What an outpouring of pent-up commentary we've had!
Here are some short notes I myself have been saving up:
1. "Arthur Ormsby". My reaction was "What, again?", thinking of "Oh Wrangler, oh Artie" at the end of Castleview. So Able is really Wrangler Dunstan, right?
2. "Arthur Ormsby". I thought the surname smelled of Significance,
so I did a Google search. <http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnamePage.aspx?html=b&ln=Ormsby&sourcecode=13304> says the -by suffix is a Norse word for settlement. The suffix occurs, I've heard, in those areas of Great Britain conquered by the Vikings. <http://www.ormsby.org/genie/Australia/Origin.html> has Orm as a big strong hero from Scandinavia. I don't know how much to trust such web sites, and I would welcome any scholarly confirmation of the authenticity of the legend.
3. The acceleration of the last part of the book. I think this is a bad habit of Wolfe's. I thought Exodus from the Long Sun was rushed, and it really just sets up the Short Sun series rather than ending. For that matter, The Citadel of the Autarch just zooms about once it's well past the stories that were put in to pad it out after Wolfe split it off from The Sword of the Lictor. The Urth of the New Sun, too, changes locales like a slide projector.
4. Queen Idnn. The giantesses were prepared for very carefully in the narrative, but they still seem to come out of nowhere. I just found it hard to buy the notion that a brief marriage, not known to be consummated, would be taken as conferring authority on a foreigner. And maybe I missed why the female Angrborn live apart, and why the males prefer human women.
5. The Black Knight was obviously Duke Marder. Didn't surprise me.
6. Org's near-invisibility wasn't memorable from The Knight, and was perhaps a tad overused.
7. Mani was a continued delight, and I missed him when the thickening of the narrative could no longer accommodate his speaking role. Does anyone think he was G. Gordon Kitty in a previous life :-) ?
-- Dan Rabin