Wolfe the man

No, not Nero, but that's not a bad guess. I've been reading a lot of books by Gene Wolfe lately and finding them very enjoyable. I'm not sure I can easily state why I find them thus, but I do. The stories all seem to be peopled with real people, not flat characters. That is, the characters act differently, have different motivations and interact with each other in ways that seem and feel realistic to me.

Also, each book seems to have a moral protagonist; at least, insofar as any imperfect being can be called "moral". None of the heroes is perfect, each makes mistakes and often people die, but at heart each is struggling and striving to do right in their quest. More details about the books after the jump.

I finished Soldier of Sidon and I was not quite satisfied. The main character never quite achieves a full resolution of his memory loss and quest for hearth and home. I'm hopeful that Wolfe will finish the story with another book before time and chance have their final say. Part of the problem for me also was that I am less familiar with the legends and myths of ancient Egypt than I am with Greece and what I do know I find less enjoyable. On the whole though, I think Latro edges out Severian as my favourite Wolfe protagonist.

Speaking of Severian, I finally finished reading The Book of the New Sun, which is the name given to the pentalogy (some would call it a tetralogy with an optional addition) of books that tell the tale of Severian. (The first two books have been collected into an omnibus edition and so have the third and fourth, so I read it in three volumes.) It was certainly engaging and I would frequently forget, even with the conceit that this is a series of books written by Severian himself, that because of that fact he was not really ever going to be in danger of death. These books, however, are very confusing since they deal in a large way with time travel, potential worlds, quantum and all that sort of thing. Which is not to say that they weren't amazing books, because they were fantastic, but it was sometimes hard (mostly near the end) to keep straight what was going on and what the significance of all of it was.

And that's the thing, these books are exquisitely layered and detailed and reward careful attention because Wolfe does an excellent job with foreshadowing, linking and internal consistency.

I've read some of his short fiction as well in the books The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Best of Gene Wolfe. I found The Fifth Head the least congenial to my taste of all his works, but The Best of was stupendous. It was haunting, creepy and thought-provoking like little else in the world of short fiction since I last read the works of Ray Bradbury. When Wolfe is on his game, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them in terms of quality.

I'm working through the first two books of The Long Sun now and I'll probably read through the entire rest of his oeuvre as well; he's a master of his craft.