THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH is out in paperback

decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn · undated · from sf-lovers.1983.mbox

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From: decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH is out in paperback
Date: 18 Nov 83 19:06:39-PST (Fri)
Message-ID: <sflovers-v8-118-7 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V8 #118
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-08

[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...

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