The Book of the New Sun First Read and Re-read project [spoilers]

[Darth Richard II]

How are we dealing with spoilers for those of us who have read the books before.? I know some are re reading and some its a first read, and I see stuff I want to jump in on but, well, spoilers, duh.

[Fragile Bird]

31 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

How are we dealing with spoilers for those of us who have read the books before.? I know some are re reading and some its a first read, and I see stuff I want to jump in on but, well, spoilers, duh.

I will change the name of the thread to indicate [spoilers] to be used.

[Jo498]

Spoilers are unavoidable for the current summaries and ongoing discussion but I'd suggest not to completely spoil developments from the later books. Either give only hints or put it within spoiler tags.

[Wilbur]

Wolfe's stories are so off the rails and his protagonists are so wildly unreliable in any case that what you might consider a spoiler may be something that I have never picked up on even though I have read the books previously.

I am completely serious here: please spoil away, as any insight as to what is happening or how it might connect to other parts of the series are entirely welcome.  Once Severian begins his road trip, I can no longer pretend to understand the characters' motivations or intentions or place any credence in the reality of what the narrator is claiming to be the course of events. 

[Fragile Bird]

If you go back to the OP, you will see a piece describing the books.  One of the comments mentions the fact Severian says he never forgets anything.  Someone up thread says Severian changes his story along the way, so he's obviously not correct and therefore an unreliable narrator, the unreliable narrator being a narrative we've become used to since the book first came out and especially as readers of   ASOIAF.

The commentator suggests instead that since Severian never forgets anything, ask yourself why he has changed some details.  Something I am trying to keep in mind as I read.

[Darzin]

In that way it feels like an actual historical text Severian manipulates things for his purposes and glosses over thing that we would find extraordinary. For example when he goes to the library in the citadel he mentions the rats infesting the library can write. It's not emphasized in the text at all but it's there and then after when it mentions them building homes from the books. My first read through I just pictured  rat's nests but seeing as theses "rats" are literate the homes he is referring to are probably more substantial and indeed he does mention they are multi level. So from two throw away lines we can see a snapshot of  something very interesting, but that's it just two lines that show something wildly different from our reality. There dozens of things like this in the book which is why I think it's so cool it feels more "real" than the average story because of how it is written.  

[felice]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I am completely serious here: please spoil away, as any insight as to what is happening or how it might connect to other parts of the series are entirely welcome.

I would suggest don't hesitate to post relevant spoilers for later book content, but put them in spoiler tags.

[Darth Richard II]

Ha well, the main thing I was thinking was about where on earth everyone is speculating the tortures guild is

Spoiler

It's Buenos Aires, though I'm not sure if that's ever revealed in the books per se, or it was puzzled out by fans or it was in an interview, or something. The guild is a giant space shuttle that was never launched.

And regards to the climate:

Spoiler

It's really cold in places cause the sun is dying/going out, although I never caught that thing about changing the moons orbit, good catch.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

40 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ha well, the main thing I was thinking was about where on earth everyone is speculating the tortures guild is

  Reveal hidden contents

It's Buenos Aires, though I'm not sure if that's ever revealed in the books per se, or it was puzzled out by fans or it was in an interview, or something. The guild is a giant space shuttle that was never launched.

And regards to the climate:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It's really cold in places cause the sun is dying/going out, although I never caught that thing about changing the moons orbit, good catch.

 

 

While talking to Rudeskind, the picture cleaner, Severian finds out details about the moon.

[Iskaral Pust]

I've read through XX now and the last few chapters are so dense that I'm worried there is much I might miss, and there may be a lot of misdirection too.

Severian journeys along the river, crosses a bridge with a bustling throng, is questioned by guards, spends the night at an inn, where he meets Dr. Talos and the giant Baldanders. He intends to abandon the duo plus their new actress, meets Algia and her brother, is mysteriously challenged to a duel by a praetorian-like stranger and , en route, embarks with Algia on a race that crashes into a tent cathedral and then visits the gardens of sand and jungle.

