Subject: (whorl) Reviews and Wolfe's sales figures

From: Ron Crown <crownrw at slu.edu>
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2000 09:59:49 +0000

I will temporarily de-lurk to offer a couple of mini-reviews of IGJ from
important trade publications (Library Journal has a big impact on
library sales).

   Library Journal, July 2000 v125 i12 p147 

In Green's Jungles. (Review)_(book review) Jackie Cassada. 
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Cahners Publishing Company 

Wolfe, Gene. In Green's Jungles. Tor. (Book of the Short Sun, Vol. 2).
Aug. 2000.  c.384p. ISBN 0-312-87315-8. $24.95. SF 

Horn's search for the legendary hero Patera Silk has taken him from the
world called Blue to the humid jungles of Green, a neighboring planet
populated by inhuman blood drinkers and their human slaves. As he tries
to make sense of his wanderings, Horn's memories and dreams blend with
the present in an elusive and intriguing chronicle of an ordinary man
forced into extraordinary circumstances. The sequel to On Blue's Waters
(LJ 10/15/99), the latest in an epic cycle that evolves from the
four-volume "Book of the Long Sun," displays Wolfe's signature;
style--literate, complex, and multilayered.  Best read in the context of
previous books in the series, this exploration of the nature of identity
and reality belongs in libraries that own the preceding series titles. 

Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2000 v247 i26 p54 

IN GREEN'S JUNGLES. (Review)_(book review) 
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Cahners Publishing Company 

GENE WOLFE. Tor, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 0-312-87315-8 

In 1980, Wolfe published The Shadow of the Torturer, the first volume in
his now classic Book of the New Sun, which was eventually followed by
his much-praised Book of the Long Sun sequence. Whereas the former
series was set on the decadent planet Urth, the latter took place within
the Whorl, a hollowed-out asteroid whose inhabitants knew nothing of the
universe outside their failing world. At the end of the second series,
the charismatic Calde Silk led his people to the planets called Green
and Blue and then disappeared. For years it had been rumored that the
two novel sequences were somehow connected--and here the rumor is
substantiated. In                          this second volume in The
Book of the Short Sun (after On Blue's Waters), Horn, the narrator of
the Long Sun books, is on a quest for the lost Silk. Although he engages
in numerous adventures--leading an army, slogging through a
monster-inhabited jungle, touring several exotic societies--the
specifics of the plot are almost inconsequential.  What counts is
Wolfe's gorgeous prose, the brilliant dialogue and the dazzling way that
reality shifts from one paragraph to the next. Horn soon discovers that
he has the seemingly magical power to travel instantaneously between
Green and Blue, though his body and those of his compatriots undergo
strange changes with each shift. Eventually, they visit a world with a
dying red sun that may be long-lost Urth. Oddly, Horn also discovers
that he has begun to physically resemble Silk. Like any middle volume in
a series, this novel leaves mysteries unsolved and plot threads hanging,
but that really doesn't matter. It's the sheer strangeness of this
masterful tale that counts, and the glorious sense of unknown wonders to
come. (Aug.) 

A review like the PW one especially should help but this morning I
checked the figures for the wholesaler that our library uses; they
pre-pub ordered 1200 copies of IGJ, as of today, they still have 757 "on
hand."  Of course, that doesn't mean that 443 have sold yet either, they
may have just delivered them to book stores which could still return
them.  Sadly, it appears that IGJ isn't jumping off the shelves, at
least not from our vendor (which is one of the major vendors for both
public and academic libraries).

Which raises a question for me; does anyone know about how many copies
(hardcover and/or paperback) Wolfe sells?  I once ran into a Tor
representative at a library convention who mentioned the figure of
10,000 hardcover copies as being the standard expectation for Wolfe. 
Can any of the well-connected denizens of the WHORL confirm/correct
this?  (or is it a closely guarded secret?)

Back to lurk mode....

Ron Crown
Reference Librarian
Saint Louis University
crownrw at slu.edu

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