Gene Wolfe Books

I first read Castleview fifteen years ago and to this day it is one of my favorite novels! It was fast paced, puzzling, hilarious, exausting and the most fun I've ever experienced reading a book. I'm buying a copy for my nephew.

In this frustrating and ultimately not-worthwhile book, Wolfe takes an incredible premise (an Arthurian castle that appears on the outskirts of a middle America town, but is only visable to certain people) and totally ruins it.

Having read a great amount of Arthurian literature (both modern and classic - like Malory, de Troyes, and von Eschenbach), I can honestly say that the plot is incomprehensible. Very few characters have any parallel to Arthurian figures (other than an occasional name), and most of them behave in a completely bizarre fashion.

I slugged my way through every last agonizing page in hopes that the end might clear up the mysteries of this book... only to be disappointed again. My only guess is that Wolfe wrote this book while on drugs, his publisher agreed to publish it based on his prior reputation alone, and that anyone who claims to have enjoyed it is a diehard Wolfe fan that won't admit that this book is a total failure.

That seems to be the byline on this one. I even bought a book of Arthurian legend but it didn't help much. Yet even without understanding exactly what happened this book kept me on the edge of my seat. A very good ride, even if you don't know where you are going.

This book, more than any other, taught me to enjoy the journey with Wolfe and quit rushing to find out what happens in the end.

What a disappointment! I had just finished reading Gene Wolfe's monumental duology, "Shadow and Claw" and "Sword and Citadel," arguably one of the most erudite, complex and unique fantasy tales ever written, only to have my expectations dashed by this piece of juvenile prose filled with poorly drawn characters. The premise was of some interest but the story could have been so much more compelling and enticing if it were not so shallow in style. Don't bother reading this one.

Gene Wolfe's CASTLEVIEW is the second of his turn of the 90's trilogy of fantastical fiction novels. The first, THERE ARE DOORS, was a rather confusing but ultimately comprehendible book, but with CASTLEVIEW the reader has no idea what's going on.

CASTLEVIEW is perhaps the most infamous of Gene Wolfe's novels. Wolfe has always like to present puzzles to the reader, and every book he's written is filled with mysteries, allusions, and inside jokes. The answers to these are usually to be found after some diligent reading and research, and in any event the main plot can always be followed. In CASTLEVIEW, even the plot is totally baffling. Apparently it has something to do with magical creatures and characters from folklore, especially King Arthur and company, plaguing a modern town outside of Chicago. That's really all one can say for certain after reading the book. The entire point of the book is an enigma, and it doesn't appear that Wolfe has included the key anywhere in its 200+ pages. My personal hypothesis right after reading the book was that 50 pages or so fell out of my copy during the printing process, so that I missed the part where everything comes together. However, I read the same copy everyone else did, and no one's ever shown it was incomplete.

Ignoring the fact that the book goes right over the heads of its audience, CASTLEVIEW is not one of Wolfe's stronger works. I was annoyed by the speed in which Wolfe introduced new characters, so that it was difficult to follow who's who. Chapters end abruptly on some mysterious development which may create suspense but which irks the reader. Ironically, the teenagers are the only characters which are portrayed realistically, and the adults are somewhat two-dimensional, which is the opposite of how these sorts of things normally turn out.

Gene Wolfe is truly one of the finest writers in the English language. His four-volume work The Book of the New Sun is legendary, and his latest work The Book of the Short Sun is filled with moments of sublime beauty and poignant emotion. I would most certainly recommend that one read Wolfe's "solar" works first (starting with the BotNS), his magisterial novel PEACE, and just about everything else he's every written before coming to CASTLEVIEW. I do recommend CASTLEVIEW, and reading the book sure does explain why so many Wolfe scholars are beating their heads against the wall on this one. Save CASTLEVIEW for last.

The Autarch, as the name suggests, is a ruler. Despite all Severian's
wanderings, meanderings, derelictions of duty, and adventures, it seems
that the Autarch sees him as future leadership material. His final fate
is to be decided in this fourth book.

How can I review a novel I've never received?

Like the other three books of this series, the Citadel is a gorgeously written account of Severian the Torturer's journey to the Autarch's throne in a far future. Gene Wolfe's story is outstanding, if only for the fabulous otherworldly reality he has fashioned with beautiful language and a singular voice. The Urth he has created is real, filled with layered depth and detail. The story reaches a satisfying endpoint in this volume -- I hesitate to call it a conclusion, because like a real history, it could continue forever. This series is one of the best of all time.

This volume contains three stories which appear in Wolfe's "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories" collection. They are: "The Island of Doctor Death", "The Death of Doctor Island" and "The Doctor of Death Island" (hence the title). All three are worth reading, but available in the "Other Stories" collection at less than collectable prices. For serious Wolfe collectors only.

