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Ms. Fanservice: Jolenta is a deconstruction. Her carefully (and sometimes painfully) maintained figure is a source of inconvenience, and people hate her for being so attractive even as they lust after her. Only Jonas ( and, arguably, Severian, later) truly and unconditionally loves her for herself. At first, the name Urth appears to be a corruption of the word Earth. But Urth is also one of the Norse Norns. The naming of Venus (Skuld) and Mars (Veroandi) follow the pattern. You won't be getting in tonight." The leader put his hand on the hilt of his knife before taking a step closer. For a moment I was afraid he knew who we were. Clarke's Third Law: This theme runs throughout the entire series. Urth is filled with the remnants of advanced and alien technology ... but they might as well be dragons or spells, for all Severian or anyone else understands their workings. In fact, the books are best described as science-fiction novels whose narrator & characters have only fantasy-novel vocabulary at their disposal to describe anything. A striking portrait of the artist as a young torturer. It takes hold of you and conducts you down strange corridors..."
Master Palaemon gifts Severian with a sword nearly as long as a coffin, its traveling sheath and a baldric (a leather belt worn over the shoulder to support the sword). 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. The words Terminus Est are beautifully engraved on the sword, which means This is the Line of Division. When Severian poises the sword above his head, its weight shifts and Master Palaemon explains, “There is a channel in the spine of her blade, and in it runs a river of hydrargyrum – a metal heavier than iron, though it flows like water. The balance is shifted toward the hands when the blade is high, but to the tip when it falls.” Sexy Dimorphism: Abaia and Charybdis are mountain-sized, multi-headed tentacle things. Their daughter-wives, the Undine, are beautiful albino women who are indistinguishable from humans other than being 60 feet tall. Big Labyrinthine Building: The House Absolute. Not only is the House so vast and complex that its extents are unknown, but there is a secret Second House coextensive with the first. In The Urth of the New Sun he mentioned that his friends called him "Severian the Lame" and his soldiers called him "Severian the Great." This may be a shout-out to the Asian warlord Timur, who was also known by both titles. (It was apparently a pun in Timur's language.)
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The Man in Front of the Man: Dr. Talos and Baldanders. Talos, who clearly seems to be the leader, is a clever, glib conman with fox-like features. Baldanders clearly comes off as the subordinate, and appears to be a Gentle Giant and rarely speaks. In actuality, Baldanders is some sort of Humanoid Abomination Mad Scientist who turns out to be a threatening villain, and Talos is an Artificial Human, who is his creation. They leave the café without paying and separate – Dr. Talos to “devote my time to the enhancement of this sylph” and Baldanders to return to the inn to get their theatrical props – and Dr. Talos asks Severian to meet them to perform at Ctesiphon’s Cross. Severian agrees to do so but has no intention of rejoining them. THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN (5 VOLUMES) THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, THE CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR, THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR, THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH & THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Severian expresses convoluted personal theories about the nature of women. On the flip side, he also at one point encounters a woman who matter-of-factly tells him that men are motivated solely by lust for power, whether they want to admit that or not.
TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Language of Truth: The "newspeak"-like language of the Ascians is intended to be this. Subverted by Loyal To The Group Of Seventeen's story. Future Imperfect: Several examples. While at the library, Severian sees a picture of the first man on the moon and not only describes it in an Innocent Inaccurate way, but also wonders why there's no vegetation on it. Another scene makes reference to the planet Mars being renamed "Present" at some point, and one character can't believe a language existed where the words for "gift" and "now" were the same. There's also a scene where Severian hears a story which has a definite similarity to that of Theseus, but has no idea of the connection. Long-lived robot Jonas does understand the connection. Shortly before Severian is elevated to journeyman he encounters and falls in love with Thecla, a beautiful aristocratic prisoner. Thecla's crime is never made clear, though it is implied that she is imprisoned for political reasons since Thecla's half-sister is Thea, Vodalus's lover. The Autarch (ruler of the Commonwealth) wishes to use Thecla to capture Vodalus. When finally Thecla is put to torture, Severian takes pity on her and helps her commit suicide by smuggling a knife into her cell, thus breaking his oath to the guild.
Banana Republic: The story takes place in a far future, alternate universe version of South America. The massive inequalities of its feudal system are a futuristic spin on this trope. As they wander deep into the Jungle Garden, Severian hears a screaming “from some red world still unconquered by thought” and asks what it is. Agia believes it is a distant smilodon (saber-toothed cat), either far off in the garden or “perhaps the distance is of time.” Although she cannot explain it and says some things are unanswerable, the chambers appear open to the sky and are much larger on the inside than they appear at first. “I warned you that the rooms open out, and that you might find that disturbing. It is also said that the walls of these places are specula, whose reflective power creates the appearance of vast space.” All right," Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers following. Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last volunteer swing the gate closed behind us. Dead All Along: Severian. For clarification, in the coda, The Urth of the New Sun, Severian died early in the book but immediately had all his memories implanted into a new, identical body that Tzadkiel fashioned for him on the spot. Unless he died earlier than that. And there's reason to think he did... there's a skull at the bottom of the river where he "nearly" dies in the first book. Inside, they visit several engrossing gardens. 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. Dazed and confused, the woman follows Severian and Agia. Severian secures the avern and the group proceeds to an inn near the dueling grounds. While eating dinner, Severian receives a mysterious note warning about one of the women. After dinner, Severian meets with his challenger, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives and finds that his challenger was the male owner of the rag shop, Agia's brother Agilus. Severian wins the duel amid some confusion. The next day, he is requested to perform an execution. The client is his challenger, Agia's brother, whom he executes.
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The third was the leader Drotte had spoken with outside the gate. "Who are you?" he called to Vodalus, "and what power of Erebus's gives you the right to come here and do something like this?" Other than the Torturers, there are the librarians and animal trainers, as well as one of witches, who rather than being solely magical, they appear to have a spy network. Christianity is Catholic: Wolfe is Catholic and the religions existing in the world are based upon Catholicism. In a stunning blend of the lyric extravagance of fantasy and the keen edge of science fiction, meeting in a future so distant that it seems like the ancient past, Gene Wolfe begins his chronicle of Severian the Torturer, in this the first volume of The Book of the New Sun. The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Subverted with Vodalus. He and his followers claim to be working to return the decaying Urth to its former past glory. It turns out Vodalus is in league with Abaia, who wants to prevent the New Sun from arriving.
Severian mentions that he practiced his craft during his journey, but attempts to avoid details of his profession in his story. What little is described is only what is necessary to make sense of the plot. All right," Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers following. Certain mysteries aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last volunteer swing the gate closed behind us. Big Badass Battle Sequence: Citadel gives us the Third Battle of Orithiya, a huge meat grinder of a battle between the hordes of Ascia and legions of the Commonwealth, which Severian finds himself right on the front lines of. It's implied by Severian that it's just the latest of a series of inconclusive battles between the two factions over the same valley, highlighting how pointless the Forever War is. Cliffhanger Copout: The novel was originally published as four separate volumes. Each of the first three volumes ended with a cliffhanger. In each case, the next book begins some time after the resolution of the cliffhanger with the resolution never explained in detail.
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Eldritch Abomination: Abaia and Erebus are particularly nasty, apparently, though they're never seen in person - only their human worshippers/slaves, the Ascians, who are an Orwellian totalitarian nation. Translation: string with nettles, the fallopian or eustachian tube, a memorandum listing documents.
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