the coin dropped into my pocket, of the dogmas of the movement Vodalus led, but I soon learned them all, for they were in the air. With him I hated the Autarchy, though I had no notion of what might replace it. With him I despised the exultants who failed to rise against the Autarch and bound the fairest of their daughters to him in ceremonial concubinage. With him I detested the people for their lack of discipline and a common purpose. Of those values that Master Malrubius (who had been master of apprentices when I was a boy) had tried to teach me, and that Master Palaemon still tried to impart, I accepted only one: loyalty to the guild. In that I was quite correct—it was, as I sensed, perfectly feasible for me to serve Vodalus and remain a torturer. It was in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I have backed into the throne.
This is an omnibus edition consisting of the novels: The Shadow of the Torturer, copyright © 1980 by Gene Wolfe
Continues...
Excerpted from Shadow & Claw by Wolfe, Gene Copyright ©1994 by Wolfe, Gene. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Orb Books; First Edition, Stains (October 15, 1994)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0312890176
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312890179
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.82 x 1.14 x 8.17 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #455,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,420 in Genetic Engineering Science Fiction (Books)
- #6,159 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy (Books)
- #13,916 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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.
Photo by Cory Doctorow licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
And yet, that basic premise is more of the starting point for The Book of the New Sun, rather than its hook. Yes, Severian is a fascinating anti-hero, a man who is capable of brutal torture and yet whose principal crime is one of kindness; a man who is both selfish and oddly kind; a man who is both interested in the honor of his guild and in overthrowing the society around him. But none of that really seems to touch on the heart of Shadow & Claw (which is comprised of the first two books of the New Sun series, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator), which is as interested in its strange, undefinable world as it is in its characters.
And what a unique world it is. It’s easy to make the assumption that Shadow & Claw is fantasy; there’s an undeniably medieval feel to the setup, to the massive castles and shadowy guilds and deadly swords. But before long, you realize that this is not an ancient world, but an impossibly distant one, and that what we are seeing is not primitive settlements but devastated ruins. What we see is not a mankind learning to connect and build a society, but one that may be dying out, as the universe itself dies out around it. That uneasy blend of past and future, of science-fiction and Arthurian myth, is one of the features of The Book of the New Sun that’s so fascinating, so compelling.
For all of that, though, it has to be said that The Book of the New Sun doesn’t read like anything else, either. Even now that I’m halfway through the series, I’m not sure I could tell you what it’s truly about; yes, Severian is on a journey, but to what end? To what are we building? What, if anything, does it all mean? I don’t have any answers to that, and to be honest, I’m not even sure that there will be answers to it. Part of that comes from Wolfe’s conceit (the series is written as Severian’s memoirs, written much later in his life, and for an audience presumably of the world around him), which results in a book that’s meandering at times, philosophical in others, and more subjective than we often realize. But much of it comes from the plotting, or lack thereof; the book often feels like a mosaic, a collection of incidents that are coming together to create something larger that we can’t see until we step back a bit and take it all in.
It’s why I've been struggling to rate this book. On one level, it’s a masterful piece of writing – wholly unique, thought-provoking, endlessly fascinating. On another, it’s frustrating, wandering, unfocused, and sometimes bewildering. Its scope and imagination are impossible not to admire, even while you sometimes wonder what it all means – or if it means anything at all. And perhaps that will change as I finish the series and I get a sense of Wolfe’s larger goals, his bigger pictures. Whatever the case, it’s a series that I’m fascinated by and compelled to keep reading, and one that I’m glad I came back to after all these years. I don’t know how far I made it when I read it all those years ago, but reading it now, it’s a book that I feel I’m far more likely to appreciate now that I’m (slightly) more mature.
Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is a popular recommendation in terms of non-traditional fantasy/science-fiction, and the man is well-respected by authors I respect so I figured it was time to find out why.
The Shadow of the Torturer is the first book in a tetralogy and it feels like it. It's a little sliver of a world, a little taste-test of Urth (a planet with a dying sun) and its weary inhabitants, and then cuts off hard at the end, offering no real conclusion. In a sense I expected this, as this story is often sold as two volumes of two books, or even a single volume of all four books. So in a way I was ready for it to be a very... introductory type story, and it was. It is a very promising introduction though.
