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

[Fragile Bird]

I need to read to the end of the book now, there are only 11 chapters left (I've read several) so I don't know what the story in the book is regarding the disappearance of the Claw of the Conciliator, but obviously Severian must have it.  The old man has been searching for Cas for so long and somehow was unable to find her, yet there she was the whole time.  Severian merely falls into the water and finds her, and as soon as he touches her she is alive again.  I believed him when he denied taking anything from the altar.  I assume Agia must have been the thief and must have slipped the gem into a pocket in the mantle when she held on to him, telling him of her injured leg and saying he would have to carry her. Yet she then walks a great distance, including the long steps down the hill to the river.

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, matt b said:

Yep.

Thanks.  It seemed the natural explanation but because she reached out for Terminus Est and for him before he touched her, I wondered if the sword resurrected her or if she did so herself.  But it seemed much more likely that the presence of the New Sun caused her resurrection.

We'll just have to find out why her and not one of the many other submersed bodies.  I doubt it's random, especially since we also met her widower husband.  It did seem to be involuntary by Severian, but he is an unreliable narrator.

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Did Severian resurrect Dorcas/Cas?  Once again, immersion in water is associated with resurrection (Severian's drowning at the start)...

I was under the impression that the resurrection of Dorcas/Cas is related not just to Severian, but to something that he is carrying with him.  I am being oblique here because I am unsure whether or not he has discovered it yet at the point of where Fragile Bird's summaries have arrived.  However, as we can see above, Fragile Bird is a better guesser than most about What Has Gone Before, using insightful inference to dope out what is what.

 

Between The Thing He Carries and Severian, she grasps him from below when he goes back in to find Terminus Est, and then somehow uses Urthian Judo to rise above him to the sedge and pull him out.  I never understood exactly the physical logistics of how she went from being the hand that pulls him down to the hand that pulls him up and out, so I just put that down to our old friend Unreliable Narrator.

[Fragile Bird]

19 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

I was under the impression that the resurrection of Dorcas/Cas is related not just to Severian, but to something that he is carrying with him.  I am being oblique here because I am unsure whether or not he has discovered it yet at the point of where Fragile Bird's summaries have arrived.  However, as we can see above, Fragile Bird is a better guesser than most about What Has Gone Before, using insightful inference to dope out what is what.

 

Between The Thing He Carries and Severian, she grasps him from below when he goes back in to find Terminus Est, and then somehow uses Urthian Judo to rise above him to the sedge and pull him out.  I never understood exactly the physical logistics of how she went from being the hand that pulls him down to the hand that pulls him up and out, so I just put that down to our old friend Unreliable Narrator.

You know, I read that passage over and over, trying to decide if somehow there were two other people in the water, maybe even a youngling of the giant water women.  I decided that when he dove down he must have touched Dorcas, maybe just brushed by her, so she was below him.  He thought she was dragging him down, but perhaps she was trying to pull herself up.

[Jo498]

The exact physical logistics are unclear and implausible. (It's very unclear to me even how he can "throw" Terminus Est onto the shore from several meters below the surface.) But Severian is panicked in fear of drowning and both his sense of direction may be off (there is  a situation later in the 4th book where he also experiences a loss of directional sense and this is also in a "magical" region with strange spacetime effects) and he may also be confused whether the hand in the water only grasps his or really pulls down. And he might have been unconscious for half a minute or more before recovering. If you look at pictures of historical "sabretaches" it could have been floating a little away from Severian and touching Dorcas without him noticing the body at all in the murky water.

However, it does not square well with later healings by the Claw that usually take some time for the patient to recover. That Dorcas (who supposedly was dead for decades although one has to keep in mind the strange (non)passage of time in some regions of the garden) is immediately well enough to help Severian out of the water is considerably more miraculous than the other Claw healings we witness in the book.

This is probably to let the reader (who does not even know yet that  Severian has the Claw, this is a very good catch by first time readers!) do a little discovery for himself because for a while one might be uncertain whether Dorcas was someone who followed them and had also fallen into the water or was resurrected somehow. (I suspected fairly soon that she was resurrected somehow but it took me a second reading to make the connection with the old man's "Cas".)

[Mavoras]

This is a nice post comparing Jon Snow to Severian:

http://www.davidbarrkirtley.com/blog/?p=2371

Mavoras

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, Mavoras said:

This is a nice post comparing Jon Snow to Severian:

http://www.davidbarrkirtley.com/blog/?p=2371

Mavoras

Be warned folks, major spoiler there....

