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This is maybe one of the saddest books I've read. An overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness pours out of each line. It is deeply emotional book, and I don't think such a book is for everyone.
Audible really outdid themselves with this production. I can't imagine a finer narrator for this series than Jonathon Davis. His pacing, emphasis, vocal expressions and various character renderings are flawless. The pacing is particularly important, as nearly every sentence contains some clue to solving the final puzzle. Another aspect of the book that makes it so important is its richly detailed world-building. Wolfe creates a fully realized, believable universe that is both strange and familiar. He populates it with a wide variety of cultures, religions, and technologies, each of which is unique and detailed. This gives the book a sense of depth and realism that is rare in the genre. Father Inire gives Domnina instruction in some basics of physics – (1) that if something moves very, very fast, it grows heavy and is attracted to Urth or other worlds, becoming a source of attraction itself if it travels fast enough; and (2) although light is weightless, it presses against what if falls on like a wind pushes the arms of a mill. He explains that the mirrors are used to travel between the stars, saying “if the light is from a coherent source, and forms the image reflected from an optically exact mirror, the orientation of the wave fronts is the same because the image is the same. Since nothing can exceed the speed of light in our universe, the accelerated light leaves it and enters another. When it slows again, it reenters ours – naturally at another place…. Eventually it will be a real being, if we do not darken the lamp or shift the mirrors. For a reflected image to exist without an object to originate it violates the laws of our universe, and therefore an object will be brought into existence.”What makes Gene Wolfe's epic different from everything else on the SFF shelf is his unique, evocative storytelling style. The reader isn't given all of the history and religion lessons (etc.) that are often dumped on us at the beginning of a fantasy epic. Rather, Severian's story is episodic and seems like it's meandering lazily, taking regular scenic detours, as if there's nowhere to go and plenty of time to get there. Because the story isn't a straight narrative, we don't understand the purpose or meaning of everything Severian relates ??? we have to patch it together as we go. By the end of the book, we're still clueless about most of it and we're starting to realize that Severian is kind of clueless, too. Much of the power of this novel comes from the sense that there is world-building and symbolism on a massive scale here, but that explanations and revelations for the reader would just cheapen it and remove the pleasure that comes from the experience of discovery.
Domnina later vowed she would not go but a servant in a livery came for her the next day. When she returned hours later she was very upset. The servant had taken her down halls she did not know existed in the House Absolute, which alone was frightening. The presence chamber itself was a large room with solid red hangings and empty except for two vases taller than a man and several feet wide. “In the center was what she at first took to be a room within the room. The walls were octagonal and painted with labyrinths. Over it, just visible from where she stood at the entrance to the presence chamber burned the brightest lamp she had ever seen. It was blue-white, she said, and so brilliant an eagle could not have kept his eyes on it.” One of the eight walls painted with labyrinths opened and Father Inire stepped out. Behind him she saw a bottomless hole filled with light. He said, “You’ve come just in time. Child, the fish is nearly caught. You can watch the setting of the hook, and learn by what means his golden scales are to be meshed in our landing net.” He then led her into the octagonal enclosure. He stumbled, as I have said. In that instant I believe my whole life teetered in the scales with his.Severian and Dorcas return to their travels and encounter Dr. Talos and Baldanders, who are almost ready to perform the play they had invited Severian to that morning. Severian assists in the play, and the next day the group sets out toward The Piteous Gate leading out through the great wall of Nessus. When they are in the gate, there is suddenly a commotion and the volume abruptly ends. Severian and Dorcas walk about the city and then return to their room. Although Dorcas cannot remember being with a man, she knows she is not a virgin and is not hesitant in her desire for Severian. They make love and Dorcas says, “I’m glad. I’m so glad.” Severian falls asleep afterward and again dreams of the great face he has seen in his prior dream of Gyoll, “a portent of coral and white seen in the sky, smiling with needle teeth.” 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. While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
The narrator for this audiobook is literally the only redeeming feature; he is able to create discrete characters easily and memorably, and strides with aplomb through the made-up waffling of the author. He comes to an inn, where he first meets Baldanders and Dr. Talos. The are travelling mountebanks, who invite Severian to join them in a play to be performed the same day. During breakfast, Dr. Talos manages to recruit the waitress for his play and they set out into the streets. Jonathan Davis adds so much to the novel with his witty and compassionate reading, modifying his voice to enhance each character without drawing attention to himself. And it's a pleasure to hear him relish Wolfe's beautiful prose or say words like anacreontic, carnifex, epopt, fuligin, fulgurator, hipparch, paracoita, and psychopomp. (Though it does help to have the text handy!) All right," Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers following. Certain mysteries 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.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. Per guild custom, a masked and cloaked Severian stands on the scaffold for a long time before Agilus is brought out. Once he is, the execution is swiftly completed. Severian hears Agia’s faraway scream at that moment. After the body is dragged away and Severian is paid a “master’s fee” for his services, he and Dorcas depart after dark per the advice of more experienced guildsmen. It is revealed that Severian was ill after the execution and he attributes that to nerves and concern that something would go wrong. This occasions Severian to recall a tale of Father Inire he heard from Thecla. When she was 13, she had a friend Domnina who looked several years younger. She says that there are two large mirrors in the Hall of Meaning which are 3-4 ells wide (10 to 13 feet) and extend to the ceiling. Thecla and Domnina enjoyed playing there because their images were infinitely multiplied. One day Father Inire approached them; he was wearing iridescent robes (having colors like the rainbow) that faded into gray and was only slightly taller than them. He told them to be wary because there was an imp hiding in the mirror who creeps into the eyes of those who look at it. Domnina asked if he was shaped like a gleaming tear and Father Inire said that was someone else. But he offered to take her to his “presence chamber” tomorrow to show him to Domnina. 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.
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