_The Sorcerer's House_ reviews

Jonathan Goodwin · 24 Mar 2010, 04:41 · from 2010-March.txt.gz

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From: joncgoodwin at gmail.com (Jonathan Goodwin)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:41:32 -0500
Subject: (urth) _The Sorcerer's House_ reviews
In-Reply-To: <cbf55b101003210755w76727290pe13ecf6d72005f60 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <cbf55b101003210755w76727290pe13ecf6d72005f60 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <37bfbeb61003232141r6ed54a73w6050b3bc5819b7c8 at mail.gmail.com>

Another review (that I wrote): http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=755

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A list of online reviews I've seen thus far:
>
> - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/121553-the-sorcerers-house-by-gene-wolfe/
> - http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58638
> - http://www.lawrenceperson.com/?p=941
> - http://www.fantasyliterature.com/wolfegene.html#house
> (This one, incidentally, agrees with us that Bax kills George at the
> end. I'm coming to think that Bax's talk of cheating is supposed to
> hint that he boobytrapped or disabled one of the 2 dueling pistols,
> and that's how he won.)
>
> A few things I notice in the middle of my second reading:
>
> * Winker is bothering me ever more. I could understand the geisha
> stuff, but did she really have to speak so stereotypically? 'Ah so! Ah
> so!'
> * Is Bax really that honest? His reply to Millie vaunts her as his
> only friend, though he has to know that she's a bubble-brained blonde,
> and that he has at least 3 friends besides Millie (Winker, Doris, and
> his mother; his mother's friendliness and focus on food makes much
> more sense this time around - she's trying to get in mothering that
> she missed)
> * I don't think Old Nick/Black killed a hobo or his dog; the
> newspapers were at least a year old, Bax says. That hobo, if it wasn't
> Old Nick to begin with, was long gone.
> * The book does seem in general less of a puzzle-box than AEG, leading
> me to think that maybe there isn't any esoteric story besides that
> explained by the end. In tougher Wolfe books like _New Sun_, Wolfe
> wouldn't've bothered to explain what 'Skotos' means in Greek, or
> 'Zwart' in German.
>
> --
> gwern
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