The Claw of the Conciliator

The Book of the New Sun, Book 2

By: Gene Wolfe

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.

Listen to more in the Book of the New Sun series.

©1982 Gene Wolfe (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 1982

Severian is taking his time showing up for work

The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, is the 2nd installment in the Book of the New Sun series. The tale picks up immediately where book 1 ended. Severian and his new friend Jonas are traveling and encounter a number of adventures. In the next town, Severian gets to practice his occupation again. A letter sends him into a horde of ape-men, but the claw (obtained in the last book) is able to exert some strange reactions. Agia attempts to steal back the claw, but he spares her life. He is captured by Vodalus' men, but manages to kill them. Vodalus remembers him and then sends him on a mission House Absolute, but not before a meal where they feast on Thecla's flesh mixed with a substance that imparts her memories into Sevarian. At House Absolute, he is imprisoned, but without any specific cause and manages to escape due to Thecla's memories of the layout. He learns that his traveling companion is actually a robot from beyond Earth. He finds his fomrer traveling companions and then participates in the play again. Baldanders goes crazy during the performance and many in the audience appear to be alien creatures. Reunited with Dorcas, he departs with her and Jolenta. They approach a stone city where they encounter witches and Hildgrin. Upon awakening, they find themselves alone.

Wolfe continues to expand and enlarge Severian's world with increasing suggestions that this world is our earth, but far, far into the future. At the same time, there appears to be some continuing function of advanced technology as well as some interactions with extraterrestrials. The claw seems to be some of that technology as it can heal. As with the first book, there is little resolution throughout. This is more about story telling, then simply telling a story.

The narration is superb with excellent character distinction. Pacing is brisk.

confusion is your friend

This is what would happen if David Lynch wrote warhammer 40k fanfiction with a thesaurus.

Prepare to be immersed

So much depth and detail. I couldn't help but feel at times that I was actually in this strange far off yet familiar world as described by the narrator. Gene Wolfe has written a masterpiece

Become a Seeker for Truth and Penitence

This is a review of the four volume THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN (TBNS) by Gene Wolfe; which traces the coming of age of Severian, once a member of The Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.

In printed form the earlier works of Gene Wolfe can be quite challenging and this is the quintessential Wolfe novel. The esoteric language employed forces your eyes to slow down and read with great care. So many of the words, while supposedly all authentic English words, are unfamiliar that looking up at least a handful of them is necessary to understand the text. As a result, the reader’s mind has time to explore Severian’s world as the protagonist himself is doing. The printed books are heavy in the hand and the weight of the pages fore and aft serve as constant reminders of what has come before, and what is yet to be.

The most telling observation I can give about the audio book is that it transforms a massive tome into a much more personal narrative. As an audio book TBNS takes on a less intimidating, much more intimate and even more friendly character. The inexorable pacing of the narrator, Jonathan Davis, does not permit pauses for reflection, or speculation, the story plows on, without pausing to try to pronounce a word, without going back to regain the flow of the plot after a difficult flashback. And it is just fine.

Jonathan Davis is a most excellent narrator for TBNS. His voice has a deep calming quality that is well suited to recounting Severian’s story. He gives each character their own individual voice. He gives a fine performance ranking this among my favorite audio books. I can recommend all four of the volumes of TBNS here on Audible without reservation.

Note: The short afterwards that are part of each of the four volumes are not included in the audio versions. They should be read to get the full effect intended by the author Gene Wolfe.

the meandering story continues

If you enjoyed the first book as much as I did, then you'll probably like this book. It's really hard to review, because the story is so odd, just sort of meandering along. I'm still not really sure where it's going. I mean, Severian tells us where he ends up, but I have no idea what's going to happen from one scene to the next let alone in the next two books.

One word of warning, the story picks up not really exactly where we left off at the end of book 1, but a short time in the future from there. I went back and restarted it probably twice and then checked to make sure that it hadn't downloaded out of order or something like that. Don't be astonished when you have no idea what's going on, you'll catch up. That being said, if it's been a long time since you read/listened to the first book, you'll probably want to go back and refresh your memory.

When I was reading other reviews of the book, I saw people complaining about the two stories inside the book (both in the second half). Really, I didn't pay them much attention, if you don't like random side tangents that don't seem to contribute much, then you probably don't like the books at all. The first story, which seems to take a lot of features out of Greek myth, I didn't mind at all. The second part people complain about is Dr Telos's play. To be 100% honest, I've tried to listen to it several times and I just get lost. I don't know if the printed book makes it more clear which character is speaking at any given time, but I found the narration hard to follow (and it breaks my heart to say anything bad about Davis, who is excellent, don't get me wrong). Now, unlike some reviewers, I'm not going to let it bother me. If it turns out next book that I really need to understand the play, I'll go back and try harder next time.

