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The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume of the four-volume Book of the New Sun, which is itself the first part of the twelve-volume "Solar" or "Briah" cycle. After dinner, Severian fights in the duel, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives. I would recommend this book only to seasoned fans of the genre and it will probably require multiple readings to fully grasp what is hiding beneath the surface.
Shortly before Severian is elevated to journeyman he encounters and falls in love with Thecla, a beautiful aristocratic prisoner. Neil Gaiman, in his list of the three greatest science fiction novels, ranked The Shadow of the Torturer first, ahead of Neuromancer and The Left Hand of Darkness.
It relates the story of Severian, an apprentice Seeker for Truth and Penitence (the guild of torturers), from his youth through his expulsion from the guild and subsequent journey out of his home city of Nessus. The New Sun's universe is cyclic, so Christianity may have existed, but not in the same form as in our (later) universe and the Conciliator, though being set up to be a distant memory of Jesus, is really Severian himself, via time-travel. Severian accompanies a new prisoner (Marcellina) to a cell adjoining Thecla’s, who still hopes to be released soon.
The contents of WolfeWiki is licensed under the Creative Commons BY Licence, except where stated otherwise. Hopeless War: While the Commonwealth has been able to keep the war against Ascia stalemated for decades, they're unable to make real progress against the enemy and are slowly but surely losing ground. From the lightless tunnels to the freezing necropolis, the Citadel can be seen as emblematic of a dying culture and a dying world. For example, Severian elaborately washes his hands of the murder of his delicious predecessor and appeals to his soldiers by claiming to be a war veteran. The thoughtful reader is supposed to connect this with the puppet imagery earlier in the narrative, and wonder what else the 'powers from above the stage' have been doing during the story.The book delights in shrouding its events, characters, history, and even locations in a thick layer of ambiguity. Neologism: The book uses a variety of real but very obscure English words to describe concepts and entities in its far-future setting with no direct equivalents in our world. It's implied that all the resources have run out, so pillaging what we would consider archaeological ruins is the only way to gather resources. The exact degree of their distinctive height and features is vague, leaving it uncertain whether they'd strike us as beautiful, or as Humanoid Abominations. He claims on several occasions to have an eidetic memory - but it's quite clear that he sometimes lies outright.
Although Severian says he deserves no gifts, the Master says that he deserves it because he has had no better scholar since Master Gurloes rose to journeyman.One is quite clearly the first chapter of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, mashed up with the myth of Romulus and Remus and an American Thanksgiving story. Severian falls into a lake used to inter the dead, and while emerging finds a young woman named Dorcas to have come up from the lake as well.
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