#The Shadow of the Torturer

[rherlotshadow]

'Hers was such a face as I have never seen elsewhere, like a pool of pure water found in the midst of a wood.'

[galaxseacreature]

Me, finishing The Shadow of the Torturer:

Wow, lotta weird stuff crammed in those last few chapters at the end! Can't wait to listen to Shelved by Genre and see what they make of it

Shelved by Genre:

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[taravangianlistenstothebeachboys]

For all the fans that follow me for the nebulous group of fandoms I post about that can only be grouped as “genre fiction,” I heartily recommend the new podcast “Shelved By Genre.” It’s done by Ranged Touch, a network also known for Homestuck Made This World, Game Theory Study Buddies, Just King Things, etc, and I definetly recommend checking out their other stuff if you haven’t.

It does deep-dives into representative genre fiction series, with their first episode discussing the first six chapters of Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer, the first book in his The Book of the New Sun series. I started reading it so I could listen along to the podcast, and I think that fans of The Locked Tomb will get a lot out of the series. It shares a similar place of genre weirdness as tlt, with court intrigue, sword and sorcery, and far-future sci-fi elements mixed together for a very unique world. It has a similar willingness to mix “literary” and “low-brow” references throughout, with pulp fiction, Proust, and obscure Catholic saints being its major touchstones. It’s main character Severian comes from a similar tradition as Gideon and Harrow in being raised as part of an alien and feared religious tradition which he has a complicated relationship with. Wolfe and Muir share a similar tendency for narrators who don’t give much detail about what they’re not focused on, often at the expense of the reader’s understanding of the plot, which encourages a reading style that Harrow fans especially will be familiar with. I would not be surprised if Wolfe is an influence on Muir. All this to say, tlt fans should definitely check out book of the new sun, and they should listen to Shelved By Genre as they do it.

[biblioklept]

Mass-market Monday | Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer

The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe. Timescape/Pocket Books (1981). No cover designer or artist credited. 262 pages. While no cover artist is credited, Don Maitz is the artist for this edition of The Shadow of the Torturer, as well as for the other three books in Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun tetralogy. Maitz is credited on the dust jackets of the original hardback first editions (Simon &…

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[apesoformythoughts]

I’m listening to a podcast episode that goes through the first chapter of The Shadow of the Torturer and they’re pointing out all the “inconsistencies” (?) in the narration (Severian’s memory?) and oh boy.

[slowthinkingreader]

The Shadow of The Torturer - Gene Wolfe

(Started May 14th, finished May 25th, 2024)

Takes a long drag of my cigarette. OKAY. I really didn't intend to start another long series of books this year. I've already started my read of Proust. How much have I read of Lost Time? Don't ask me that right now. This book, I'm coming to know, is basically like reading Proust, except instead of following along with the minutia of high-society France in the 20th century, we're somewhere in the far distant future, where the sun has dimmed in the sky and society is contrived in such a way that the ruling powers depend on a guild of Torturers to blindly carry out the punishment they're ordered. There's also fantasy medieval towns and fantasy logic; duels, mythology, time travel, JRPG characters... I could sooner fit what doesn't appear in this book rather than what doesn't.

Full disclosure, the ^ cover art above is not the actual art of the book I own, as I would otherwise put, because I don't own the book, I'm reading this series on my phone, and the cover art that Apple Books supplies to all their books are so ugly I couldn't in good conscience put that shit here for other people to fry their eyes with. Thank me.

Another disclosure; I'm listening to the Shelved by Genre podcast as a companion as I read along. It's really good! It's what got me interested in reading these books to begin with. I'd heard of the Book of the New Sun series before, in a "this series is a classic but the books look very intimidating on the sci fi shelves" sense, but never felt compelled to read them myself until now. I listened to the first episode and realized I would have a lot more fun if I read the chapters myself and then compared my observations as I went along.

In fact, this first book was not that long of a read, but it's very, very dense with information. Not in the sense that the worldbuilding or the plot is especially strange, though it is; the prose itself is so evasive in what it's describing that several times I've had to backtrack to make sure I'm understanding what's even transpiring on the page. You're frequently introduced to foreign expressions and concepts with no explanation as to what it means, and sometimes you're introduced to things that should be familiar, but that are mystified and made foreign.

It makes for a confusing review, but I don't know if I would have enjoyed this book without the podcast as a companion. And I'm not saying that as a complaint. Maybe this speaks more about my own patience and taste, but in a way I feel like the book presents itself so much as a game rather than a singular reading experience. Things of interest are obscured from you; the narrator obscures the truth from you; your ability to parse and identify patterns reveals different things every time you read something, depending on what you seek out. Any one interpretation is bound to be different. I'm trying to imagine myself reading this book alone and finding myself very bored at the prospect. I understand why New Sun has such an involved fanbase; you could hold infinite debate over every detail in this book. I'll keep myself more limited in this review than I could be.

Severian— I love Severian. Awesome, never lies, wise beyond his years, shredded and shirtless all the time, and his sword is huge. May or may not be embellishing his own biography.

Okay I actually don't have much to say about him yet. The book is such that it doesn't exactly resolve anything. I imagine by the end of the series I will be able to formulate something much more like an "opinion" about the "contents", which will hopefully make more sense by then. Until I finish, I have a few thoughts and predictions:

I love the way this book plays with scale. I love how unabashedly *huge* everything is. Can't get enough of massive women and mountains and galactic empires and ocean monsters. Not enough of this in any genre, I say!!!