The Captivating, Meandering Tale Evolves

Would you listen to The Claw of the Conciliator again? Why?

Certainly. I have read the whole series many times but listening to it fills in or lets me fill in more inferences and observations.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Still Severian. Its fascinating how well you know him by the end of this book but even more interesting that there is so much more to discover about him that you really and genuinely care to learn.

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Davis – was your favorite?

Severian. You could say that he is not performed by Jonathan but he is instead performed by all the other characters. I guess Jonathan does so well with the supporting characters that they throw Severian into strong relief and you see him in a wonderful context. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the audible book so much even though I have read the books over and over.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes indeed. Gene Wolfe tells you right at the beginning of the first book what's going to happen. And the story is asynchronous and loosely coupled but yet the reader (er listener) is compelled to walk with Severian (as he expresses it). The mystery, the allegories, the superficially hidden references that delight the audience and the deeper connections that the reader can triumphantly discover draw you to accompany Severian.

Any additional comments?

This book develops Severian, the wonderful combination of past, present and future in Severian's world and continues the beautiful prose and penetrating perspective gently hidden in a fascinating story.

Good not as good as the first, but good.

I feel like all these books end abruptly. I guess that is what you get when you take a huge book and break it into 4 parts. I long for the ways of french romanticist literature when a 1400 page book like the Count of Monty Cristo got published commonly. Anyway. It is good. Though I noticed that whoever put the cover art together spelled Conciliator wrong (or the people who listed it on audible did, either way someone screwed up).

Excellent

The prose is exceptional, truly in a class of its own, unlike anything else I've ever encountered. Not sure how I'd never heard of the series prior to recently stumbling upon it. I am absolutely enthralled in the language and the world building. I am very much enjoying the little connections and understandings I am making as I'm trying to figure out what the frack is going on. There are parts of this book that blow my mind and I'm ready for more; I'm excited to move forward in the series. The first two books are very short, yet, because they are so rich in texture, theme, verbiage, imagination, and beauty, the length of the books end up being just right. I highly recommend this series to whoever else may have stumbled upon this work of wonder.

brutalized incoherent sexcapade fantasies

the first book was interesting, a bit different, I was willing to see if some red flags were not predictive in the second because of it. The second book is just a rambling plot that lumps in some mindless sexual conquests and denigrating of women in general and just ends up being completely off-putting and uninteresting.

"Where we are is Hell" and "There is only love"

If Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) is Severian's bildingsroman, depicting his growth from a boy apprentice to a young journeyman of the guild of torturers and his exile into the world outside it, The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), the second novel in Wolfe's four-book science fiction classic The Urth of the New Sun, is his romance, relating his experiences--many involving women he loves--outside Nessus, the City Imperishable, as he attempts to travel north to become the lictor of Thrax. The novel also traces his growing awareness of the powers of the awesome jewel hidden in his sabertache, the Claw of the Conciliator.

The second novel is more difficult than the first, having less humor and more disturbing things, including a woman's graphic execution, excessive "cooing," narcotic cannibalism, algophiliac sex, an awful fate for an artificially beautiful woman, and a confusing climax (that isn't explained till the third book). The darker mood of the novel is reflected by a line Severian sees in the Book of Wonders of Urth and Sky: "Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed, for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there we must be."

Moreover, the two longest chapters of the novel consist of a story that Severian reads aloud and of a transcription of play that Dr. Talos' company performs, and although the story and especially the play (a series of funny lines and outrageous scenes satirizing religion, politics, and humanity and reflecting a culture longing for a new sun) are interesting, they both seem to last too long. And despite Jonathan Davis' best efforts (marvelously reading the novel as a whole) it's often impossible to tell which character is speaking which lines in the play without referring to the text of the book.

All that said, there are many poignant and sublime points in the novel, which thrums with Wolfe's perfect prose, exotic vocabulary, philosophical asides, and vivid, dream-like descriptions. And there are many powerful moments, as when Severian hears an apocalyptic step in a deep mine, raises his "iron phallus" over Agia, enters Vodalus' forest headquarters atop an elephantine baluchither, looks in a man-sized mirror-paged book in the House Absolute, tosses a coin into the Vatic Fountain there, talks with Dorcas about the Conciliator, and sees and is seen by the mythic Apu-Punchau.

And another line in the novel beatifies the Hell vision: "In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity." Indeed, this novel is largely about love in many of its forms, among them Severian's sad and abiding first love for Thecla, his protective and companionable love for Dorcas, his self-destructive love for Agia, his resentful lust for Jolenta, his awed attraction for a gargantuan undine, his lost love for his mother, his warm friendship for Jonas, and his fly-captured-in-amber admiration for Vodalus. At one point Severian senses Thecla's mind inside his: "We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters."