Disciple’s Fate
May. 30th, 2012 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselOct 2011
Return to the Whorl - Gene Wolfe - Tor, 2001
* * * * *
Well, my plea was answered - my father very kindly ordered this book all the way from the United States, so I have now completed Wolfe’s New Sun/Long Sun/Short Sun magnum opus (alas, another case of “House!” in author bingo). It is an effective and satisfying end to the whole sequence, though as is so often the case with Wolfe, the denoument is a bit of a let-down.
Once again, two stories are told in parallel - one on Blue involving Horn’s capture and imprisonment by the corrupt judges of Dorp, a town close to New Viron where his adventures began, and the other a description of the protagonist’s experiences on the Whorl after his arrival by lander from Green. I use the term “protagonist” advisedly - the big mystery of the book is just who he is in the Whorl story. He self-identifies as Horn, but as a result of events on In Green’s Jungles has a rather different appearance. To further muddy the situation, the Whorl section is told in third-person rather than the first-person employed in the Blue story, and includes conversations that occur while “Horn” is asleep and so cannot come from his own experiences.
The Dorp section is, to be honest, not particularly interesting - there is little sense of serious threat and Horn once again demonstrates the leadership qualities he mysteriously acquired on Green to overcome his adversaries. There are another couple of visits to Nessus which intriguingly tie in with the Book of the New Sun, and some shenanigans with inhumu (including another revelation about their relationship with humans), but that’s about it.
The Whorl section is much more engaging, both in the mystery of the protagonist and in the developments which have occurred there since the events of the Book of the Long Sun. A significant amount of the action takes place in pitch blackness, the long sun being off for “long nights” to the considerable inconvenience of the fractious locals, and giant humanoids called godlings stalk the land, telling people the will of the gods of Mainframe. “Horn” befriends an obliging shopkeeper called Hound and a large blind soldier named Pig who speaks in an odd demotic which I interpreted as a thick Scottish accent (one of the minor annoyances of this book is that the speech patterns of the new characters go a bit overboard. Wolfe’s ability to imply character in dialogue by use of speech patterns and quirks is brilliant, but occasionally he takes it too far). They accompany him to some of the locations from The Book of the Long Sun where, um, various things happen (we are definitely into spoiler territory here).
By the end, most of the major mysteries are (sort of) explained and the events of the three books dovetail into a coherent and consistent narrative. While I really enjoyed the skillful way in which this was done, the manner of its telling does raise a few niggles. The characters spend an awful lot of time sitting and talking about what is going on rather than doing anything, and I was a little disappointed when the conjuror whipped away the handkerchief to reveal the bunch of flowers that we were expecting rather than something more surprising (I hope that was sufficiently metaphorical not to be spoilery). At the risk of beating the same old drum yet again, I should also mention that none of the female characters are of great significance. This is literature that most definitely fails the Bechdel test.
Nonetheless, it is still an astonishing act of story-telling, and despite the huge canvas and big SF ideas, Wolfe manages to insert some touching human moments that give the lie to any notion that he is a cold or uncaring writer. The theme of discipleship also reaches a quiet but moving apotheosis in the closing pages. Whether the sequence has anything more profound to say, only a second reading will tell. But that it will certainly have, if I live long enough to do it.
Return to the Whorl - Gene Wolfe - Tor, 2001
* * * * *
Well, my plea was answered - my father very kindly ordered this book all the way from the United States, so I have now completed Wolfe’s New Sun/Long Sun/Short Sun magnum opus (alas, another case of “House!” in author bingo). It is an effective and satisfying end to the whole sequence, though as is so often the case with Wolfe, the denoument is a bit of a let-down.
Once again, two stories are told in parallel - one on Blue involving Horn’s capture and imprisonment by the corrupt judges of Dorp, a town close to New Viron where his adventures began, and the other a description of the protagonist’s experiences on the Whorl after his arrival by lander from Green. I use the term “protagonist” advisedly - the big mystery of the book is just who he is in the Whorl story. He self-identifies as Horn, but as a result of events on In Green’s Jungles has a rather different appearance. To further muddy the situation, the Whorl section is told in third-person rather than the first-person employed in the Blue story, and includes conversations that occur while “Horn” is asleep and so cannot come from his own experiences.
The Dorp section is, to be honest, not particularly interesting - there is little sense of serious threat and Horn once again demonstrates the leadership qualities he mysteriously acquired on Green to overcome his adversaries. There are another couple of visits to Nessus which intriguingly tie in with the Book of the New Sun, and some shenanigans with inhumu (including another revelation about their relationship with humans), but that’s about it.
The Whorl section is much more engaging, both in the mystery of the protagonist and in the developments which have occurred there since the events of the Book of the Long Sun. A significant amount of the action takes place in pitch blackness, the long sun being off for “long nights” to the considerable inconvenience of the fractious locals, and giant humanoids called godlings stalk the land, telling people the will of the gods of Mainframe. “Horn” befriends an obliging shopkeeper called Hound and a large blind soldier named Pig who speaks in an odd demotic which I interpreted as a thick Scottish accent (one of the minor annoyances of this book is that the speech patterns of the new characters go a bit overboard. Wolfe’s ability to imply character in dialogue by use of speech patterns and quirks is brilliant, but occasionally he takes it too far). They accompany him to some of the locations from The Book of the Long Sun where, um, various things happen (we are definitely into spoiler territory here).
By the end, most of the major mysteries are (sort of) explained and the events of the three books dovetail into a coherent and consistent narrative. While I really enjoyed the skillful way in which this was done, the manner of its telling does raise a few niggles. The characters spend an awful lot of time sitting and talking about what is going on rather than doing anything, and I was a little disappointed when the conjuror whipped away the handkerchief to reveal the bunch of flowers that we were expecting rather than something more surprising (I hope that was sufficiently metaphorical not to be spoilery). At the risk of beating the same old drum yet again, I should also mention that none of the female characters are of great significance. This is literature that most definitely fails the Bechdel test.
Nonetheless, it is still an astonishing act of story-telling, and despite the huge canvas and big SF ideas, Wolfe manages to insert some touching human moments that give the lie to any notion that he is a cold or uncaring writer. The theme of discipleship also reaches a quiet but moving apotheosis in the closing pages. Whether the sequence has anything more profound to say, only a second reading will tell. But that it will certainly have, if I live long enough to do it.