Urth of the New Sun: The Second Take on The Second Reading

The locked and rusted gate of the necropolis stood before me, wisps of mazed kelp threading its spikes like the mountain paths, the unchanging symbol of my old exile. I launched myself upward, swimming several strokes and thus flourishing the skull without intending it. Suddenly ashamed, I released it; but it appeared to follow me, propelled by the motion of my hand.

Gene Wolfe; Urth of the New Sun

The above passage, where Severian encounters his childhood (a torture guild) home after drowning his formerly frozen planet with a new sun, summarizes my experience with C-PTSD. Time and again I was forced to confront a series of facts: my past was dead, I had killed it, and it was never meant to last. 

My past is dead. Many people think something along those lines but very few people must confront the fact that dead means rotting. My past wasn’t just gone, it actively disintegrated, morphing into new and horrid shapes, revealing new details I’d not thought about as a child, similar to finding the skull of a childhood friend at the bottom of the ocean. 

Or a childhood rapist.

Or the fading memory of your wife’s childhood laugh.

All. Rotting. At the bottom.

In one big oily mess.

But it was what was left behind that haunts me still. Memories of what I valued and why were underneath the things that rotted, but now exist as half-shades of their own, without the things that gave them context. I've tried. And Tried. And tried. To get back what I had atop of these more foundational, more primal, memories. But the person who had made those memories is long gone. His innocence, his joy, his strength, it's all gone, vanished into the ether. There's just me, here, in the present. 

The truth of it is the next part: I did this, to myself. By wanting to heal, by wanting more than what I could give, I had to destroy what I was. On some level I knew who I was just simply couldn't get me through the next lifetime. I had set my face like flint so hard, had put everything I had into the attitude, that to change was to fall apart. All of this emotional wreckage... I had done it. And I had to. 

But the hardest part of it all, as I examine my emotional wreckage, is the knowledge that it was always going to happen. I remember how I felt, why I felt, and how driven I was... and I know now it was never going to be a long-term thing. And it isn't. I'm far weaker than I was before. I don't have the willpower. I can't face the same emotional storms I once could. But I don't need to now, I suppose, now do I? Life has changed. I am married. A father. I went to visit family for July 4th for criminy's sake, that was definitely not something I did as a child. I'm in a new place. I chose this new place. And that means everything that could not adapt to that new place had to die.

That just so happened to be almost everything.

Almost.

But not quite.

If you think this post has nothing to do with Urth of the New Sun then I don't know what to tell you, but it does. It has everything to do with it. Wolfe, on coming back from the Korean War, could not hear a loud noise without collapsing to the ground in a heap. He lived with his parents because his PTSD was so bad that he couldn't live a normal life on his own. Book and Urth of the New Sun were written very much in this period of recovery, and I just... I felt this book in a way that's impossible to understate. Even more than New Sun I always walked in a dream when reading this book. It was a dream where I could just... be. I was what I was: strong, defeated, pathetic, and some form of nobility that I have a hard time owning.

But it's there.

Just like with Severian, the former torturer, rule, and then drowner of Urth.

The Book of the New Sun: Second Read Through

My first review of this book was a purposeful babbling. I was trying very hard to put into words something that I'd always been afraid would eat me if I did. I went and finished The Solar Cycle in a flurry of turning pages, puzzlement, and deep mourning. Gene Wolfe was wrestling with what I still wrestle with: the inherent dishonesty of mankind, the terrible mercy of the Divine, and a pain that was far deeper than personal. When I finished Short Sun I knew I wanted to return immediately; I knew this to be a terrible idea. Reading the books was like the most painful of soul surgeries. I would need to wait. I wasn't idle; I read and read and read and learned and played games and explored ideas and tried to change just enough. I had a bit of a plan on going back, reading-wise. And it was going well!

But then one night I had a dream. I was standing on an electric dam, at night. I was admiring this machine of power, and knew it to be mine. I had examined the schematics thoroughly and I knew this place. I was the master. As I stood in the dying sun's rays I felt confident. 

I heard Gene Wolfe's voice, echoing above the crashing water. And my blood turned cold. 

