{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/1",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1,
    "subject": "\"Shadow of the Torturer\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": null,
    "last": null
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v3-101-3@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "ICL.REDFORD",
        "address": "icl.redford"
      },
      "date": null,
      "subject": "\"Shadow of the Torturer\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It's hard to know what to say about this book, except that it's \ndefinitely worth your time.  It's the life story of an executioner, \nstarting with his appenticeship in the torturer's guild, and ending in\nhis early manhood.  Later books apparently chronicle his rise to the \nAutarchy, the emperorship.  The second, \"The Claw of the Conciliator\" \nis already out in hardback.  It is not a violent or sadistic story, \nnor is the protagonist particularly evil; he is just a cold, dark man \ndoing the job for which he was trained.  He tells the story in such an\neven philosophic tone that you have to shake yourself to get out of \nit.  Example:\n\n            The knife had somehow fallen from the dead man's neck.\n    Perhaps he had pulled it out in his agony.  When I bent to\n    pick it up, I discovered that the coin was still in my hand\n    and thrust it into my pocket.\n            We believe that we invent symbols.  The truth is that\n    they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard,\n    defining edges.  When soldiers take their oath they are given\n    a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch.\n    Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the\n    special duties and burdens of military life - they are\n    soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the\n    management of arms.  I did not know that then, but it is a\n    profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things\n    to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to\n    believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic.\n    The would-be sorceror alone has faith in the efficacy of pure\n    knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves\n    or not at all.\n\nGene Wolfe is the author."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}