The Shadow of the Torturer

The Book of the New Sun, Book 1

By: Gene Wolfe

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in the four-volume epic, the tale of a young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy towards his victim.

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

©1980 Gene Wolfe (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The best science fiction novel of the last century." (Neil Gaiman)

• World Fantasy Award, Best Novel, 1981

• Favorite Audiobooks of 2010 (Fantasy Literature)

An interesting fantasy

Look forward to finishing the series, there a lot of little details that draw you in

Beautiful and appalling

The prose is often poetic and to my liking, but I can see how other readers find it difficult. Moreover, the story doesn’t present itself in a straightforward fashion. Events and details are half explained and require a second read throughout to catch their true meaning. The plot jerks and twists in unexpected directions which left me both intrigued and confused. The breadth of the world is alluring, yet, the narrative seems to lack the ability to adequately and clearly guide the reader through it.

Some of this obfuscation must be the author’s intent, and I feel that it works wonderfully, but also takes away from the readers enjoyment in a small way. All this to say, I enjoyed the story and its telling, but at times felt the author stumbled through it.

Good

Just never got interested in the characters. Very well written and very well narrated finished

"All of you are torturers, one way or another"

The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), the first of the four books that comprise Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterpiece The Book of the New Sun, is a rich, moving, and challenging novel. Just in the first few chapters we learn that narrator Severian (who is writing his life story) was an orphan apprentice of the guild of torturers (the Seekers for Truth and Penitence) in the Citadel of sprawling Nessus (the City Imperishable) in the far future of Urth (earth?), under a dying sun; that the towers of the Citadel are long-derelict spaceships; that Severian has an eidetic memory; and that his youthful encounter with the rebel leader Vodalus set in motion events that will lead him to betray his guild, become an exile, and sit on the throne.

The novel is disturbing! There are glimpses of the appalling "excruciations" the guild performs upon its "clients," and many characters are afflicted with grief, including Severian, who is cursed to remember every detail of his sad experiences. But it is also funny, as in the eccentric and grotesque characters like Dr. Talos and Baldanders and the banter between Severian and Agia.

Severian's history is a demanding read. As in novels like A Voyage to Arcturus, everything seems to bear symbolic as well as narrative meaning. And Severian is not a completely reliable narrator, for he often lies and may be insane, and although he remembers everything, he selectively tells his story, at times eliding painful things and alluding to them later while narrating different events. And some things he recounts question the reality of his world (and ours).

Severian has much to say about reality, memory, history, story, art, culture, justice, religion, meaning, and love. Provocative lines punctuate his text. Symbols "invent us, we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." Or "time turns our lies to truths." Or "the charm of words … reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us."

Additionally, the richness of the novel's language, the elegance of its style, and the fertility of its imagination require slow savoring. In Severian's text common words rub shoulders with archaic or obscure ones, evoking the exotic texture of his world, as in names for officials (autarch, archon, castellan, chiliarch, lochage) and beasts of burden (dromedaries, oxen, metamynodons, onagers, hackneys).

Numerous descriptions yield shivers of pleasure: "She sighed, and all the gladness went out of her face, as the sunlight leaves the stone where a beggar seeks to warm himself." Or "Behind the altar rose a wonderful mosaic of blue, but it was blank, as if a fragment of sky without cloud or star had been torn away and spread upon the curving wall." Or "(A spell there was, surely, in this garden. I could almost hear it humming over the water, voices chanting in a language I did not know but understood.)"

Numerous scenes impress themselves on mind and heart, as when Severian visits the blind caretaker of the Borgesian library, finds a horribly wounded fighting dog, connects Thecla to the revolutionary, receives the black sword Terminus Est, falls into the Lake of Birds in the Garden of Everlasting Sleep, performs for the first time the mysteries of his guild's art, or witnesses a miracle with Dorcas.

Jonathan Davis adds so much to the novel with his witty and compassionate reading, modifying his voice to enhance each character without drawing attention to himself. And it's a pleasure to hear him relish Wolfe's beautiful prose or say words like anacreontic, carnifex, epopt, fuligin, fulgurator, hipparch, paracoita, and psychopomp. (Though it does help to have the text handy!)