I followed where I thought the voice was coming from and found a stair, leading down into the dam. It should not have been there. I knew the schematics. There was nothing in the dam, not there. But Gene's voice was clear enough, even if the words weren't. I didn't want to go down. Staircases that aren't supposed to be there was weird enough, what was the ghost of Gene Wolfe doing in my dream?? But my legs started moving. I tried to stop them. I knew what was down there, I knew what waited, and I didn't want to see it. The lie had been so pretty! So complete! Couldn't I just be left alone?

There was a door at the bottom. I stood there, trying so hard not to open it. But Gene spoke, beyond the door, above the roar of the water. The metal of the handle was so cold.

An abyss of darkness. Gene's voice was no louder.

I felt a moment of vertigo. I couldn't, wouldn't, go in!

And then I was standing in the darkness. Inside the dam was only that darkness. Only! There should have been pipes, electrical equipment, stuff! My head began to hurt and I clutched it in my hands. A BANG and I was deserted by the door. Gene's voice got louder and louder, and I began to try and scream to block it out. It was something he'd said in an interview. 

"You'll be a motherfucker or a saint, and if you're lucky you'll be both." 

There was a laughter with the last phrase that always made my cold with terror. I collapsed, and felt the shifting of the dam. I was hit by a drop of water.

I woke up, in a foul mood. After a day I went upstairs and stared at The Book of the New Sun. It wasn't time yet, so I had declared.

My hands trembled as I picked it up.

Severian is easier to empathize with this time around. In the first read-through Severian comes off as an amoral womanizer. On a second read-through it's apparent that most of my impressions of Severian were a reaction against his culture; I had foisted my culture shock upon the protagonist, as if to blame him for not being like me. There is a funny tendency in modern liberal thought to ascribe the sins of a culture to the people who are held captive by it.  We all have this feeling that others should know the truth that we, as liberals, think is inherent to all humanity, and we judge all others by those standards. This time around I was better able to absorb what was coming from Severian and what was coming from his culture, and how they collided in Severian's skull. And what I found was a man continuously struggling against his own culture. Severian was always questioning, trying to be free. No matter how flawed he was Severian wanted freedom from his cultural climate, and was willing to sacrifice everything to own up to what was inside of him.. The fact that he mostly failed  shouldn't tarnish where he succeeded. And Severian does succeed, in all the ways that one actually can. Any further would require suicide or monasticism. He comes to the conclusion that nobody else would come to: that without the New Sun the rest doesn't matter. Humanity cannot solve its issues without changing the context it lives in.

The plot this time around was... clearer? It's certain that Severian was being watched, prodded, and manipulated from the word "Go". Severian is simply trying to get from point A to point  B, and the rest of the world, aware of what he will become, is doing everything it can to get him their side. I can certainly see why Severian was chosen. His willingness to protect life whenever he could, to question everything that was in his power to question, made him stand out. And that's a powerful person to get on your side. I think my favorite "book" of the bunch is The Sword of the Lictor, where Severian winds up accidentally leading a rebellion because, I mean, of course! That's a very Severian thing to do. The Citadel of the Autarch is a fitting end, however; Severian, the one who always felt the limits of his knowledge so keenly, now has more knowledge than anyone knows what to do with. It's a good place to leave him. He'll bring the New Sun.

I caught the dying woman under the guild this time around, ha!

As I try to tie this up I find myself at a loss for words, again. This time around changed everything, all over again, just like before. But this time I was looking for it. I expected Wolfe to rock me. And he did. There are things I'm deliberately leaving out here, because, just like the first time, they'll continue to percolate in my heart, changing how I see the world. Ultimately you'll see the changes in what I talk about on this blog and how I choose to write about it, just like last time. The dream, that eternity, that I spoke of so  brokenly in the first review isn't an external thing that I long for now; a spark is now deep down, in the recesses of my soul, where I keep the nightmares and darkness. The dam had been built to cover this spark. Somehow it had survived.

This time the spark wasn't lit. 

It was blown on.

A crackling can be heard. 

My soul is warmer.

