Interlibrary Loan (no spoilers)

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 19 Jul 2020, 03:00 · from 2020-July.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 20:00:15 -0700
Subject: (urth) Interlibrary Loan (no spoilers)
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I *have* read it - just finished a few minutes ago - and boy do I have
thoughts, but most of them have to wait until the spoilage period has
passed.

I found it much easier going than *A Borrowed Man* - until the last four
pages or so, where I suddenly had *no* idea what was going on, and most
especially the last line. What the actual hell?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

*?Wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the
dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which
could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the
soul of something marvellous.? -- *Joan Mir?

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 7:44 AM Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com> wrote:

> Has anyone read this, and if so, do you have thoughts?
>
> I re-read *A Borrowed Man* before reading *Interlibrary Loan*. I had
> found *A Borrowed Man* to be very opaque on first reading, and much more
> reasonable on a second reading. (This is my normal pattern with Wolfe; each
> reading produces more clarity.)
>
> I found the first reading of *Interlibrary Loan* to be even more opaque,
> and also a bit disjointed. It was by turns weird, scary, and funny. I
> believe it is actually hard SF rather than Fantasy, which seems to go
> against a lot of reviews. It could have used another draft. It is extremely
> sad we will never get one.
>
> Dave Lebling
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