book review: shadow of the torturer
Shadow & Claw by Gene WolfeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
not sure what i can say about this.
i want to borrow from the tagline for the pc game caves of qud (which is funny, because qud doesn't exist without wolfe), but this felt like eating a slice of layer cake, where each layer was increasingly ancient civilizations, and the waiter asked me to leave the restaurant before i figured out what i had just eaten.
certainly has the mouthfeel of crushed granite at first—i picked this book up shortly after finishing my university work in 2014 and immediately felt out of depth, despite my fresh english degree (ha...). i had to live a little more life, hit a few more walls in futility, before i could make my way back to wolfe with any endurance. shortly after giving up, i read bolaño's 2666 , an immensely antagonistic text, which gave me a panic attack in the starbucks i would frequent on my borgesian lunch breaks, and so began my awakening and appreciation for texts that heralded something more terrifying than apocalypse.
in 2020 i finished miller's a canticle for leibowitz , and something inside me realized "oh... is deep-future some of the most interesting writing?", which similarly compelled me to finally sink my teeth into dune , which led to messiah and children and god emperor —my own writing was finally finding its foothold during this time as well within the genre (be it due to finally having language for the engine inside me that slaked itself on lore and world-building, or because during the pandemic i formed a writing group with friends who would hold me accountable to sticking with a story).
the final nail into the camel's back for my journey back to wolfe was the podcast ranged touch's announcement that they would be starting a new series, shelved by genre (what is the etiquette for typing up podcast crew titles and series... i will just italicize), starting with the monumental, herculean effort of reading through the entirety of wolfe's book of the new sun series, of which these two books are the first chunk. i really recommend the podcast series, it's three episodes in as i write (with some cool bonus episodes on tangential material to the corresponding era of the text they're going through), and they're done with shadow of the torturer (the first book included in this double-book edition of the series) in the next two weeks (episode 4)!
there's that glow-in-the-dark quote by john clute that seems to show up anywhere you see wolfe discourse, "you can't read a gene wolfe story, you can only reread a gene wolfe story." i mean, i can't even seem to write about one either without some sort of layer cake of my own experience as a reader and writer before even encountering the text specific.
to me, this is not merely a book, to be read, reviewed on goodreads, and eventually forgotten.
as a writer, i find this to be an invaluable companion as i shod myself for working within the subgenre. a mineshaft long abandoned by our forefathers (like so many other things they've left by the wayside), bearing arcane secrets and wisdom. and big women.
as a reader, this feels like this text is to the mind what cross-fit is to the body—no other text i've encountered has felt as strenuous (or rewarding) as a rigorous weight-training regimen.
as a human being, my propensity for wonder, nearly beaten out and crucified by my plastic evangelical upbringing and the pig-iron shackles of america's limited future (awaiting the dawn of the new sun), is being revived. a text like this reminds me that it's okay to think beyond our limitations of science, to welcome what is magic and let it stoke the wavering coals of our minds—to quote tim robinson, "anything can happen in this world, we really know very little."
might take a break from the series before digging into sword & citadel , but who knows, i'm feeling Weird right now.
my star system:
1 star - this book must be forgotten by god and man
2 star - i was not wild about this book
3 star - others will enjoy this book more than i, but i see the appeal/enjoyed it/had some fun
4 star - i dug this book and recommend it
5 star - i am an absolute freak and this book was made specifically for me, your mileage may vary
(this is an experimental export of my goodreads reviews to my blog... we'll see how this goes.)