Design Journal: Crescendo and Gene Wolfe

There is no author with half the influence upon Crescendo as Gene Wolfe; Crescendo is meant to emulate the deeply psychological and spiritual fantasy shown in The Solar Cycle and the Latro Trilogy. But Wolfe's works are almost impossibly large, not to mention byzantine in structure. So what do I mean when I say Crescendo is heavily influenced by Wolfe? I mean a few things. Protagonists make their way through worlds that are always moving, regardless of their actions. Wolfe's stories are as much about the protagonists learning to be a part of the world, with adventure being just one aspect of their lives. Stories are not centered on defeating the Big Bad(s), but end when the protagonist has reached a point of development that makes an ending statement. Wolfe's stories are almost ruthlessly character oriented. Crescendo grabs all these points and is attempting to make a cohesive RPG from them.

Sorry, no complex interweaving of enigmas, not yet! If anyone has ideas for that let me know! But I've never personally felt a draw to the puzzle-unravelling that a lot of people seem to have with Wolfe. What Wolfe is saying, behind those puzzles that I can't figure out, is a lot more interesting to me than the puzzles themselves. That's not a knock upon those who like doing that, but if you're looking for a game that is an enigma in a box, I'd suggest Bleak Spirit. Maybe some of that tech may wind its way into Crescendo. But it's not my focus, not at the moment.

Most RPGs I've played and read are not deliberately psychological. Play centers around the actions of the characters, with the psychological impact of those actions left up to the player. Crescendo will be a deeply psychological game. Players draft Tenets, which are what their character is willing to fight for. These Tenets have what are called Resilience Points, which measures how much failure the Tenet can take before the player has to make a decision about that Tenet. Characters also have Limits, which are traits that the player can use to recharge the RP of Tenets; act on the Limit and heal your Tenets! There's a lot more than that involved, but those are the basics: act upon Tenet, lose RP, and use Limits to recharge. At each stage of development I've checked in with licensed psychologists of varying backgrounds to ensure that the mechanics are psychologically accurate and healthy, with more input to be sought in the future.. I have always found gaming to be a cathartic and helpful experience, and wish Crescendo to be deliberately so. 

The Catholicism of Wolfe is indispensable in understanding his work. But Wolfe was no ordinary Catholic; he was well-experienced in the healing power of God, not to mention his historical, theological, and philosophical background. Thanks to my own experiences (some of which I have put on this blog), combined with my private studies of the Philokalia, Leanne Payne, Thomas Carlyle, The Book of the Elders, Antirhetikous, Meditations on the Tarot, The Emerald Tablet, The Golden Legend... I really hope I'm up to the task. Cause I assure you that's a drop in the bucket in comparison to what Wolfe had read. Wolfe's emphasis on the healing of a personality by encountering Others, especially those of the supernatural order, will be a primary theme throughout the mechanics of Crescendo. To be whole one must encounter the whole of creation. Locales provide feedback loops that create encounter that would be random in any other game, but here are deeply significant to the development of your character.

The setting the players have crafted will always be in motion; the actions the players take will be mirrored in the setting, producing a living and breathing world that will have an uncanny familiarity to them. On the GM's side this means Movements, which are the big three things happening in the setting at the moment. The GM and players will keep journals of some of their actions, so that they can be imitated by the NPCs in the setting, as well as informing further actions in the narrative. Your decisions matter, they reflect into the world over the course of the game.

One of the things that's struck me as I've read Homer and other ancient writers was their emphasis on games and festivals, not to mention philosophical discourse. Characters exist in a larger world and not only do they enjoy it but they talk about it! Wolfe takes this trope and runs with it. And so will Crescendo. There's festivals, executions, strategy games, and other contests. Characters get bored and will have conversations that build the world, as well as the themes of the story. This means that when conflicts do occur, whether by word or steel, they are quite unusual and intense. Crescendo will not just be about the big plot. The game will reward any action you decide to take equally, so it can take almost any tone you like in any given session. But because of the focus upon the player's Tenets and the GM's Movements you'll find that the experience is cohesive. Wolfe writes to see the journey of a character. The narrative meanders along, with elements from the background jumping in to develop the protagonist... only to fade into the background when its end is complete. Crescendo is entirely based upon the interactions of the players. There's no grand scheme at the forefront of the action. What the players put on their character sheets is only a beginning, the fuel you put the fire of your time to. Each session ends in a twist, wrenching the narrative into unexpected territory, forcing the story to stay on the characters.

And this brings us to what I think Wolfe and Crescendo are about: the person, with all their flaws and virtues, in the context of their world, with all its flaws and virtues. Person and world crash into each other, evolving into something different and new. After processing what they've changed into they run into each other again. And again. And again. And at some point you know they're going to be fine, somehow. So you leave them be.

Everything I've read of Wolfe's has made me a better person, in no small part because he's part of the original story, the primal narrative of the ancients: man looks at the cosmos; the cosmos stares back. They size each other up, trying to understand each other.

And then someone blinks.

Soldier of the Mist

 

At some point it occurred to me that the things that we use the symbols of faeries, dryads, nymphs, and mythical sea monsters to describe were still real. I don't know if those symbols are literal, but they are indicative of a reality that is still in existence. And we can't seem to interact with it. There's this moment when I'm talking to someone and I can feel this moment of both of us being cut off. Over the months this horrific knowledge has possessed my mind: we can only interact with a tiny amount of reality at this point, as moderns.

This started when I went to the Gulf of Mexico. I was playing on the shore with my firstborn, which was awesome. He enjoyed the water, I enjoyed the water and got to enjoy him enjoying the water, it was amazing! What people don't say about parenthood is that the joy of your child is your joy, at the same time. You basically double-load on joy, and it sometimes is so much that you wonder if you'll crack open and the light will spill out. This was one of those times. I was just overcome with joy at watching my son interact with the ocean. But children burn out very quickly at times, and this was one of them. He went to play on the beach and I stood, up to my waist in the surf.

The water you are in has been in the Marianna Trench.

A Flow rushed through my mind, and I reeled a second. This water had been everywhere: the Bermuda Triangle, the Beaches of Normandy, the Galapagos Isles, the list could just go on. And here I was, standing in the world itself. Basking in the water simply because it felt good. I don't know why, but that struck me as wrong. Something about what I was doing was superficial, cheap. I was a tiny little dot in a freaking infinity, and as I looked right and left I was struck that no one else was feeling what I was feeling, as I was feeling it. The arrogance we were all displaying collapsed on me. This wasn't something to just feel good about, it was an event, and how short we were in actually enjoying it!

You'll notice I said we, not they. 

When I left the water ten minutes later it felt like I was closing a door, and behind it waited... something. Something old, frigid, chthonic. I've no real words beyond that. I'm not sure one could make words for what I felt, but I've been wrong before.

Whatever that feeling was stuck with me. And it grew. At one point on this blog I wrote about standing beneath a tree and wondering if the dryad within it needed other trees to wake up and be fully functional. And I started to ask why we, as a race, could no longer intuit this reality. 

I am not claiming as to the literalness of the symbol dryad, let's not get that confused. I am asking why we cannot seem to intuit that the tree is aware of us and what we do.

And then I stumbled acrost Wolfe's anthology of his Latro novels. Latro was a man who had sustained a head injury and had lost his short memory and was forced to write his thoughts down on a scroll taht he'd have to read every day. In exchange he gained the ability to see the gods.

I tried to resist getting it. My house is overfull of books.

But every time I've read something of Wolfe's I've learned. Most people who read Wolfe seem to have a "I must pick this apart and understand it" reaction. And I get that. But my response to every Wolfe work I've ever read has been "How. The hell. Did he know. About that." Reading Wolfe for me is like realizing that I've been on the edge of the Marianna Trench and that I've been too chicken shit to go in. 

I had to know. I had to go back in.

And at first it was everything I really wanted it to be. I started to devour the first book, Soldier of the Mist. Like I'd said before, this was like what I had experienced in my life... but more. A lot more. Not since Clannad had I found such a powerful commiseration, but this time it wasn't with a character, but a writer. Latro was honorable, good, strong. And he was loved. And he saw none of it. He just wanted his memory back. The gods and other creatures he ran into, the marvels he encountered... Latro didn't want those things. He just wanted his friends.

As I continued to read my family went to southern Oklahoma, to a tourist site where there are freshwater springs. It's an incredibly beautiful place, filled with water that is totally clean from our.. interference. I put my feet in the cold water with my sons and wife.

I come from places you cannot imagine, under the earth. Nightmares and beauty are what I flow through.

You are a blip.

You are not welcome.

I looked at the beauty surrounding me and felt a chill. I had the feeling that we were being watched, and resented. We hadn't come to sit with nature, we'd just come to feel the water on our bodies. That feeling of cheapness overwhelmed me. The place was crawling with people, who had no intent to do anything more than... well... what they were doing. And the same went for us.

