The Post-Pentecostal Preacher
May. 25th, 2008 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselJan 2008
In Green’s Jungles - Gene Wolfe - Tor, 2000
* * * * *
Hurrah, Wolfe is finally back on form, at least for one book. Sidestepping the reader’s expectations, constantly pushing on with the plot, and hinting at a grand resolution of the whole New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, this is SF writing at its most exciting.
At the end of On Blue's Waters, we left Horn escaping from the palace of Gaon while his memoir had reached the moment of his arrival on the jungle planet of Green, home of the blood-sucking inhumi. Given the title of this book and the flashback-heavy nature of the previous one, you would think that the majority of the text would concern his adventures on Green, but in fact most of the action is present-day with only occasional references back when Horn thinks to make them. This serves to heighten the mystery and power of the Green episodes which are truly horrific.
The main storyline is set in a pseudo-Italian town called Blanko, where Horn (now calling himself Incanto) has fetched up. He befriends a local bigwig (confusingly named Inclito) and his family, and spends the first third of the book swapping stories with them. Wolfe used a similar trick in the fourth part of The Book of the New Sun, where the clunking SF re-tellings of biblical tales by the wounded soldiers held up the plot and were deeply annoying, but here it just about works as it develops the characters of the family and enables Horn to reveal his back story.
All of this is a prologue to the main event, which is the invasion of Blanko by the neighbouring city-state of Soldo under its leader Duke Rigoglio (it is telling how often war and battlefields appear in Wolfe's books; there is definitely a thesis to be written about the influence of the Korean War - in which he fought - on his writing). Horn takes the lead in organising the resistance and shows a quite surprising military acumen. This would seem an implausible character development had not one of Horn's stories made clear that he had undergone an intriguing transformation as a result of his adventures on Green. To reveal more would be a spoiler, but suffice to say that it makes perfect sense of his subsequent behaviour in this and (to a certain extent) the previous book.
One of the effects of this event is that Horn develops a mystical ability to transfer himself and others in dreams to distant places. For me, this was the most jarring element; unlike the rest of the New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, this is pure magic with no obvious science-fictional justification (lending credence to my theory that Wolfe is a fantasy writer who uses science fiction trappings rather than the other way round). Its effect on the narrative, however, is to introduce still further complexity in the form of what I can only describe as flash-sideways events to other locations. One of these is the city of Nessus - Severian's starting point in the Book of the New Sun - and Horn makes a casual observation that suggests that the Urth of the New Sun is not what we have been led to believe and that there may be an even bigger back-story still that ties all of the Sun books together.
The themes of In Blue's Waters are continued, with the mystery of the relationship between humans and the inhumi partly explained and partly deepened. At first sight, one element that seems to have been dropped is the theme of discipleship. Horn shows very few of the doubts and foibles that he displayed in the previous book and appears to know exactly what he is doing. But I think the parallel with the life of St Peter is being maintained, with the transformative events on Green corresponding to those of Pentecost.
All of which makes me very keen to read the final book in the sequence, Return to the Whorl. But - arrghh! - it is out of print. Does anyone have a copy that they could lend me?
In Green’s Jungles - Gene Wolfe - Tor, 2000
* * * * *
Hurrah, Wolfe is finally back on form, at least for one book. Sidestepping the reader’s expectations, constantly pushing on with the plot, and hinting at a grand resolution of the whole New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, this is SF writing at its most exciting.
At the end of On Blue's Waters, we left Horn escaping from the palace of Gaon while his memoir had reached the moment of his arrival on the jungle planet of Green, home of the blood-sucking inhumi. Given the title of this book and the flashback-heavy nature of the previous one, you would think that the majority of the text would concern his adventures on Green, but in fact most of the action is present-day with only occasional references back when Horn thinks to make them. This serves to heighten the mystery and power of the Green episodes which are truly horrific.
The main storyline is set in a pseudo-Italian town called Blanko, where Horn (now calling himself Incanto) has fetched up. He befriends a local bigwig (confusingly named Inclito) and his family, and spends the first third of the book swapping stories with them. Wolfe used a similar trick in the fourth part of The Book of the New Sun, where the clunking SF re-tellings of biblical tales by the wounded soldiers held up the plot and were deeply annoying, but here it just about works as it develops the characters of the family and enables Horn to reveal his back story.
All of this is a prologue to the main event, which is the invasion of Blanko by the neighbouring city-state of Soldo under its leader Duke Rigoglio (it is telling how often war and battlefields appear in Wolfe's books; there is definitely a thesis to be written about the influence of the Korean War - in which he fought - on his writing). Horn takes the lead in organising the resistance and shows a quite surprising military acumen. This would seem an implausible character development had not one of Horn's stories made clear that he had undergone an intriguing transformation as a result of his adventures on Green. To reveal more would be a spoiler, but suffice to say that it makes perfect sense of his subsequent behaviour in this and (to a certain extent) the previous book.
One of the effects of this event is that Horn develops a mystical ability to transfer himself and others in dreams to distant places. For me, this was the most jarring element; unlike the rest of the New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, this is pure magic with no obvious science-fictional justification (lending credence to my theory that Wolfe is a fantasy writer who uses science fiction trappings rather than the other way round). Its effect on the narrative, however, is to introduce still further complexity in the form of what I can only describe as flash-sideways events to other locations. One of these is the city of Nessus - Severian's starting point in the Book of the New Sun - and Horn makes a casual observation that suggests that the Urth of the New Sun is not what we have been led to believe and that there may be an even bigger back-story still that ties all of the Sun books together.
The themes of In Blue's Waters are continued, with the mystery of the relationship between humans and the inhumi partly explained and partly deepened. At first sight, one element that seems to have been dropped is the theme of discipleship. Horn shows very few of the doubts and foibles that he displayed in the previous book and appears to know exactly what he is doing. But I think the parallel with the life of St Peter is being maintained, with the transformative events on Green corresponding to those of Pentecost.
All of which makes me very keen to read the final book in the sequence, Return to the Whorl. But - arrghh! - it is out of print. Does anyone have a copy that they could lend me?