Gene Wolfe's four-volume (plus coda) work The Book of the New Sun is widely regarded as one of the greatest works in science fiction, with a setting of great mystery and plot of enormous complexity. Since its publication in the 1980s, it has won many admirers, but few detailed examinations, and most of what's in print, such as the guides of Andre-Driussi and Borski, are amateurish and self-published. In ATTENDING DAEDALUS: Gene Wolfe, Artifice, and the Reader (Liverpool University Press, 2003), Peter Wright presents the first critique of academic quality on Wolfe's masterpiece.

ATTENDING DAEDALUS begins with a general introduction to Wolfe's body of writing, and two of his early stories are explored in depth, "Trip, Trap" and "In the House of Gingerbread". What I found especially enlightening here is that Wright presents the long series of critical reactions to Wolfe's work, even admitting that CASTLEVIEW is a problematic novel, and showing that OPERATION ARES was worth surpressing.

Wright's examination of the Urth cycle is based on two aspects of the work that have gained wide consensus through discussion on the Urth mailing list and other fora. The first is the deceitful religiosity of the book. While the Hierogrammates seem divine, the Claw a holy relic, and the deluge upon the coming of the New Sun sacrificial, humanity is really only being manipulated by the inhabitants of Yesod into furthering their own ends. God is, in the final analysis, nowhere in the picture. The second is the unreliability of Severian as narrator. Wolfe attended introductory courses in psychology in Texas and later in Ohio, and Wright conjectures that here Wolfe would have studied historic cases of perfect memory, providing a model for Severian's behaviour. Just as historic mnemonists, such as "S." studied by Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, were incapable of reflecting on their experiences, instead merely re-remembering events without analysis, so Severian stands between the reader and the true events of the work.

With these in mind, Wright's main thesis is that the Book of the New Sun is the epitome of a very complicated literary technique devised by Wolfe in which the reader is consistently challenged and baffled, and yet consistently given the necessary keys to unlocking the plot. Wolfe also consistently reminds the reader that what he is reading is fiction through a continual stream of metaliterary allusions and jibes. Wright's assertion that all of Wolfe's novels after the Book of the New Sun are meant to provide a series of elucidations for its mysteries is sure to be controversial, but is for me nonetheless quite convincing in many instances.

If you are a dedicated fan of Wolfe, having sought out everything he's ever put written and read the Urth cycle more times than you can remember, I would highly recommend ATTENDING DAEDALUS. With the intricacies of plotting revealed here, I appreciate Wolfe's skill more and more, and see him as one of the most significant English-language writers of our time. Don't heed what naysayers claim, this book is entirely dedicated to Wolfe's oeuvre and is very relevant to those investigating the Urth cycle.

i bought this book assuming that it would be similar to robert borski's "a solar labyrinth", in that it would hopefully shed some of light on some of the interesting and random little aspects of the book of the new sun that the casual reader would never notice or deduce. however, this is not the case at all. be prepared for long-winded blather and lots of "big words". i place "big words" in quotes, because within the first few pages of this novel, it becomes quickly evident that wright is far more concerned with attempting to impress the reader with his own intelligence, as opposed to providing any real content. the book amounts to little more than wright patting himself on the back over how intelligent he believes himself to be, while simultaneously essentially calling anyone else who has an opinion about the book of the new sun too stupid to really understand it. there is nothing at all in the way of actual content - most of the book is devoted to wright picking out random bits of text and then supporting his own beliefs about them with unrelated quotes (often hacked up and paraphrased to the point that they have come meaningless) from other book critics who (frequently) do not even have a background in science fiction. don't get me wrong - i absolutely love gene wolfe. however, i believe wright is giving him far too much credit for supposedly intentionally placing all these little allusions and whatnot throughout the book. sadly, the entire book sounds like a desperate author painstakingly trying to convince himself that his theories are correct by overanalyzing minute parts of the novel that fit vaguely within the confines of his boring ideas. as wright notes in the intro, this book originally started as his doctoral thesis - and unforunately, it reads like one. i'm sure this book would be great if you needed to skip on down to some professors' lounge at harvard and impress them with long-winded and essentially meaningless dialogue about "ulysses" (which wright practically spends more time discussing than wolfe's work), but if you want to learn something about the book of the new sun, dear god please look elsewhere.

as an aside, if you decide to purchase this book despite my best efforts to warn you of its terribleness - amazon shows this book's length at 240 pages. be warned - it's really not at all. expect more than 30 pages of footnotes and bibliography, as well as nearly 50 more pages that barely give the book of the new sun any mention (as these are dedicated to more vague and generally disinteresting dissections of minute parts of wolfe's other novels and short stories). if you want to actually read something interesting that provides legitimate insight into the book of the new sun itself, i highly recommend borski's "a solar labyrinth".

Tylor Monroe (below) is a little harsh - but not very. This book is an academic critique of Wolfe's masterpiece, and like a lot of contemporary academic literary criticism, cannot get out of its own way. Lots of theory, lots of jargon, little illumination of the work for the average reader. This is the sort of book which gets on the author's resume, counts toward his publication list for tenure - and is immediately forgotten!

I do not want to say that that all of his ideas are worthless; just that they are very hard to extract from the jargon, and may not be worth the effort.