I shrugged. Nothing I could do about it, and I wasn't going to let the resentment of the land get in the way of enjoying it, however limited and cheap it was. It was what I had.

We made our way down to where two creeks intersected. I looked out at the trees, and felt we were not alone. And for a second I found myself asking, in my mind: Why don't you come out? So we can see you? I felt an immense longing to see, to understand, something.

Do townies hang out with the tourists? Came the reply.

What if I seek to understand? What if I want to understand things as a "townie"?

Then come back at night, and keep going. And going. And going. Until you are lost. Then you will find us.

I knew that to be a trap. Crazy as this conversation sounds, understand that as I heard these words in my mind it was on the point of overloading. I knew it could not be happening but it was. And I almost did it. I looked into the forest, longingly. I wanted to understand. The whole world has felt wrong for years and years and years and I needed to know why. 

I'm not bringing my wife and children near any of you. Came the reply from the depths of my soul.

A shame, we love children. There was a dry chuckle that rumbled through my mind, shook me with a casual cruelty that I've only encountered once or twice in my life. 

I kept playing in the water, laughing and enjoying my family. We were watched. And I didn't care. What could they do to us? If they were going to do it they would have already. But that was the day I learned they weren't my friends. Whatever they were.

But still that yearning persisted. I wanted to escape a reality that continued to prove itself to be more and more artificial, more and more just a construction of people desperate to close themselves in. And I found the closing in so destructive that I am practically allergic to it at this point. Whenever everyone is saying something in the same tone of voice with the same words and their eyes go just the right shade of glassy something is wrong. And when I look in the mirror I see it there as well. 

Understand this isn't me standing around and throwing shade on others. When I look in the mirror my eyes are so glassy I can barely recognize them.

Last night I finished Soldier of the Mists. I did not like what I found, but in the same way someone doesn't like having cold water dropped on them when it's time to wake up. See, Latro gets what he wants, but not what he needs. He's duped. Ignorant of those around him that love him, Latro keeps reaching for the impossible, keeps begging to have something that he can't have back (his memory) restored.

And it ends so badly.

Because the gods are not to be trusted. They are liars. They do not share. They do not care for us. "How strange the ways of the gods. How cruel they are!"

The gods, dryads, nymphs, and somesuch were not forgotten. Our race didn't forget.

We banished them.

And what if that wasn't a bad thing?

What if I don't want the dryad in that tree down the street from me to be anywhere near me?

But to know they're there is part of opening the container. Is it close-minded to not want them? So much misery is the result. 

The world is fallen. I've never understood that like I do now. The world itself is fallen. We are living in something that should be wonderful and beautiful, and it is filled with horrors.

And yet I can't look away. I feel the pull of my mind, complaining about the strain. How is any of this relevant? Can't we just stop?

What the hell is wrong with me?? That's probably not the right question, but it is the question I have in my mind, as I look at the world around me.

The Lie of Self-Identity

light spoilers for Book of the Short Sun to follow

ADDENDUM: As has been brought to my attention, my terms are not well defined. I'll attempt to define the most important one: Self-Identity. By Self-Identity I mean a constriction of yourself to what you think of yourself. I am not using Self-Identity as a noun, but as a verb that indicates a toxic toxic attempt of self-smothering so you may continue to retain your illusion about yourself, including suppression of experiences that would change how you see yourself and the world, trying to change your environment (or yourself) to match an image you have of yourself, lying to yourself that you didn't mean to do whatever mean thing you very clearly did on purpose, etc. Hopefully that clears things up.

I don't recognize the person that looks back at me in the mirror. I just don't. I haven't for decades. The person who gazes back at me isn't who I feel myself to be. The person people seem to know and talk about with my name attached to it I haven't recognized in even longer, and when I do recognize the person they're talking about it's the raging thing I work as hard as I can to restrain (which means I've failed yet again), or this deeply insightful person who is really just the byproduct of decades of heartbreak. There are memories people try to share with me that I find myself completely ignorant of. All I find when I look into my memories is a dark pit. How do you tell someone that you recognize them, but that may really be it? So I smile and play along. The memories I do retain most people don't seem to remember, to the point to where I wonder if I didn't just make them up. Maybe I did. Maybe my memories just aren't real. 

