The book of the new sun thread

is this worth reading as someone who doesn't particularly enjoy fantasy books?

>>8344161
It's not strictly fantasy. I would call it "theological science fiction".
And it's leagues above any other fantasy novel

>>8344161
It's fantasy at times, sometimes goes into SF.

Still, being "fantasy / SF" is not what defines the book. It's pretty philosophical and discusses some interesting themes. It feels more like the Bible than flippin' Lord of the Rings.
Severian can get really rambly at times though. But you'll learn to live with it. Sometimes it's funny like when he asked Agia if she wants to hear a story he discussed with Thecla, Agia says no but Severian tells the story anyway because he wanted to hear it one more time. He can get really autistic.

>>8344206
Strange how he can be such an oblivious autist and yet be such a stud
He says he isn't even attractive
One of the many mysteries of the novel

>>8345527
People find him attractive because he has Exultant genes

by the end of the story he probably does look like shit

>>8345527
The game is rigged

>>8344126
He does seem to have more but no clear significance...

I tried to listen to this on audiobook and had to rewind 6 times in the first 5 minutes. it's badly written and confusing as fuck

>>8345574
It's not badly written. It's meant to be read, not listened to in the background, it needs your full attention, that's why it's confusing.

>>8345574
Is this bait?

This series has so many layers. I've read it twice before, and started on my third reading recently. There are still things about it I'm noticing for the first time.

Whenever Severian mentions his perfect memory, the surrounding text contains inconsistencies with earlier parts of the story.

>>8345607
Like what?

>>8344161
It's pretentious shit.
Imagine house of leaves but less entertaining.

Can you fucking dumbasses substantiate your posts?

And what was the deal with little Severian anyway?

>>8344161
It's worth trying definitely

ignore this dummy >>8345659

>>8345607>>8345637
For example (and I may be wrong but this is just from memory) Severian mentions having sex with Thecla at one part- when it was before stated that he didn't have sex with Thecla

>>8345601
? I listen to audiobooks while jogging and this is the first non literary work where I've had to rewind it multiple times. Certainly the first scifi/fantasy book

This is the most complex novel I know. The plot works on so many levels... it is both allegorical and not. it is more full of mysteries and puzzles than Ulysses.
I love the way details about the setting are revealed in very subtle, easy to miss ways- it makes it feel like a very alien and unknown world.

>>8345754
>non literary work
It's a novel, that makes it a literary work. And don't evoke the "literature/genre fiction" dichotomy, because that doesn't apply here or pretty much anywhere. And if it did, the New Sun books are so far above most other science fiction or fantasy books that it wouldn't matter anyway

>>8345754
Yeah, this is for sitting down and focusing on, not listening to in the background.

>>8345729
>Severian mentions having sex with Thecla at one part
Really? Never remember reading that.

>>8345754
Audio books were made for people who can't read print, i.e. the blind or nearly blind, or alternatively for people that have problems processing written information, like the severely dyslexic. They were not intended to be used by lazy cunts who think they can absorb a novel as background noise to their daily routine.

>>8344126
I thought for sure Gene was going to pull some time loop shenanigans, but, NOPE

>>8345921
that's what I meant by red herring. But there's no way that Severian could be the same Severian that grew up with the the torturers.
It may imply that Severian has a twin sister named Severa, like little Severian. She would probably have grown up with the witches

>>8345921
read Urth of the New Sun if you want that

>>8345907
You're a dumbass.

>>8345931
I'm pretty sure the time loop shenanigans could be inferred just from clues in the first four volumes

I wish the book of the new sun wiki had more extensive analysis and entries

>>8345942
The coffins in Severian's "Dorm" and whatnot

>>8346043
The coffin makes me think maybe little Severian really was another iteration of our Severian. Because there obviously were many of them. The one who is buried in the coffin, Apu Punchau, the narrator Severian, et cetera... And Severian can survive "dying" sometimes. It's hard to tell.

>>8345907
What the fuck are you talking about lol

>>8344126
>>8346193
He could be an "earlier" iteration, one that failed because... didn't he succumb, in a way, to Satan's lure?

>>8346224
I thought Erebus or Abaia or the thing in the mines was Satan, and Typhon was more of a king ahab
But I'm not too familiar with the bible, so I may have confused that

How are the long sun and short sun series?

>>8346259
Typhon offering Severian Autarchship of earth if he swears submission to him is Gene doing a take-off of Satan's last temptation of Christ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temptation_of_Christ#3._Mountain

>>8346283
I like them both a lot. Long Sun is very different from New Sun, there's no odd vocabulary and there's much more of a "plot" to the story, its even told in a third person perspective, not the unreliable first person perspective you'd expect from Gene. Short Sun is more of a return to form, it is much more like New Sun.

Always funny to see people say shit like "plot dosent matter" but go into GW or even Pynchon thread and the plot is all they talk about.

So is it just one guy posting that meme or what?

>>8346306
What if the plot is the only thing that requires talking-about, are you a faggot mister?

>>8346355
I'm not sure you even know what you asked me.

>>8345527
Aliens are giving the women around him drugs to make them sluts. Or he's raping them. Or they fuck him because he's their grandson.

>>8346304
Dropping the obscure diction is one of Long Sun's strengths. Though some big words are used, they are more integral, less of a novelty. The prose of Long Sun is so elegant, it has such a natural flow to it. Though I might change my read when I reread New Sun again, for the time being Long Sun is my favorite.

Fuck, my app crashed, I wrote on teleology of Aquinas in New Sun, now it's gone forever.

Should I read Urth before Long Sun ?

>>8347402
Yes, urth is the conclusion to new sun

>>8347402
>>8347701
Though, it doesnt really matter, long and short sun are more or less stand alone.

>>8346283
Long Sun was mediocre compared to the New Sun. Wolfe is simply better at first person. It's also too long, it becomes a drag near the end. It should have been at least somewhat shorter.
Short Sun is on the other hand great, similar to New Sun.

>>8345542
Or he's fucking lying about all his sexual encounters. You'll notice he talks a lot of shit if you pay enough attention. An anyway, the book's supposed to be his autobiography that he's writing as Autarch, right? So it pays to embellish for PR reasons.

>>8347946
I disagree. Wolfe has confirmed explicitly that he never lies, he sometimes twists the facts a bit, doesn't understand them or simply leaves bits out.
His sexual encounters aren't random and don't happen out of the blue.
Agia, who he doesn't fugg, wants to make him soft and also say she is sorry in a way, for what she believes will kill him.
Thecla is locked up in a tower and the Autarch planned Sev to fall in love with her, I mean which 18 year old wouldn't? She is bored and also quite decadent, of course she will want some dick.
Dorcas is alone in the world, knows not who she is and seeks protection, her body is the only thing she can give and Sev rapes her anyway.
Jolenta gets raped.
The one mascarading as a pellerine too is trying to buy her life with her body.

>>8348004
when does he rape dorcas
isnt dorcas his lover

>>8348004
It's been closer to a decade since I read the books but I don't recall there being this much rape going on.

>>8348032
>when does he rape dorcas
When he turns water to wine. He "forces" himself upon her. It's very ambivalent in the portrayal, Dorcas gives in because she knows she's got nowhere else to go.
>isnt dorcas his lover
She is and he loves her as much as he loves himself. But, not at that point.
>>8348046
He doesn't make it obvious. The words used are never direct. I didn't notice any on the first read.

I read the books, and I kinda didn't like them. I think they were a classic case of 2deep4me. I understand the allure of a deep, complex novel, but I also feel that mr Wolfe went too far in many places where it hardly made sense to me.

>>8348113
It isn't terribly difficult to understand it, especially if you know a thing or two about Catholicism.

>>8348113
You can kind of take a lot of it at face value, because nobody has really "figured it out" yet.

>>8348113
The thing about Wolfe is that people LOVE to overthink him; I doubt even he thinks his stuff is that bizzare. See how he talks and its clear he's a straight shooter.

There was this one short story that pretty much told you its point in the first couple paragraphs then proceeded to deliver. And then you see some guys "interpretation" thats all over the fucking place.

So my take on Wolfe is this: Read amd enjoy, flow it out and dont stress yourself about "getting it", his books are meant to he re-read and are well worth it each tome.

>>8345929
Wasn't it implied that Meryn was Severian's sister?

>>8345527
He's not really a stud at all.

Thecla likes him because he's kind and she's in a horrific situation.

Dorkus likes him because they have an innate ambiguous attraction to each other because he's her grandson

Jolenta isn't attracted to Severian until it becomes apparent to her that he's special.

The older women at the town where he's the head executioner guy is an anomaly but she's a cougar at a masquerade thing so she hardly counts.

>>8349428
>Dorkus

>>8349428
>because he's her grandson

What the fug, I missed that part

>>8349428
Dorcus is his mother.

>>8348612
What short story.

>>8349977
Dorcas, sorry.

>>8349428
He was also wearing a mask at that party which she specifically tells him to leave on in case she guessed incorrectly and he wasn't attractive.

>>8349978
I forget the name but its a first person one about a guy thinking about this girl he seems to have seen twice in his whole life, but at the same age across many years

>>8348612
>there are people who tried to "get" Shadow and Claw
I mean don't get me wrong, the narrative was very detailed and I quite enjoyed it, but nothing seemed that hard to get at all, even the philosophical points that were made. Not to sound self-righteous or anything but did the book really come off as that deep?

