The Book of the New Sun is the insanely praised magnum opus of Gene Wolfe. It’s so well reviewed that it’s been called science-fiction’s Ulysses. Since the people praising it are fellow writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin and Alastair Reynolds, any serious science-fiction fan had better sit up and pay attention. The tetralogy is also notoriously difficult to make sense of, so much so that there are published analyses of its deeper meanings and themes, such as Michael Andre-Druissi’s Lexicon Urthus.

I found a copy of the hardcover Gollancz 50 edition of the first volume, comprising the first two books The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator in a local bookstore and promptly bought it, knowing it to be one of the classics of SF that I never got around to reading. Unfortunately the second volume, comprising the books The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch doesn’t yet exist in that edition, and I ended up ordering a paperback copy online. That was many months ago. Yes, it took me that long to finish the series to my satisfaction.

This extended length of time was necessary because this is a book that requires close reading. I actually finished the first volume once, felt somewhat lost, and had to read it a second time. The second reading gave me a much better idea of what the writer intended to convey and sufficiently prepared me to tackle the second volume in a single pass. Even so, immediately finishing the book I immediately hit up QT3 to ask some questions about a number of niggling issues that I couldn’t quite resolve and received some very illuminating answers.

The series is set on the world of Urth, which may or may not be our own Earth a million years in the future. This is world whose stock of natural resources is exhausted, so much so that mining is the term used to describe the activity of scavenging for useful items from the detritus of past civilizations. The sun is dimmed and so weak that one can see stars during the day. Though humanity is aware that their ancestors once had the ability to travel between the stars, commoners are now reduced to a roughly medieval level of technology. They pray for the coming of the prophesied New Sun which will bring renewed life to the planet and stave off the planet’s slow slide into cold, dark death.

The protagonist is Severian, a young member of the guild of torturers based in the city of Nessus, the capital of a country known only as the Commonwealth. The torturers serve as an arm of the government, punishing convicted criminals through torture, imprisonment or execution as ordered by the magistrates. Severian at first seems unremarkable, save for his claim to possess an eidetic memory but he is soon embroiled in state intrigue of the highest level. The entire series is narrated from his point of view in the guise of his collected memoirs.

On one level, The Book of the New Sun is a straightforward read. It’s an account of Severian’s adventures as he travels the land after being expelled from the guild. Armed with his executioner’s sword Terminus Est, he dispatches foes, encounters strange beings, hears and collects many stories and becomes involved with various women. It’s the age-old heroic fantasy epic, albeit one with a science-fiction subtext.

But the attentive reader soon discovers that this reading is inadequate. As the text purports to be Severian’s memoirs, we know only what Severian tells us. But is Severian telling the truth? He claims to have a perfect memory, and indeed much of the text consists of his recalling events long before he set pen to paper, but is he indeed recalling the truth or merely what he wishes to believe were true? The reader cannot escape the sense that Severian is not necessarily dishonest, he often appears to possess a marked naivety so that his impressions of events and people are misleading. In particular, the details he tends to obsess over often seem irrelevant to the reader while scenes that most readers should find critical to the plot are glossed over or recounted only in retrospect.

To compound the difficulty of comprehending the book, Wolfe tends to use bizarre terms that are rarely explained. These are never wholly invented words, but are instead obscure English words adapted to a slightly different meaning or borrowings from another language. For example, fuligin is coined to described the color of the torturer’s cloaks, the color that is said to be darker than black, the genetically-engineered horse-like animals used are called destriers and so on. This has the effect of making the world seem mysterious, yet not wholly unfamiliar.

Then there are the numerous in-story stories recounted by characters Severian meets. To the casual reader, all these feel like irrelevant digressions, but upon careful analysis, many are commentaries on the state of the world or parallels of Severian’s own trials. Some of these stories are allusions to the myths that we know and would be difficult to understand without knowing the source material.

All of it adds up to an extremely dense novel that often leave you scratching your head in confusion. At the same time, however, once you take the time to reread sections of the book and put all of the connections, the results can be immensely satisfying. The craft and care involved in writing it is evident and the book leaves me in awe of Wolfe’s writing skills. This book certainly deserves its reputation for being one of the most literary of science-fiction works. That said, enjoyment of it comes mainly from appreciation of its writing and how it holds multiple levels of meaning rather than the science-fiction elements of the story. It’s certainly not a book for everybody and if you’re just skimming through, you’ll miss out on a lot of what really happens between the lines.