Maybe you're not real.

I've no way of knowing, the vast majority of the time.

Retreating doesn't seem to do me much good, so I just throw myself into whatever situation it is, hoping I'll figure out what's going on. I frequently don't. But I didn't back down. And that means something to me, whatever that's worth.

Gene Wolfe, an infantry vet of the Korean War, has always dealt with identity. What is it? How do you define it? Can you define your identity? Is it an individual's choice, who they are, or is it the community, your relationships, some weird combination thereof? Book of the Short Sun deals with these questions the most directly of the Solar Cycle, and I'd argue it is the point of Wolfe's science fantasy series. We follow along with Horn as he runs smack-dab into the fact that he's not who he thinks he is, over and over. Bad or good begin to blur as Horn's self-conceptions prove to not just be lies but damnable lies, causing more trouble than they're worth, but yet how are you supposed to move about in the world?

How are you supposed to act if you can't develop a proper conception of you? And never will? 

What if your ideas of you don't matter for being a person at all?

I'm not sure what exactly I'm driving at with this blog post. All I know is that the ending of On Blue's Waters, the first volume of The Book of the Short Sun, stopped me dead in my tracks. That first volume is watching someone's self-identity crumble. Horn does truly heinous things that are truly beyond his control but he did them and he experienced doing them and nobody can tell them they weren't his fault because fault doesn't matter and never did. 

He experienced it. 

And that was enough. 

Fuck the whole concept of fault, period.

The rest of the book shows Horn trying and trying to grow beyond his (supposed) misdeeds and failing, over and over. He wants to be the person that he thought he was and he knows he can't do it, but there's just no other thing for him to do, right? If you aren't who you think you are then why live? Why even bother? But he holds onto this mirage we call identity, fighting for it harder and harder. Horn doesn't ask what seems to be obvious to me now: why does what I think of myself matter, at all? But he doens't ask. He gets a lot of people killed over it.

And at the end of that volume Horn finds himself looking into a pool of water. And he doesn't recognize himself. What's staring at himself is a broken shell of a man who Horn does not want to accept.

He failed to retain the mirage.

I put the book down and sobbed for him. And me. There wasn't anything to be done. Self-identity is not real. And it never was. There is no way to sum up a person, especially if it's the individual in question. Because we all want to be something that we're not. And it does us no good, even if we think we achieved it. 

The rest of the Book of the Short Sun delves into this concept much harder and provides an answer, of sorts. I'm not really going to get into that now. But the beginning of self-knowledge is to be able to let go of the concept that you know who you are. And that you will ever fully learn who you are. You are larger than you know, infinitely so. So am I.

And no cheap thing like self-identity is going to even scratch the surface of the depths.

Every translator is a traitor, and that goes double for the lie of self-identity, which is when you try to translate yourself to yourself.

What a miserable concept.

Idolatry, in one of its purest forms.

Book of the Long Sun

 

I hoped this book would be different from Book and Urth of the New Sun. The last thing I wanted was for Wolfe to try to bottle lightning again. I mean, it had been well over a decade since the last two books had been released, so I kinda figured that Wolfe wasn't out for a cash grab. 

Boy, I did not know what I was getting myself into.

The set-up of the book is simple. Patera Silk, a priest of a small parish onboard the "whorl" (a roving space station filled with people who have forgotten they're in a space station) is called by the Outsider, a minor and obscure god, to save his parish from imminent destruction. Of course at this point he wasn't really aware that it was in danger in the first place...

And thus begins the rollercoaster.

Now, I'd heard people complain about how slow this book was, so I was prepared for it. I don't think they quite sold it hard enough; parts of this book are an absolute slog to get through. Wolfe's prose requires sometimes a pass or five to get a basic understanding of the text, and there's some points in time where I shrugged and went on, filling in what happened from the context of the next few hundred pages. This sucker is 1300 pages long. It is packed with plot, characterization, so much freaking worldbuilding, philosophy, and theology, that to call this anything less than a science fantasy attempt at a Russian novel would be idiotic.  The plot in particular seems rather byzantine in structure, looping around on itself multiple times, intentionally producing impasses that let you learn more about the characters and their whorl, and to take a breather.