So much packed in there. We learn about the Conciliator, a historical messianic figure who mastered power and may exist outside time (does Severian too?). Algia and her brother seem like a dual-aspect god for some reason. The gardens, like the library, seem to extend beyond their physical space. Severian is powerfully affected by the garden of sand. It seems like Severian may have taken the Claw of the Conciliator (not stated in the text) but the priestess(?) declared him innocent, which is not the same as saying he did not take it. Once again, time turns lies into truth. In the inn, a dream of another immersion in water and meeting with mysterious female figures who show him a future of him with a sword defeating a giant wielding a stick (Baldanders, perhaps?). We also see more directly that Severian the author is the Autarch in the House Absolute, how Father Inires' mirror explains inter-dimensional and faster-than-light travel, that reality has layers beneath the one we see and that our masters lurk within us.

His exile feels very similar to Pilgrim's Progress, so I assume that Baldanders and Algia have some deep significance either literally or figuratively. Each excursion outside his tower is increasingly fanciful and possibly metaphorical. What are Algia's motives? What is Dr. Talks' damaged house with vaults intact?

So many other questions. This section is really sense and I look forward to discussing.

[Sheep the Evicted]

I have also just gotten to chapter XX and at first I really wasn't enjoying it. I know Wolfe is a titan of the genre and this is a seminal work but, for me, reading this book just isn't fun. Rather than just relaxing and passively submerging myself in the story, like i am wont to do,  i have to constantly be on the look out for the smallest details, constantly analzying what is metaphor, misdirection or reality. And then always coming to the conclusion that there is almost no way to really know. It felt more like i was studying the books than reading them for personal pleasure.

So after about chapter V i just decided to just read along mindlessly and allow FB's excellent chapter summaries and the discussion here to supply me with insight.

So am i reading it right that their method of intergalatic travel creates clones ? Or is the "copy" just made in another universe where the light comes from ?

Also the kindle version of this book is horrifically bad. If you're  thinking about getting it, dont.

[Fragile Bird]

Okay, I am going to continue with chapter summaries then, and by setting them out I may trigger some information, or some insights.  I'll try to get 5 chapters summarized tonight and 5 tomorrow.

ETA:  The denseness of the chapters is what derailed me when I first started to read the book.  As I said, the summaries really help me.

[Sheep the Evicted]

Please don't do it if its on my behalf, that sounds like a hell of a lot of work. Im sure someone else has done chapter summaries for this series before anyway.

[Iskaral Pust]

Sheep - I agree that it's not a pleasurable read on the surface. It's a long con and I expect the payoff is when the con is revealed and you can see all the hints and foreshadowing with the benefit of hindsight. As I read, I can feel the hidden story building, but I don't know how much I'm missing or being misled.

But I think this kind of group reading project is definitely the best way to tackle it.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XI, The Feast

More creepiness factor here.  Put yourself in the place of that legendary lieutenant of the guard 300 years ago, watching the proceedings of the guild's annual feast.

The feast comes at the end of winter, celebrating St. Katherine.  Perhaps Wolfe draws from Catholic traditions, or merely medieval traditions, but the feast is full of ceremony, prayer, symbolism, dance, drink and food.  Depending on the level of elevations being done, they are lofty, lesser or least.  Severian believes there are more than 135 guilds in the Citadel and they all spend weeks of preparation for the saint's day feast, with all the other guilds using pageantry and free food and drink to draw high attendance from outsiders.  No one attends their feast day, not in 300 years.  The said lieutenant was so paranoid he imagined horrible things were going to happen to him, drank too much and when he got home fell and hit his head.

But what does he see?  The senior master recites the history of the guild - 'in the years before the ice came' - the members sing the Fearful Song, the hymn of the guild, then kneel and pray among the broken pews of the ruined chapel, and her legend is recited and chanted while others play flutes carved out of thighbones and a rebec that shrieks like a man.

Just think of how matter-of-factly Severian says that:  flutes carved out of human thighbones and the music of a screaming man.

The saint, dragged struggling and screaming, is then told she will be broken upon the wheel, which collapses under her hand, and then she's to be beheaded, and she's quite graphically beheaded with lots of blood and a wax head rolling down, the head picked up by it's hair and displayed by one master and her 'blood' caught up in the hands of a second, blood used to initiate whoever is being elevated.  Then the beheaded saint gets up, takes back her head, speaks, and then disappears.

And this is their patron?  Someone they killed? 

