Subject: THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH is out in paperback (re-posted)

From: donn <donn at sdchema.uucp>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1983 00:06:39 +0000

[This is part of a batch of articles from San Diego that the rest of
the net never saw, because our net connection was down -- sorry if you
have seen this before, or if the discussion seems dated.]

Date: Fri, 21-Oct-83 23:50:34 PDT

This book is the last volume of Gene Wolfe's tetralogy, THE BOOK OF THE
NEW SUN.  There are some very good reviews in the front, even from the
New York Times.  My own glowing review has appeared on the net.  A
warning: if you haven't read the previous three volumes then you
probably won't understand CITADEL; of course this is no guarantee that
you WILL understand the book if you read the previous volumes...  but
you're off to a good start.  I re-read all four volumes this summer in
hardback and learned lots of new things...  Buy it.

I also read Avram Davidson's strange book THE PHOENIX AND THE MIRROR.
I am tickled that there appear to be a couple connections between this
book and Wolfe's tetralogy; in particular Davidson's protagonist at one
point wears a cloak of 'that nameless color which is darker than
black', and mentions the term 'lictor', meaning executioner.
Curiously, the word 'lictor' is absent from Wolfe's glossary of words
from THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER in THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER; perhaps he
considers this word so common as to be not worth describing...  (Not
that the glossary is anything like complete!  And the words are not
always for real, merely 'almost always'.  A funny definition: 'ONEGARS:
My erroneous spelling of ONAGERS.  I should look these things up.') Did
anyone else like THE PHOENIX AND THE MIRROR? My feelings are somewhat
qualified, but there are parts of the book that really shine...