[Fragile Bird]

7 hours ago, Jo498 said:

The exact physical logistics are unclear and implausible. (It's very unclear to me even how he can "throw" Terminus Est onto the shore from several meters below the surface.) But Severian is panicked in fear of drowning and both his sense of direction may be off (there is  a situation later in the 4th book where he also experiences a loss of directional sense and this is also in a "magical" region with strange spacetime effects) and he may also be confused whether the hand in the water only grasps his or really pulls down. And he might have been unconscious for half a minute or more before recovering. If you look at pictures of historical "sabretaches" it could have been floating a little away from Severian and touching Dorcas without him noticing the body at all in the murky water.

He doesn't toss it as far as the shore, but onto some floating sedge, the same floating sedge where the two of them end up clinging to.  A bit far fetched, true, but pushing up something straight and relatively narrow like a sword would be easier than something that was , for example, square.  Also, it got caught in the reeds, so the water could not have been that deep. 

7 hours ago, Jo498 said:

This is probably to let the reader (who does not even know yet that  Severian has the Claw, this is a very good catch by first time readers!) do a little discovery for himself because for a while one might be uncertain whether Dorcas was someone who followed them and had also fallen into the water or was resurrected somehow. (I suspected fairly soon that she was resurrected somehow but it took me a second reading to make the connection with the old man's "Cas".)

I first spent 1500 posts at the north end of the Board.  Constant analysis and re-analysis of GRRM's books make you more suspicious.   

ETA:  I have read to the end of the book now, and will be doing chapter summaries.  I was already struck by the Wall, and once again thought about influences on GRRM.  There's a well known story told by George that he was in Northern England and visited Hadrian's Wall, and seeing it strongly influenced him to create a wall that keeps civilization safe from the barbarians in the North.

The Wall here surrounds the city, protecting it from all directions, so the parallel is not quite the same, but perhaps George was influenced by the size of Wolfe's wall.

[Jo498]

I finished the whole 4 volumes now. While quite a few puzzles are solved (some explicitly), there is still quite a bit that is more hinted at than explained. The end itself is fairly open in several respects and I am not quite sure I understood the central conceit at all...

But I don't want to discourage anyone. It was a fascinating read and when going slowly over everything again with smart people I will understand more...

Did anyone understand what the point of the Wall of Nessus is? With fliers (rare as they are) there is not really a point of such a huge wall and for the more usual weaponry a wall of, say 80-100 ft. would have been sufficient.

[Darth Richard II]

Anyone want to spoil the significance of the sand room scene for me? I totally missed that one I think.

[Jo498]

It's impossible to get the significance when he is there with Agia. I still don't quite get it when it is "explained" close to the end of the book.

[matt b]

13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Anyone want to spoil the significance of the sand room scene for me? I totally missed that one I think.

 

From Chapter XXXI The Sand Garden, The Citadel of the Autarch (obviously, spoilers for the end of the book)

"At last I followed the tracks of a two wheeled cart and came to a clump of wild roses growing from a dune."

"A thorn caught my forearm and broke from its branch, remaining embedded in my skin, with a scarlet drop of blood, no bigger than a grain of millet at its tip."

"It was the Claw."

That's where the Claw came from. It's a rose thorn that has some of Severian's blood on it. Lots of Catholic imagery here, with the Crown of Thorns and the Blood of Christ and all that wrapped up together with the power of resurrection.

[Jo498]

I do not want to start a discussion about stuff so far ahead now but this is where I don't really understand what supposedly is the "solution" of everything

Spoiler

How does the time travelling or the eternally recurring similar (so practically parallel?) universes work? Severian had the claw embedded in the gem BEFORE he came to that beach/the sand garden. Did some earlier version of him go the beach, hallow the thorn that was later embedded and kept as a relic? Was the earlier version of Severian the conciliator?

But this "earlier" conciliator was not in some earlier phase of the cyclic universe (which would be billions of years before a big crunch/big bang transition) but in the past of that timeline of Urth we encounter Severian the torturer's apprentice in, only a few thousand (or maybe a few hundred thousand) years earlier...

 

 

[matt b]

Time travel gets confusing, there aren't any easy answers here.  I think your 1st paragraph in your spoiler tag is pretty accurate:

I do believe there was an earlier version of Severian who was the Conciliator. Additionally, this Severian will go back in time and become the Conciliator. I think there's a constant parade of things (Severians?) from the future coming into the past and altering things ever so slightly.

But I feel a lot less confident about any of these assertions than almost anything else in book. I think Urth of the New Sun has a some good ruminations along these lines as it dives down the Kabbalah rabbit hole pretty deeply.

[Iskaral Pust]

Something occurred to me about Severian's unreliable narration -- we saw earlier how he reversed himself on his number of sexual encounters and he seems to do something similar about how many times he fought with Thecla, and since Thecla is dead we know those things did not happen later to Severian. 