>>8349428
There's also the slave woman in the town next to Baldander's castle, but it turns out she never actually liked him was playing to his ego until she got him to eat those hallucinogenic mushrooms.

>>8345527
He has muscles from carrying T.E. around, and he never wears a shirt.

>>8345729
That's just because he's lying at first and let's things slip as he gets carried away, same thing as when he says he had to stop thecla from clawing at his eyes

>>8350087
Agreed. I just thought it was a really comfy read. Every chapter was an independent story. I read one before bed each night. Made me feel super cozy as it got epic.

>>8345660
I'm not sure about little severian

The obvious answer is he's a sort of allegory for big severians past, loss of family, dies at a young age etc

The main thing I think he's there for is to illustrate that big severians has a sister, as severian is a name given to the male twin

>>8345760
Have you read urth of the new sun? It takes the subtle complexities of the original work and flips the whole series on its head, the whole novel begins to work in a cyclical fashion with multiple severians existing throughout history, everything you think you know about severian is subverted

>>8350087
To be honest you're probably missing a lot of stuff, the books are really enjoyable when read at face value but there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, like severians time travel, aliens manipulating the plot etc etc

>>8350087
The meta narrative, the religious experience, the way he portrays teleology in a way that's it's impossible to deny it are the main deep things about it, in short.

File: Screenshot_2016-08-02-00-16-35.png (57KB, 480x800px) Image search: [Google]

57KB, 480x800px

Literally just bought the first part. I tried reading it on my phone but couldn't do it.

It has been a while since I read it but there was one part that didn't make sense to me. When Sebastian and Dorcas are walking together in Shadow of the Torturer they both have a vision of a flying (floating?) castle.

What was the deal with that?

>>8350762
Err meant to type Severian. Fucking auto-correct.

>>8346588
Thank God.

>>8350762
It was a rocket flying into space.

>>8350762
Tzadkiel's ship

>tfw I fucking love this series
>tfw being Italian we have only this series translated
fuck

I've read The Knight in English and it's quite good, but it has too many new words for me.

>>8345527
all the mysteries are solved when you remember that it is told in the first person by a liar

>>8350909

It was the Pelerines' cathedral.

>>8351002
No

>>8350042
“Suzanne Delage” is one of his more puzzling stories.

>>8351757
Doubt.

>>8350982
I thought the knight sucked and I'm a massive fan of gene Wolfe

>>8352707
The Knight was pretty great childrens story arthiriana

>>8352733
A children's story where the child protag gets /ss/'d in the first 20 pages.

>>8352964
Well yeah.

>>8351757
I just read it and at first it seemed so straightforward. Then I read a bunch of commentary on it and it blew my mind

>>8352707
I wouldn't say it sucked, ofc it was not the book of the new sun, but the lore was deep and the story was never straight

>>8354719
so it was abysmal and gay?

>>8350762
Utes's the pelerines tent cathedral being set aflame and rising from the updraft like a hot air balloon.

>>8350762
This is the one thing I can't see any explanation for

This series is pretty much perfect. There is no reason to not read the best genre fiction on this planet.

>>8357403
I have to agree. Wolfe is the most underrated author

>>8357544
Not really. GW is a writer's writer. Guys like GRRM and Neil Gaiman have been singing his praises for decades now. He's only "unknown" among average readers.

>>8349977
Close, grandmother, the balding man from the restaurant is his father, it's heavily implied his mother is an exultant and a prisoner of the guild he is born into

Has anyone read this?

http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/10/the-best-introduction-to-the-mountains-2/

It's 90% Wolfe sperging out about Tolkien. Reading Tolkien's response to one of Wolfe's letters was pretty surreal

>>8357563
>GRRM, gaymean

uuughh

>>8358424
What? Was I supposed to say Pynchon? Those are popular authors who know GW personally. Gaiman is very good friends with him, and GRRM was part of the same writer circle as GW in their early days.

>>8358424
Gaiman is alright. The Sandman comics are cool. I don't have an opinion on GRRM.

>>8358420
It's a pretty nice essay, thanks for posting.

I always hear that Wolfe uses Catholic themes, but can someone expand on how? I've been interested in distinctly Catholic literature.

>>8358869
It's a novel which tries to make you feel the thomistic-aristotelian teleology, the world is wholly intelligible, ordered by God. That's the gist of the overarching narrative.
But alongside that, Severian has a long journey which is largely religious in nature, he repented his sins, gives himself up to the will of God and so on.
It has a story in symbols, parallels to sacraments. You can't miss it, unless you are that one retard from the general.