Books by author: Gene Wolfe

This book could well merit a four-star rating, but I won't know until I read the second half of the series. Having never read Wolfe before, I don't know whether or not I can trust him as a writer to tie things together in an acceptable manner. So far, he has raised far more questions than he has answered. Although I've enjoyed the journey so far, and I'm interested in finishing the series, I am a bit worried that it won't have been worth the effort.

The Book of the New Sun is not a series that can be understood in one reading. Wolfe admits this in the last twenty pages, after a whirlwind of apparent Deus ex machina during the final chapters. There's so much going on in the 800 pages of this novel that has no apparent relevance when it happens, but which turns out to be important 400 pages later, that there's no way for a normal reader to make sense of it in one go. Alas, now that I know the ending and some of the novel's secrets, I have little interest in revisiting it.

I realize that I'm not being entirely fair to a series of novels that has won many awards and the adulation of the critics, but there's only so much work I'm willing to do to enjoy a novel. I'm reminded of Infinite Jest in that regard, but I loved Wallace's wordplay and I found his characters worth getting to know. In contrast, Wolfe's writing is very stylized and only the narrator achieves any depth of characterization.

Wolfe's creation is very ambitious, and he has created a fantasy world with much potential, but the story arc as a whole has many of the qualities of a shaggy-dog tale — ever more outlandish adventures ending without a good punchline. On these points, another obvious comparison is Tolkien, but Wolfe falls short there too: Urth is no Middle Earth.