I honestly have no idea where the book is going wrt misogyny and gender. It's certainly grappling with a lot of interesting thoughts on gender roles and bioessentialism... but to what end, I really can't predict. I wonder how Severian would react to somebody challenging him? If a woman did? If Vodalus did?

What memory could Vodalus possibly be trying to get out of eating corpses. Just any corpses, too? Nobody's crypt in specific you're trying to pilfer? Why is memory something you can extract from eating corpses too I... whatever. Whatever. I'm normal. It's fine.

Maybe I'm too Lord of the Rings-brained, but when I read this, my immediate impression was that he was looking into an eye, with a sharp sclera surrounded by fire:

For the first book of the Book of the New Sun series, The Shadow of the Torturer was intriguing, and enjoyable if only to appreciate the prose, but it hasn't completely sold me yet. 6/10.

[timetot]

[...philosophical. In the brown book in my sabretache there was the tale of an angel (perhaps actually one of the winged women warriors who are said to serve the Autarch) who, coming to Urth on some petty mission or other, was struck by a child's arrow and died. With her gleaming robes all dyed by her heart's blood even as the boulevards were stained by the expiring life of the sun, she encountered Gabriel himself. His sword blazed in one hand, his great two-headed ax swung in the other, and across his back, suspended on the rainbow, hung the very battle horn of Heaven.

"Where wend you, little one," asked Gabriel, "with your breast more scarlet than the robin's?"

"I am killed," the angel said, "and I return to merge my substance once more with the Pancreator."

"Do not be absurd. You are an angel, a pure spirit, and cannot die."

"But I am dead," said the angel, "nevertheless. You have observed the wasting of my blood—do you not observe also that it no longer issues in straining spurtings, but only seeps sluggishly? Note the pallor of my countenance. Is not the touch of an angel warm and bright? Take my hand and you will imagine you hold a horror new dragged from some stagnant pool. Taste my breath—is it not fetid, foul, and nidorous?"

Gabriel answered nothing, and at last the angel said, "Brother and better, even if I have not convinced you with all my proofs, I pray you stand aside. I would rid the universe of my presence."

"I am convinced indeed," Gabriel said, stepping from the other's way. "It is only that I was thinking that had I known we might perish, I would not at all times have been so bold."]

[jonaswpoetry]

"... so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us."

The Book of the New Sun Volume 1: The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

[valtsv]

you should always be careful when you fall back asleep again after waking up because sometimes you will just have a pleasant little snooze but sometimes you'll get trapped in TIME PRISON. unfortunately there is no way to predict this.

[ferrocyan]

have an excerpt from the first book where the protagonist in this high fantasy setting finds a picture of the moon landing:

The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure’s helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more.

This warrior of a dead world affected me deeply, though I could not say why or even just what emotion it was I felt. In some obscure way, I wanted to take down the picture and carry it—not into our necropolis but into one of those mountain forests of which our necropolis was (as I understood even then) an idealized but vitiated image. It should have stood among trees, the edge of its frame resting on young grass. (...)

"(...)Today I took the notion to clean it again. And it needs it, see how nice it’s brightening up? There’s your blue Urth coming over his shoulder again, fresh as the Autarch’s fish.”

All this time the name of Vodalus was echoing in my mind. I felt certain the old man had come down from his ladder only because I had mentioned it, and I wanted to ask him about it. But try as I might, I could find no way to bring the conversation around to it. When I had been silent a moment too long and was afraid he was about to mount his ladder and begin cleaning again, I managed to say, “Is that the moon? I have been told it’s more fertile.”

“Now it is, yes. This was done before they got it irrigated. See that graybrown? In those times, that’s what you’d see if you looked up at her. Not green like she is now. Didn’t seem so big either, because it wasn’t so close in—that’s what old Branwallader used to say. Now there’s trees enough on it to hide Nilammon, as the saw goes.”

I want a typical old fantasy setting with castles and dragons but you regularly see stuff like this in the world

[bestjeanistmonster]

Dc au- a day in the life of having strange af partner in crime

[vindicia]

A shinobi would know the difference between honour and victory.

SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE (2019)

[weepingtalecowboy]

Four has weird shit on his resume

Fanfic prompt:

Four knows a lot about illegal and forbidden warfare

About how to get information in a very disturbing and cruel manner

And more

Because Vio was taught by the same kid who burned down almost all of Hyrule

There is no way Shadow or Vaati respect Warfare

They probably use it as a to-do list

And Vio was dragged along and given hands on experience how to torture people

And four sometimes forgets that it isn’t fine to put salt on the fields of his enemies thereby ruining food production for generations

Or that getting tied to a stake and getting threatened with death by public execution

And dark magic like necromancy and stealing people’s life souls

Is considered a war crime

Warriors who fought in an unhonorable war against evil is genuinely disturbed by four's knowledge of their tactics

And how four sometimes accidentally thinks the same way or similarly to a monster or dark mage

Wind considers himself a master criminal but the second four opens his mouth

He has to tune him out for his own sake

And remaining innocents (he literally can’t even comprehend most things four implies because he still is a kid)

Four has done things

You don’t know how to torture people with such success if you haven’t done it yourself

That little man has skeletons in his closet

[strawberrygreens]

more human cookies BTW