#it’s alzabo time baby

[windowsloth]

“The animal was brought from the stars long ago… it is a beast having no more intelligence than a dog, and perhaps less. But it is a devourer of carrion and a clawer at graves, and when it has fed upon human flesh it knows, at least for a time, the speech and ways of human beings.”

[slowthinkingreader]

The Sword of the Lictor - Gene Wolfe

(Started June 7th, 2024, finished July 15th, 2024)

Wow I really took my time finishing this review. But I have my reasons!! ONE: my writing got deleted twice and I gave up for a bit, I was so sad, and TWO: these books get really fucking good a few chapters in, and honestly? I've struggled to put the books down. I've basically had to force myself to finish this review right now, much later, before I can already finish the fourth book. It gets good! It gets really good! In fact, I have to start by saying that this is by far the best these books have read so far. Without spoiling anything about my next review, I think Sword of the Lictor will already be the highest point in the series for me.

There's a part in the book, a little after Severian escapes from Thrax, where the story really picks up the pace, and then it never really seems to want to slow down. It stops feeling so much like a semi-distant recollection by the author of story, and we enter into a survival-horror scene. There's an immediacy and sense of detail—starting with the descriptions in the mountains— that hasn't been present in these books before. Several times between readings of this book, whilst I was cooking, or doing dishes, or driving, whatever, I found myself running back to certain phrases and impressions from these chapters that felt so vivid to me that I struggled to think about anything else. You know when you're just really into something and even when you're hanging with your best friends you just want to tell them to chill out for a bit so you can read? That's what I felt. The most excited I've been to turn pages in a loooong time.

Some key events that really stuck out, and I'm serious about spoilers now, starting with: LITTLE SEVERIAN!!!!!! I can't explain well enough how delighted I was with every single scene in which the two Severians were hanging out together. It's just so good. Getting to see (big) Severian, both socially inept and an asshole, genuinely try to take care of a little kid, is some of the most comedic shit I've ever read. And some of the cutest. When he's just carrying him around all the time like a little baby, because (big) Severian is so massive? When he's reading a little bedtime story to him? These sections were literally chemically engineered to have me giggling and kicking my feet the whole time. I was going to bed with a smile on my face. And you know what, when chapter 24 rolled around I genuinely don't know why I didn't expect That, it's truly so obvious, but I didn't expect That, and it made me scream out loud in real life like someone had killed my real life son. I swear to god. Everything before that makes it even more gut-wrenching. The like dilemma of whether or not to enter into a fight with the alzabo or the... weird lobotomized humanimals... ohhhhh... and AGIA?

So happy to have Agia back. She's the best. I love her. There's not enough of Agia honestly. I kind of wish she would appear with the same frequency of Team Rocket, she just improves every scene so much. And you know what, Severian SHOULD be shamed and mocked and threatened with knives by women more often. It's good for him and for me, who enjoys seeing him suffer. She's ALMOST as good of an antagonist as Typhon. He didn't have enough pages where I feel like I can reasonably talk about him too much, but man, I really wish he got more screentime. I'm imagining a beautiful alternate universe in which he and Agia return from time to time to try and kill Severian in increasingly cartoonish and violent ways.

What else. The standoff with Baldanders...... where do I start. Wait. I know. When Baldanders descends from the heavens with his anti-gravity belt, like a beautiful massive angel. I'm shaking my head and smiling as I recall the scene. Gene Wolfe you get me in ways nobody else does.

And then, when Terminus Est breaks— that's where I honestly felt these books were going to end. Because what an ending. I completely, briefly forgot that Severian is supposed to become the autarch at some point. By that scene I really could have let the series stop. It's that good!!! No marks!!

Honestly: 8/10. Favorite book in the series so far. I desperately want everyone to go read these books right now.

[serfcrue]

PROGRAMS SCHEDULE FEBRUARY 2020

Upcoming broadcasts on Mercury Theater Television for the month of February 2020:

Sunday 2/9 at 2:22pm EST another gd SECRET HITS OF 96 where your boy Big Baby Januarius tackles an ancient tape unearthed from a cursed vault. 

Sunday 2/16 at 11:00am EST grab a fuligin cloak and a shot of alzabo cuz chapters 20-28 of Citadel of the Autarch are getting tackled by Marc Armini’s worst nightmare-- the trash-talking, claw-carrying, certainty-eschewing WOLFE PACK.

Thursday 2/20 at 8:00pm EST @whorevidal returns to A MALE FROWN, the video game show that happens over on our twitch channel. Having proven impervious to the psychic fog of Silent Hill, this time Emster will tackle the driving of various trucks.

Wednesday 2/25 at 7:30pm EST you’re going to get tackled by the one and only Ronski from Ronski Cooks! when he comes on A MALE FROWN to test his wits against an unholy trinity of puzzle games: Dr. Mario, Tetris Attack, and Kirby’s Avalanche.

Friday 2/27 at 7:00pm EST it’s a Shadowrun campaign from the twisted tacklebox of Connor Kizer and it’s called WHAT ROUGH BEAST and it involves an elfy hacker, a fledgling vampire, a sheltered martial artist, and a pro death-cycle goalie who have been stranded in Barstow, CA where corrupt corporations and eldritch spirits are clashing.

MUCH MORE TO COME!! Set an alarm in your phone to check back obsessively for updates, additions and errata!!