Severian gets quite drunk and later wakes up in his new journeyman's cabin.  The room moves, he smells Thecla's perfume, he gets up and pukes, then lies down again.  He sleeps, he dreams.  First, that he is in the chapel, but it's not in ruin, and there's a window with glass so blue, described like the skies we see today, not like the real sky, so dark it's almost black.  (How can that be, is most of the atmosphere gone?  How can they breath?)  He's elevated above the altar, and looks down at the altar to see a cup of red wine, bread and a knife.

Then he wakes to hear padding feet, which he tries to ignore since he is nauseous, but surely the description is that of Triskele walking outside his room.  And his door opens and Master Malrubius looks in on him.  Severian waves to him, and he leaves, and sometime later he remembers Malrubius is dead.  [St. Malrubius was a hermit in Scotland, massacred by Vikings when he tried to preach about Christ to them, about 720.]

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XII, The Traitor

Severian wakes up hungover the next day, but, by long tradition, as the elevated participant he is not required to take part in the clean up after the feast.  Instead, he is working in the oubliette.  He brings in Thecla's food, but she is sleeping and he doesn't wake her.

A new client is brought in, a woman of the caste optimate.  Severian puts her in the cell next to Thecla, thinking the two will be able to speak to her to each other.  The woman wants to tell Severian why she has been arrested, explaining that her fiancé, an officer, had a mistress he refused to give up.  She arranges to have the woman's lodgings set on fire and is arrested and sent to the torturers, a punishment she thinks is too harsh for what she has done.  She, like Thecla, hopes she will be released without being tortured.  The conversation wakes up Thecla, who joins in the conversation, assuring the woman she knows she will be released.

Drotte runs into him and tells him to go to bed.  Instead, Severian sneaks into Master Gurloes' chamber and finds the torture order for Chatelaine Thecla, the excruciation order.  Severian can't sleep, instead he goes to the tomb that was his secret hiding place.  He imagines having helped her escape, and having hidden her there, before finally smuggling her down to the river and putting her on a boat to escape.  But he has no drugs or weapons with which he could have knocked out the brothers on the watch, but for a knife he stole from the kitchen. 

And Thecla had called him a rather sweet boy, which he realizes is what she thinks of him, and that he will always be a sweet boy to her, and I think at that point he realizes she does not love him the way he loves her and he gives up the thought of rescuing her.

The next day Master Gurloes has Severian assist him in the torture of Thecla.  When he arrives at her cell and they take her out, she doesn't understand yet what is happening, but when they get to the torture room she understands and handles it very bravely.  Various instruments of torture are described to her as they walk to the machine she will be put on, the revolutionary.  An electric current is run through her, making her scream more terribly than Severian has ever heard before.

The machine apparently has the effect of splitting her in two, so that her physical body hates her conscious self and will constantly try to kill her.  Her mouth bites her cheeks and tongue, her hands strangle her but she loses consciousness and the strangling stops, and then her hands try to blind her.  Severian admits her hands will indeed blind her, and that her death will take about a month.  He explains he had a knife and he tried to rescue her, but couldn't, because it would have meant killing his friends.  She asks him to bring the knife, but he has it, ready, leaving it with her after he tells her he sharpened it carefully.  He waits outside her cell, wondering if he shoud take the knife back, but doesn't, and finally a rivulet of blood flows out under the door, and Severian goes to Master Gurloes and tells him what he has done.

[Darth Richard II]

A lot of Wolfe's stuff I think you can just kind of let the whole thing flow over you the first time..if that makes any sense, but yeah, the Solar Cycle is dense as fuck. Most of it eventually comes together but for people reading Wolfe for the first time..yeah. It helps if you like mindfuck films(David Lynch, etc) I think.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XIII, The Lictor of Thrax

Severian is confined to a cell in the oubliette, not far from Thecla's, guarded by two armed journeymen.  His 'trial' consists of telling his story again to Master Palaemon.  He is there for 11 days, thinking about all the ways he could be tortured.  He remembers Master Malrubius telling him hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.  He isn't tortured right away, so he begins to hope.  He even dreams that Vodalus comes and rescues him.

On the 11th day he is called before Master Palaemon, and is told that the guild has decided not to kill him  For one thing, they don't have the authority to do so, and these torturers do nothing without permission.  They would have to bring Severian before a judge, and if they did that the world would find out a torturer betrayed the guild and the guild would lose credibility.  They might even have to turn over the guarding of prisoners to the soldier caste.  Severian says he would rather drown himself than allow that to happen, and Master Palaemon tells him to make sure not to tell Master Gurloes that.  His fate has been decided after consultation with all the guild members, even the apprentices.  There are some who are on his side, and have asked that he be allowed to die without pain, while others would like to see him tortured as cruelly as possible.

