Can we have a BotNS thread? I just read the whole thing and loved

>>9802027
I finished it maybe 2 weeks ago. Easily my favorite fantasy/sci-fi I've read. One of the best things I've read in general. His lovely short stories throughout are probably what pushes it up so high for me.

Barnes and The NobleS is usually too expensive for me, and I'd rather shop at a locally owner store anyway.

>>9802038
boo

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Is there a name for the type of plot BotNS has? Maybe my favorite thing about the novel is the way there's always a sense of the end in mind, largely due to Severian constantly reminding us of it, yet at the same time it's a very wandering, meandering story, one in which the reader gets lost in the world along with Severian. It's like there's a path, but it's a rambling, winding one that goes through forests and mountains.

>>9802057
Its a common enough story structure (its an Odyssey), the weirdness comes in through the details and the psychological focus.

I haven't read Urth but does anyone else feel sad for Severian? His the reward to his long, brutal quest for identity is more or less the loss what little identity he had to begin with. He gets to become Autarch, but seems to value himself as a vessel for the role of Autarch, and not himself as ascended to the position. Dorcas leaves him with the hint they will get back together but before she dies in a different time, Thecla loses her mysterious and exotic qualities, which are led Severian to become infatuated with her, when they merge, he never makes peace with Agia which he clearly longs to do and Jonas is met again but not in the incarnation which Severian had such a fondness for. Now he gets to live his life as a muddle of minds, as a God-like King of a fucked up world with barely any hope and will eventually bring the New Sun which forces unknown have already decided for him. Perhaps the whole thing is an extended metaphor to the transition from adolescence and adulthood, which often means leaving behind old friends, committing yourself to various unchangeable and unknown forces and sacrificing some of your individuality to become successful.

The return of Severian with Dorcas at the end of Shadow of the Torturer is probably the single best scene to come out of sci fi.

>>9802057
Technically it's a dying earth tale, but >>9802063
is also correct.

>>9802074
I definitely got the sense that he was desperately trying to hold on to his identity after his exile. The carelessness by which he left Baldander's party really struck me in a strange way, but I wasn't sure why until I read this post.

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>>9802027
It's pretty good

I want to read Book of the Long Sun, but I have so many unread books that it seems silly to go seek out more

>>9802074
>Perhaps the whole thing is an extended metaphor to the transition from adolescence and adulthood, which often means leaving behind old friends, committing yourself to various unchangeable and unknown forces and sacrificing some of your individuality to become successful.

Maybe, yes, but think in broader thematic terms.

>>9803084
I'm near the end of Long Sun right now. It's very good. Also a completely different kind of story to New Sun.

>>9802027
I recommend the Lexicon Urthus as an excellent companion book if you're feeling lost, although perhaps don't get it until you've read the books twice. I enjoyed the Book of the New Sun more on my second read because it's only then that some things really clicked.

BotNS is probably my favourite novel in any genre desu. It's more affecting than anything else I've read.

>>9802074
>Now he gets to live his life as a muddle of minds, as a God-like King of a fucked up world with barely any hope and will eventually bring the New Sun which forces unknown have already decided for him.

He's basically sacrificed himself in order to facilitate the coming of the New Sun of which he is also the literal representation i.e. the New Son i.e. Christ. On one level the BotNS is a bildungsroman as you pointed out, but on another level it's the Book of the New Son and a garbled version of the New Testament. That's by no means the deepest reading though, the stuff with the different timelines and abu punchau, hildegrin and the aliens is pretty crucial too.

But Gene Wolfe deliberately made Severian a torturer because he believed there's a good chance that's what the historical Jesus Christ was, and it's also a position in which you can understand human suffering. Quotation from Gene Wolfe from the Castle of the Otter:

>“It has been remarked thousands of times,” Wolfe once said, “that Christ died under torture. Many of us have read so often that he was ‘a humble carpenter’ that we feel a little surge of nausea on seeing the words yet again. But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments of torture were wood, nails, and a hammer; that the man who built the cross was undoubtedly a carpenter too; that the man who hammered in the nails was as much a carpenter as a soldier, as much a carpenter as a torturer. Very few seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a ‘humble carpenter,’ the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip.”

Is Urth worth reading?

>>9804673
if you liked BotNS it definitely is

the start is a bit staggering but it's great over all

>>9803143
The first few pages of Nightside are the most beautifully written passages Wolfe ever wrote. They bring a tear to my eye every time I read them.