At the end of The Shadow of the Torturer, Severian says he cannot blame his reader for refusing to follow him any more through his life, for "It is no easy road." Nevertheless, the next three novels reward the effort to read them manifold.

The character Jonathan Davis was born to play!

This book is the first part in a five part series, and only the first four books are available on Audible. I would say that this series is the story of the torturer's apprentice Severian, and his journey from lowest and most despised member of society to the throne, set in a far future Earth in which civilization and society are on a slow decline. I would say that, except that this is less a story and more a multi-dimensional mental jigsaw puzzle. The series requires that you, the listener, pay a great deal of attention to the plot, characters and vocabulary, and then listen to the whole thing all over again, possibly a few times, to get the richness, complexity and beauty of Gene Wolfe's vision. If you are prepared to make that kind of commitment, this is a great bargain as it will repay you in many hours of listening pleasure, getting better each time you listen again.

If you are not familiar with Gene Wolfe's work, you would probably be surprised to hear this series compared to Lord of the Rings. After all, how many stories can live up to that kind of comparison? Amazingly The Book of the New Sun series does, and in some ways exceeds it, as these are more adult stories with some added layers of complexity.

Audible really outdid themselves with this production. I can't imagine a finer narrator for this series than Jonathon Davis. His pacing, emphasis, vocal expressions and various character renderings are flawless. The pacing is particularly important, as nearly every sentence contains some clue to solving the final puzzle.

I hope the final book in the series, The Urth of the New Sun, will be available at some point. Although written a few years after the first four in the series, it fits in so well with the rest of the story and solves so many unanswered questions that it appears to have been planned all along.

great story, great narrator

I read the 1st book before and was happy to see the series here. I started with the 2nd book as an audio book, and purchased this 1st one in audio soon afterward. I found that I had forgotten much of the 1st book. Also, the narrator is so compelling that I thought I would gain more by listening to it instead of re-reading it.

I Treasure This Series

In the early 1980's, almost 30 years ago, I read the four books of the new sun as well as its sequel The Urth of the New Sun. Of the hundreds of books I've read in my life, this series has stuck with me, forming me in many ways.

I just finished listening to the four books of the new sun, starting with The Shadow of the Torturer, and I listened to 48 or so hours almost non-stop just pausing when I must to sleep or work. I loved this reading and still love the books the second time around.

This is not so much a plot driven book, though it has a strong plot that it follows in its patient, winding way. It's a book of stories, allegories, compassion, growth and hope. It's a story of pain and loss and change but of humanity and our hope for a better world. I am a richer human for having read the series and richer for having heard it again now that I am older.

I can't wait for Audible to come out with the fifth book, and I hope they get Jonathan Davis to read it, too.

An incredibly poetic writer.

Having read the New Sun books 25 years ago, I have to say that listening to them narrated by a truly great narrator made them even more enjoyable the second time around. Wolfes' writing is beautiful and hearing it in a different voice other than your own inner reading voice makes you appreciate his amazing ability to string words together, many of which he created for there rhythmic sound, in a melodic way which most authors can only dream of.

A masterpiece read brilliantly

If you could sum up The Shadow of the Torturer in three words, what would they be?

Compelling, intriguing, beautiful

Who was your favorite character and why?

Severian. His view of the world in which he lives is coloured and shaped in a manner that draws you deeply into the story.

What about Jonathan Davis’s performance did you like?

No bombast. And brilliant characterization. The speed is just right - sometimes the readers push too hard and you lose content or move too slowly and your concentration lapses.

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

I know the book. I've lost count of how many times I have read the whole series. But Jonathon Davis brought the book alive and I found more value in Gene Wolfe's remarkable masterpiece than I had known was there.

Any additional comments?

This is not a book to everyone's taste. But everyone should try reading it - or listening to it. Its one of the great science fiction masterpieces. One reviewer referred to Gene Wolfe's "achingly beautiful sentences" and Jonathon Davis savours them, holds them up to marvel at then moves to the next one.

Tangential

Me thinks the Author doth digress too much.

Good story at the core and I like the way the world unfolded.