Instead, it has been decided he will be sent out into the world to take up a position in the city of Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms, a town in the far north.  The archon there, Abdiesus (a version of Abdjesus, the name of several different early saints and martyrs) had written to the House Absolute asking that someone be sent to them to fill the position of executioner and excruciator, to follow the instructions of the judicators there.  It will be a position universally hated and feared.  He will be sent as a torturer, even though he is only a journeyman, as his punishment

All travel in the land is now done by river, to make taxation easier, but travelling by river takes money, and Severian will not be given any money, except for a few smaller coins.  Instead, he must walk to Thrax.  Severian assumes he will take the road, but it turns out all travelling by road has been forbidden, to prevent sedition, and that there are uhlans (originally, Polish light cavalry armed with sabres and lances) authorized by the Autarch to kill anyone found using a road.  Severian will therefore have to travel cross country.

Severian is allowed to spend one last night in the guild and take to the road in the morning, but instead he asks to be given one watch's time to get ready and then leave.  He's told to be careful, because while he has friends, others would like him to die a painful death. (Was he offered one night, in hope someone might come to his room and murder him?)  And he is asked to return to the Master, since he has something to give him.

Severian quickly picks up his meagre possessions, and then visits Thecla's cell one last time.  The four books are still there, and he decides to take the small one about the history of legends.  He also goes to the roof, for one last view of the city, looking south, to the sea, and then north, to the House Absolute, to Thrax, the pampas, trackless forests and rotting jungles. He thinks about these things until half mad, then returns to the Master's room to tell him he is ready to go.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XIV, Terminus Est

Master Palaemon has a parting gift to give to Severian, a sword called Terminus Est translated as "This is the Line of Division", whereas a straight translation would be "This is the end".  The Master says it is light to raise, weighty to descend ie raising it costs nothing, lowering it means you are executing someone.  It has two edges, a male edge to behead men with and a female edge to behead women with, and a square end, meaning it can't be used as a thrusting weapon.  It is protected by a sheath of sable manskin, which I assume means the tanned skin of a black man, soft as glove leather.  It's also a beautiful work of art, which makes you wonder how often it was used, beyond ceremony.

Severian leaves the Tower with a light and happy heart, all his past doubts left behind and only his love of the guild remaining.  He is so happy he is smiling, which he is only supposed to do while with guild members, so he pulls his hood up over his head.  Wrongly he thinks he will perish on the way, wrongly he thinks he will never return to the Citadel, but also wrongly he believes there will be many more such days along the way.

Severian thinks he will be out of the city by dark, and will be able to sleep under a tree somewhere, but he doesn't realize how large the city is, though he knows trying to sleep in a building or a corner somewhere would be an invitation to be murdered.  So he walks all night, along the riverside.  Finally, at dawn, he comes to a bridge where he finds himself fascinated by the crowds.  He is stopped by two guards who tell him it's illegal to be wearing the clothes he has on, and he states he has the right as a member of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.  He is then brought before the official in charge of the bridge, the lochage, who tells him he is causing a disturbance merely by wearing the clothes he is wearing.

The lochage tells him he had thought the torturer's guild had been reformed out of existence long ago.  He also tells him he had better buy new clothing so that he doesn't frighten people.

One of the guards who brought him in, Petronax, has doubts that Severian is who he says he is, and the lochage says he knows he is telling the truth by the smell of rusting iron, cold sweat and putrescent blood that clings to him.  Then he invites Severian to demonstrate his craft, and Severian quickly incapacitates Petronax by crushing the nerve in his neck that causes convulsions.

 

[Darth Richard II]

There are also a few books written about this book if you guys are so inclined. The most famous I think is the Borski which is interesting, if a bit, eh, controversial, in that a lot of people think he's either complete 100 percent right or completely wrong, and boy do they fight. I think he points out a lot of interesting stuff but some of his later theories are nuts.

There's also the companion, plus someone who used to post here but out some huge book about Wolfe and his works, but it was published Vox Day's company, alas.

I digress, continue on.