Y'know, several hundred page breathers.

No big deal.

Up until the last fifteen pages (no, I am not exaggerating!!! The last fif-frickin-teen!) I'd no idea what the hell I was reading. None. The plot continued to balloon and balloon and I felt like I was watching some ancient sea monster come out of the ocean to devour me alive. And then the last fifteen pages happened. No, do not skip to the end. Even if it does make sense to you, the surprise is well worth the wait. Yes, I do mean it. Those 1200+ pages were ample build-up to the surprise at the end, at least in my estimation. I cannot tell you why that is. You either trust me and can weather the cloud of unknowing for 1200 pages or you can't. But when it snapped into place, when Wolfe finally revealed what he was doing for 1300 pages, I found myself nodding in appreciation and enjoyment.

Book of the Long Sun does not work as Book and Urth of the New Sun did, but that is what is makes it special. As I sit here, with the dying embers of the story living inside of me, as I look back at one of the longest journeys with a book I've ever taken, I feel years and years older. That was one hell of a journey. I learned a lot of things, most of which were barely registered, nevermind understood.

Whereas Book and Urth of the New Sun were waking dreams, which I loved so much that I almost sobbed when I stopped reading them, Book of the Long Sun feels like a conversation with a grandparent. They have a lot to tell you. Sometimes you don't know why they tell you what they chose to. But years later, their words still glow in my memory and I find myself taking strength from what they said. 

I remember how they looked when they said their words.

I find myself back in the car, or the room, or that afternoon walk. I can smell the air. Hear the birds. The crickets. The sky is the exact same size as it is now. The world made absolutely no sense. But I didn't need it to.

Because they loved me, then. And they do, still.

I promise that I will see you again. I find myself whispering that to them, now, as I think about the Long Sun. Or is it when I think about the long walks? Or the car rides? Or when we were just sitting in their living room, talking about nothing in particular?

Does it really matter?

The Book (and Urth) of the New Sun

This is the third take I've had on this review. Every time I write my thoughts I find them woefully inadequate. There are concepts in this book I had no idea that I needed in order to understand myself, nevermind the world. And, now that I'm coming to the last fifty pages of The Urth of the New Sun, I find that I am terrified of ending the book. But end it must, and I must figure out what I will do from here.

The previous two iterations of this review became more and more grandiose as they progressed, to the point to where I found that the painful humanity of the book was lost. But when I tried to walk it back the grandeur was also lost in sweeping statements on how petty the main character could be. I could not focus on both, even though the book did.

The last few years of having PTSD have been some of the most rewarding and insanely painful of my already-painful life. I've seen highs and lows that I wouldn't have known that anyone else had experienced, were it not for this book. Reading Wolfe's thoughts on time travel and salvation left me speechless. There are things in this book that are so real that they can hardly be believed. But real they are. This man knew, he had done it. But when I try to write about it I destroy what it is that I love about the book. I cannot talk about them, even though the book did.

Ending The Urth of the New Sun is like driving to the airport with someone you love quite deeply. You hang on every word, you savor every last sight, smell, sound, them. You know they will not be there, with you, for much longer, and so you drink them in as much as you can, praying that it's an illusion, hoping against all hope that when you get to the airport they'll say "JUST KIDDING! I'm staying here". You hope that this is the time they stay and you will not have to be parted from them, ever again. Maybe, maybe this time, the dream will not end.

They get on the plane.

The book ends.

And you have to wake up.

It is over.

But the dream continued, this time, somehow. My friends and family will come back to me and in a real way they never left. I will finally be able to fully enjoy the family and friends I have now! The book is over but I will return to it, to enjoy it anew. Eventually that pleasant dream, where the world makes sense and I'm not fighting by the skin of my teeth to maintain even a facade of mental health, will become reality. Eventually I will triumph. Like all properly Christian works, I am left with hope, as Severian strides off into the unknown. Wherever he is going, whatever The Increate will require him to do, he has triumphed.

This is not typical to the types of reviews I write, and for that I apologize. This is a very deeply personal book to me, and I find that it's almost impossible to write about. If you like sci-fi and fantasy, and find yourself wanting something of a similar depth to Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guinn, you will be not be disappointed here. Wolfe is a master, if not the master, of his craft. I cannot recommend this book enough.