So far it seems like he was lying, trying to make his younger self more pure and/or slightly older self more worldly.  But is it possible that space/time aberrations, or memories from another Severian's life make it true?  The story is hinting at movements through time and possibly recurring cycles. 

[matt b]

3 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

So far it seems like he was lying, trying to make his younger self more pure and/or slightly older self more worldly.  But is it possible that space/time aberrations, or memories from another Severian's life make it true?  The story is hinting at movements through time and possibly recurring cycles. 

I've had that thought as well. I think it's plausible enough but I'm not sure if I buy it. Can't say that's there any particular reason as to why. Still, one of the things I love about New Sun is I question even the things I'm absolutely convinced of at least a little bit.

[Jo498]

At the first run through I don't really remember anything important Severian is lying about.

Spoiler

There is, of course, another aspect that could lead to mixed up and unreliable memories, despite his claim of total recall. His memories and to some extent his personality fuse first with Thecla's and at the end with the former autarch's and all he had absorbed. It's almost miraculous that he does not get mad then...

There are little gaps and some things are uncertain but it does not seem very important for the story whether he had sex with Thecla or not. Later on it certainly looks as if they had (and regularly over a longer period of time, she is in prison about a year or more, I think) but it seems somewhat strange that the guild would tolerate that (it could hardly been kept secret) despite the explicit warning by one of the masters. It would also explain his reluctance to go to the brothel again. But I have no idea why he should describe it differently at first and mislead the reader, only to be frank about it later.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XXIV, The Flower of Dissolution

As they row across the lake, Dorcas picks a water hyacinth and puts it in her hair.  Severian, writing the book at night, wonders if the flower only came into being because Dorcas reached for it.  He wonders if, as Hildegrin may have implied, the seeress' cave and the garden are actually on the other side of the world and they've travelled there by entering the garden.  He contemplates the relationship between light and dark and order and chaos.

Hildegrin asks if he's thinking about going to his death, he thinks he sees it in his face.  Severian denies it, but Dorcas whispers to him that he was, because his face was full of nobility.  She says the world is filled with half good and half evil, and you can tilt it so that more good fills your mind, or back. She also says she would bend time backward if she could.

The shore where the averns grow is less marshy.  Looking at them Severian says, "They are not from here, are they?  Not from our Urth."

Agia tells Severian that good form requires that he pick his own avern, by snapping the stem off close to the ground.  She says she will show him how, but Hildegrin stops her and tells her she won't.  As soon as he says "I'll take the females to safety" Severian remembers where he's met him before.

The averns are powerful plants - only short grass is growing around the plants, since the grass withers away when an avern leaf touches it.  Dead bees and the bones of birds are in the grass.  Agia warns Severian that averns are closer to you than you think, they seem to have some kind of power to create optical illusions of space.  At one point Severian thinks he's a few feet from a plant when he's actually about to prick himself on a razor sharp leaf.  Looking at the flower itself with it's swirling pattern held his gaze "and with the dry lust of death sought to draw me in".  He goes to cut down a sapling on the hill to attach the avern to, to keep it well away from everyone.  He spends some time practising throwing leaves so he will know what to do in the duel.

When they row back to the other shore, Agia tries to drive Dorcas away, and while they are busy doing that Severian tells Hildegrin that he too is a friend of Vodalus, having remembered Hildegrin was the big solid man he ran into in the graveyard in Chapter I.  Hildegrin denies it, and then Severian says "the worst thing I could have said: "You tried to brain me with your shovel".  Hildegrin goes to his boat and rows away.

Agia is still trying to drive Dorcas away, Dorcas is walking 50 steps behind them, something Severian at first thought was a good idea, because he fears that he won't be able to get Agia to have sex with him if Dorcas is there.  But now he realizes that, having poured out in words to Agia his sorrow over Thecla, speaking about his sorrow has made him feel better.  In the end Agia can't force Dorcas away, and Severian threatens to strike her if she doesn't stop.

They trudge along in silence, presenting quite a spectacle, Severian in his fulgin cloak showing under the mantle, carrying the avern like a gonfalon (a medieval Italian banner), Agia in her torn robe, and Dorcas covered in mud.

[Darth Richard II]

Right!

 

Spoiler

Time! I remember most of it now, stupid time loops!

 

[Sheep the Evicted]

So my kindle tells me i'm 82% of the way through book 2; and this i'm afraid is where I bow out. Despite the acclaim and all his influence on the genre, Wolfe just isn't for me. I don't think I will be revisiting these books some time in the future either.