The
Book of the Short Sun
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The
Book of the Short Sun
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On Blue's Waters
by
Gene Wolfe
On Blue's Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. You don't have to be acquainted with the Long Sun tetralogy, but it helps considerably, and though Wolfe's teasing list of ``Proper Names in the Text'' is of small benefit to newcomers, fans of the previous should not be disappointed. For "On Blue's Waters": The story starts off twenty years or so after the end of "The Book of the Long Sun", with Horn (a character from the "The Book of the Long Sun") setting off on a quest to find Patera Silk, the hero and central character of "The Book of the Long Sun". It takes a while to get used to the very non-linear nature of the narrative. Horn has to find Pajarocu, a semi-legendary city that has a spaceship capable of returning to the Long Sun Whorl (an enormous, semi-evacuated orbiting spaceship), where he believes Patera Silk to be. While most of the characters in the book are human, there are also the inhumi, the race of intelligent but parasitic beings that evolved on Planet Blue's neighbor, Planet Green, and eventually spread to Blue, as well as the Neighbors or Vanished People, who were the original inhabitants of Blue before being nearly killed off by the inhumi. There might also be a race of superbeings who functioned as the gods of the Vanished People, but we're never sure of that. Overall, this is a strange, well-written, complex, and enchanting tale. |
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In Green's Jungles
by
Gene Wolfe
In the second book (after On Blue's Waters ) of the Short Sun trilogy, Horn is still searching for his mentor and leader, Silk. He has reached prosperous and aggressive regions, where he is hailed as a wizard. Taken into the household of the Duko, Horn encounters another blood-drinking inhumu, Fava, posing as a visiting friend of the Duko's teenage daughter. Conflict between the Duko and a neighboring ruler escalates, and Horn becomes a military advisor while also trying to protect the Duko's family from Fava. Meanwhile, Green, the inhumu's birthplace planet, is on Horn's mind. Surviving on both Blue and Green has shaped Horn so that he resembles the wise, cynical object of his search, Silk. Shifting identity is a major theme here; besides Horn, the inhumu change age according to their needs and fears, and children "become" their parents. In addition, Horn and the inhumu can transport themselves, when asleep, to Green's feverish jungles. Thus, while desperately battling to save the Duko's people, Horn and Fava fight enemies on two worlds. |
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Return to the Whorl
by
Gene Wolfe
Few of the mysteries presented in the first two volumes of the Book of the Short Sun trilogy (On Blue's Waters; In Green's Jungles) are actually explained in this latest novel by one of SF's acknowledged masters, but Wolfe continues to provide literary entertainment of a high order. Horn, the supposed author of Wolfe's previous tetralogy, the Book of the Long Sun, continues his search for the now legendary Cald‚ Silk, the godlike former ruler of the city of Viron. Traveling back and forth between the aging generation starship known as the Whorl, the planets Green and Blue, and, strangely enough, the decadent and dying universe of Wolfe's much earlier Book of the New Sun sequence, Horn encounters a series of bizarre characters, some familiar from earlier books and others, like the blind giant known as Pig, new to this volume. Most of the novel consists of conversations between the various characters as they make their way from place to place on one world or another, attempting to answer some of the complex questions that the author has established over the course of 10 earlier volumes. Not the least of these mysteries is why Horn has begun to look like Silk, so much so that he is consistently mistaken for the legendary hero by people who know both men. For all its many beauties, Wolfe's latest novel is likely to remain opaque to any reader unfamiliar with at least the previous two volumes in the series. Still, longtime fans of Wolfe's complex plotting and ornate literary style will find much to cheer. |