I am a sucker for sci-fi settings that take place so far in the future that they end up feeling like the past instead. Science-fantasy, I've heard it called (though I prefer space-fantasy). The types of stories that rest on forgotten epochs and eons upon eons of history. Dune is like that. But unlike Dune Wolfe's books take place on Earth itself, or Urth. It is unclear just how far in the future the story takes place (at least, it's unclear at this time) but you can feel the history of the world. It's a tangible thing, and you can read it in the characters' faces, scry it in the ancient river Gyoll, see it in the massive border-wall of Nessus, and in the eerie halls of the Citadel... It's a world that feels old—with all of the strange mythos and cultural idiosyncrasies one would expect—and those are often the best kind.
Now, I was less sold on the characters than I was on the world itself. The story is about Severian, an apprentice of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, more commonly known as the Guild of Torturers. We are being told the story, in Severian's own words, of his exile from the guild and ascension to the throne of the autarchy. And while that story is really just getting started, the nature of Severian's unreliable narration is one of the more interesting parts of the series thus far. This unreliability could certainly be why I don't quite know how to feel about Severian yet, but the other characters that surround him sometimes felt like mere carriers of plot points instead of people with agency. I'm looking for improvement there.
Beyond the story, beyond the characters, the writing itself is noteworthy. I must be on a path of difficult lexicons or something. First Wallace, now Wolfe. I should read McCarthy soon and complete the hat trick. Bring a dictionary, is what I'm saying. Better yet bring a google search bar, because not only is Wolfe using words of utmost antiquity, he's perverted them with time. Which is realistic, but does not help in the effort of deciphering the language. Vocabulary aside, the man can write. His prose is that of someone who loves language, and wants you to love language. And there were phrases that caught me in just the right way.
So ultimately, it was a good start. And I did enjoy joining Severian as he encounters the wider world outside of his guild's Citadel. He has a lot to learn, and frankly so do I.
THE CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR
A step up from the first book, I am considering giving this one all five stars. I felt that it lost some of its steam toward the end, but may yet still change my mind.
In any case, certainly a step up. Though honestly it may just be the simple fact of getting more familiar with the world, more familiar with the characters. It's what generally happens in any series that I spend more time with (assuming consistent—or in this case improved—quality).
The Claw of the Conciliator seems to take a firmer grip on what Wolfe is shooting for this series to be. Drug experiences, strange creatures, non-linear time, secrets and myths, even tongue-in-cheek stage plays, all of these things lent to a more... involved feeling story for me here in book two.
Severian... I still don't know what to think about Severian. He has a strong sense of justice, and often does honorable things. He’s loyal, and even compassionate at times. But he also performs despicable acts, seemingly without thinking about them. And I'm not talking about his work as a headsman. In fact, as morbid a thought as it is, I actually found it fascinating how this book gets you inside the head of someone whose job is to torture and kill people for a living, and forces you to consider the thoughts and emotions that accompany such a role. Severian is a professional. He doesn't worry about the things that would make someone like me squirm. He worries about his nerves. He worries about doing a good job. In a weird way, it makes him far more relatable.
But then there's also the fact that the entire story—told as it is by Severian himself—could be full of as many lies and deceptions as he sees fit to tell. Additionally, I did not really think all that much during the first book about the repercussions of having perfect recollection. The dangerous possibility of getting lost in such a thing. How could you differentiate memory from reality? Memory from dream? Dream from reality? It would be very difficult, and is thus on occasion difficult for the reader to differentiate between these things, on top of the unreliable narration.
From a writing standpoint, I think I needed to get used to Wolfe's prose just like I needed to get used to the setting, because it was really hitting for me at times here. Many vividly and poetically described scenes that I found myself appreciating.
Taking a short break then I'll read on for the third and fourth entries in the tetralogy.
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in Mexico on March 17, 2021
- poorly packed (not a single piece of bubble foil or anything else really, just thrown into a cardboard box, both parcels, that's also why some of the paint came off on the corners of the books)
- a bit dirty (some sort of stain that I cleaned up with wet towels. It wouldn't come off under finger)/scratched (one of the books has small kind of damage, looks like it was scratched in the warehouse.
- the hardcover is indeed "hardcover", but it's not anything special really. I have seen better ones, but fine. It's not something that I can blame amazon for, but the quality of paper is kind of a joke to me (for the price they want).
The chapters have ugly headers, but the book looks okay. It's the matter of "style", although I have seen some pretty books...
It's printed in the USA (chinese quality though). I wanted the edition written in English, because this is the author's main language, plus I wanted something else than paperback, because they tend to fall apart quite easily...
Reading this book is a challenge. And, in my opinion, a totally rewarding one, since its plots and storytelling structure does not follow the same rules and formulae applied in almost every fantasy story currently available.








