Important Information

Title: The Book of the Long Sun in four volumes (or two omnibus editions)

Nightside of the Long Sun

Lake of the Long Sun

Caldé of the Long Sun

Exodus from the Long Sun

Author: Gene Wolfe

Publisher: Orb/Tor

Cover art: illuminating both literally and spiritually

Length: 1,200 combined pages in two trade paperback omnibuses

Rating: 5 out of 7 (A flawed masterpiece hindered by a lack of emotional attachment the reader should feel for characters in a novel of this size and scope.  But then again, that may have been the author’s whole point.  In which case, our rating system is utterly useless.  In fact, this entire review may be useless.  It may bring to mind the folly of an ant attempting to comprehend the world in which it lives.  It is able to witness events occurring around it and possibly even put it into some sort of “ant-ish” context, but ultimately it is still an ant.  Our poor insect friend just doesn’t have the faculties necessary to fully grasp what is going on.  To paraphrase Nietzsche “As an ant is to the writers of Inchoatus, thus are the writers of Inchoatus to Gene Wolfe.”  This is going to be a strange review so buckle up)

Critical Essay

Questions and answers with Gene Wolfe regarding the Long Sun

On the Path to History lies Fiction: an examination of Gene Wolfe's narrators

Four young people from a poor neighborhood, a young priest, a thief and two comely prostitutes, and the priest’s talking bird are swept up in the momentous events of their society.  Their seemingly medieval city-state is in the throws of revolution with various factions vying for power.  These five characters are soon thrust into the epicenter of these events when the priest is suddenly made the supreme ruler of the city and the thief becomes a prophet.   There are also interactions with various gods and goddesses.

This is the most exhaustive recap of the plot we can give without “spoiling” any of the major plot points. 

Let’s say your spouse is a world-famous artist and for your birthday they have decided to create for you their greatest work.  They are in their studio night and day, eschewing food, water and regular bathing to make for you the greatest product of their boundless creativity.  With much anticipation the appointed day arrives and their love’s labor is unveiled.  It is an understatement to say you are overwhelmed.  Admittedly, this is one of their best creations.  The skill and talent poured into the work is evident from the intricacies of design and the execution is flawless.  It is a work of raw, jaw-dropping genius.

And you hate it.  Not only do you hate it, you never, ever want to see it again.  Nothing personal, it just isn’t for you.  How do you broach this with your spouse, the person you love with all your heart and soul?  You would throw yourself under a train rather than hurt them and now they want your honest opinion on their work.

That is how we feel about this novel.  The author, whom we admire as one of if not the greatest writer in speculative fiction, is an amazing genius with several notches in his very worn success belt.  How does a reviewer recognize a work for it’s brilliance but at the same time hate it?  It is pure, unadulterated genius and a work of consummate skill, engineering and craftsmanship.  It will leave indelible images in your brain for years to come. And you will probably hate it, too.  It is the greatest book you will ever read that undoubtedly you will never read again.  Only Elsworth Tooey would attempt to convince you that this is a work of pure joy and beauty.

Wolfe has always been into punishing his readers with his characteristic obtuseness, but in Long Sun he takes his lexiconic sadism to a whole new level.  This is a very dense and layered book.  Not only is it difficult to grasp what is occurring at a given moment, but as soon as a chapter begins to build some steam and we begin to empathize with the characters, the plot abruptly halts and switches to one of the other, various parallel plot lines.  He keeps his characters at arm’s length from the reader.  We never get the chance to connect emotionally with any of them.  The only character in the book that we seem to identify with isn’t even human.  Oreb the talking bird can communicate more in his disyllabic utterances than the other characters can in pages of dialogue. 

His main characters also have a tendency to speak in a very stylized slang that is difficult to understand.  Others may speak in the Queen’s English, but employ extremely annoying mannerisms interspersing their words with non-words such as “ah, uh, um, ahem, etc.” in dialogue passages that may continue for several pages.  These parts cannot be “skimmed” because they may contain important plot points.  The abused reader is then required to slog through these frustrating lines.  Any reader who manages to finish every word of these books should be mailed a Merit Badge by the publisher.

A novel needs to be more than an exercise in sterile word-smithing and genius plot-development.  At some point, the reader wants to actually enjoy what they are reading.   Stephen King put it best when he wrote about the unspoken agreement between the author and reader.  If the reader agrees to commit the time to follow the author to the end of the story, the author promises to make it worth it.  This tetralogy is a serious time commitment, but in the end it is too long a journey to undertake with strangers.