Book of the New Sun-Should I keep going?

Lawrence Person · 12 Dec 1996, 18:56 · from sf-lovers.1996.mbox

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From: lawrence at bga.com (Lawrence Person)
Subject: Re: Book of the New Sun-Should I keep going?
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 13:56:49 -0500
Message-ID: <sflovers-v21-516-15 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V21 #516
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-21b

Michael Wen <mswen at worldnet.att.net@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>What I would really like to know is why this series is so popular.  Does
>it get better in the later books?  Is there some great revelation about
>Urth that is to come?  In general, just tell me something good about the
>book so I can decide to finish reading it.  Help is appreciated.

It's popular because it's vivid, baroque, raises many important moral
questions (i.e., Severian's profession), poetic, erudite, and highly
imaginative (among about a hundred other virtues). As for whether you
should keep reading, I would say one of the primary considerations would be
your age and how much SF you've read. I read SHADOW at age 16, went "Whoa,
this is really baroque," and never sought out the other books. At age 26, I
read all four books and loved them. But it's definitely not work suitable
for beginning readers.

Lawrence Person

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