{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/152", "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'" }, "archive": "sflovers", "thread": { "id": 152, "subject": "Review: On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1999-10-25T17:30:06+00:00", "last": "1999-10-25T17:30:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Aaron M. Renn", "address": "arenn at urbanophile.com" }, "date": "1999-10-25T17:30:06+00:00", "subject": "Review: On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe\n\t\t Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn\n\nConclusion: Recommended\n\nUnder the heading \"Simply embarrassing that more people don't read Wolfe\",\nan amazon.com reviewer wrote:\n\n
\nI looked at my local Barnes and Noble. I drove to a Borders which was over\n30 minutes away, betting that Borders would be better than B&N (typically,\nit is). I called the two local sci-fi specialty shops to see if they had\nit. None of the above had the new Wolfe book. It is terribly\nembarrassing. ... What is going on? Is Wolfe too literate for people?\n
\n\nWhen I mentioned on the net that I was reading On Blue's Waters as my first\nWolfe novel, I was told, \"this is *not* the Gene Wolfe book to start with\"\nbecause \"It is the fifth volume in a seven-volume series, and quite a lot\nof the emotional and intellectual interest of _OBW_ depends on prior\nknowledge of the characters and situations as depicted in _The Book of the\nLong Sun_.\" A couple messages later we discover \"Gah, why is _Lake of the\nLong Sun_ out of print?\"\n\nWell, there you go.\n\nAs it turned out, things weren't nearly so bad as I had been told and you\ncan safely read this without having to have read The Book of the Long Sun\nfirst, though I'm sure that would help. One of the blurbs on the cover\ncalled Wolfe a \"modern-day Homer\". That's probably a good choice for the\ncover of this novel, because it is indeed a bit Homeric. On Blue's Waters\nis a rough parallel to The Odyssey. The Protagonist Horn finds himself\nsailing the seas on a quest to bring back the legendary personage of Silk\nto be the leader of the humans on the newly settled world Blue. Along the\nway he runs into various magical creatures on islands and such, as well as\nother interesting creatures, both human and not. Silk was apparently the\ntopic of the previous Book of the Long Sun and references to events in that\nseries abound. However, because this book is basically the retelling of a\nlegend, albeit by one of the participants, the idea that there is a lot of\n\"common knowledge\" that we don't know completely isn't out of line.\nIndeed, I found that it added a certain something to the book, especially\nsince Wolfe is careful to backfill all the material we really need to know.\nI just considered the events in Book of the Long Sun a type of hazy and\nheroic Elder Days and that worked well for me.\n\nAs I said, this story is the retelling of a legend. Horn, who had\npreviously chronicled Silk's story as the Book of the Long Sun, already\nspread widely throughout Blue (the Illiad?), now sets out to tell his own\ntale. Since he's writing after his adventures, we know he survives them,\nand in a sort of foreshadowing technique Wolfe drops numerous glimpses of\nwhat will happen throughout the text. As with not knowing what happened in\nthe previous four books, this actually improved rather than degraded the\nstory as I would have thought. It's clear that Wolfe knows a whole heckuva\nlot more about writing than I do.\n\nThis book is literate without being highbrow, intelligent without being\nboring, and is a generally solid read. Based on comments from Wolfe fans,\nI was expecting mucho density, but instead I found something that was very\nreadable while still displaying a great deal of craft.\n\nThe main problem I had with it was the relative lack of any type of epic\nimportance to the quest to go with the writing style. This quest to find\nSilk and various other things is presented as important to the future of\nthe planet, but I wasn't convinced. Nor was the planet itself a\nparticularly interesting place of discovery as you might expect from a\nstraight-ahead colonization story. Actually, I pretty much was of the\nopinion that Blue would be better off getting put out of its misery, since\nthe whole place was moderately depressing, IMO.\n\nWolfe is from Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago that is just about\nthe last place I would expect a serious writer to live. While I said\nsuburb of Chicago, Barrington is really a suburb of Schaumburg, the major\nedge city of the northwest 'burbs. It's a very upscale town, but is very\ndisconnected from the city and generally lacking in the same sort of\ncharacter as other similarly upscale areas. For example, the North Shore\nis made up of older railroad suburbs full of stately Victorian era homes\nand people who make regular train trips into the city to see the opera and\nsuch. Barrington is full of mostly newer homes, having just enough of a\ncutesy downtown to make people feel like they've got more culture than the\nsurrounding towns. And full of people who are much more likely to stay in\nthe 'burbs than visit the city. The kind of people who told my one friend\nthat they would never live in a \"used house\" when he bought his 100 year\nold home in Elmhurst.\n\nI kept trying to find some way that my concept of living in Barrington\nwould be reflected in Wolfe's novel, but I didn't. Maybe you will. And\nincidentally, if you hate seemingly pointless asides like that one, you'll\ndespise this novel. Wolfe is always going off on tangents." } ] } ] }