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The Shadow of the Torturer
- The Book of the New Sun, Book 1
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
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Overall
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A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Able and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero. Inside, however, Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, and wizards.
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Confusing as hell.
- By Zachary on 09-26-18
By: Gene Wolfe
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On Blue’s Waters
- Book of the Short Sun, Book 1
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On Blue's Waters is the start of a new work by Gene Wolfe which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk.
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Amazing!
- By Janet & Greg Carter on 12-12-22
By: Gene Wolfe
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The Dying Earth
- Tales of the Dying Earth, Book 1
- By: Jack Vance
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home.
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A Decadent and Hopeful Dying Earth
- By Jefferson on 06-27-10
By: Jack Vance
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
- By: Walter M. Miller Jr.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.
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Introibo Ad Altare
- By richard on 03-20-13
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Litany of the Long Sun
- Book of the Long Sun, Books 1 and 2
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Litany of the Long Sun contains the full texts of Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun that together make up the first half of The Book of the Long Sun. This great work is set on a huge generation starship in the same future as the classic Book of the New Sun (also available in two volumes from Orb).
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Utterly brilliant in it’s tedium
- By John on 04-14-22
By: Gene Wolfe
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Soldier of the Mist
- Latro, Book 1
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Gregory Connors
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The first volume of Gene Wolfe's powerful story of Latro, a Roman mercenary who received a head injury that deprived him of his short-term memory. In return it gave him the ability to converse with supernatural creatures, gods, and goddesses who invisibly inhabit the ancient landscape.
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Read Gates of Fire first for context
- By Amazon Customer on 07-17-22
By: Gene Wolfe
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The Knight
- The Wizard Knight Series, Book One
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Able and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero. Inside, however, Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, and wizards.
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Confusing as hell.
- By Zachary on 09-26-18
By: Gene Wolfe
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On Blue’s Waters
- Book of the Short Sun, Book 1
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On Blue's Waters is the start of a new work by Gene Wolfe which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk.
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Amazing!
- By Janet & Greg Carter on 12-12-22
By: Gene Wolfe
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The Dying Earth
- Tales of the Dying Earth, Book 1
- By: Jack Vance
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home.
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A Decadent and Hopeful Dying Earth
- By Jefferson on 06-27-10
By: Jack Vance
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
- By: Walter M. Miller Jr.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.
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Introibo Ad Altare
- By richard on 03-20-13
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The Black Company
- Chronicles of The Black Company, Book 1
- By: Glen Cook
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead - until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her....
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Hard Boiled Morally Ambiguous Epic Fantasy
- By Jefferson on 03-18-11
By: Glen Cook
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Titus Groan
- Volume 1 of the Gormenghast Trilogy
- By: Mervyn Peake
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Enter the fantastical world of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy, one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Novelist C.S. Lewis called Peake's books "actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."
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A great book ,no cliches, worth the effort
- By Zachariah on 08-17-09
By: Mervyn Peake
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Solaris
- The Definitive Edition
- By: Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston - translator
- Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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At last, one of the world’s greatest works of science fiction is available - just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it. To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation - complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani ( Battlestar Galactica), Lem’s provocative novel comes alive for a new generation.
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A comment on negative reviews
- By Burns on 09-20-11
By: Stanislaw Lem, and others
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A Borrowed Man
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human. A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth.
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Great Gene Wolfe Concept, Distracting Narration
- By Alex Levine on 10-27-15
By: Gene Wolfe
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Hyperion
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Allyson Johnson, Kevin Pariseau, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
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The Shrike Awaits. Enter The Time Tombs...
- By Michael on 10-13-12
By: Dan Simmons
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The Mote in God's Eye
- By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
- Narrated by: L J Ganser
- Length: 20 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".
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A great read!
- By J. Rhoderick on 02-12-10
By: Larry Niven, and others
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Ilium
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing - and often influencing - the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy. Thomas Hockenberry, former 21st-century professor and Iliad scholar, watches as well. It is Hockenberry's duty to observe and report on the Trojan War's progress to the so-called deities who saw fit to return him from the dead.
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Achaeans and robots and post-humans, oh my
- By Ryan on 04-11-14
By: Dan Simmons
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Lord of Light
- By: Roger Zelazny
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rule their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons, Lord of Light.
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How could a performance be so wrong?
- By 1st World Problems on 05-29-22
By: Roger Zelazny
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Swords and Deviltry
- The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
- By: Fritz Leiber
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Neil Gaiman (introduction)
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In the ancient city of Lankhmar, two men forge a friendship in battle. The red-haired barbarian Fafhrd left the snowy reaches of Nehwon looking for a new life, while the Gray Mouser, apprentice magician, fled after finding his master dead. These bawdy brothers-in-arms cement a friendship that leads them through the wilds of Nehwon facing thieves, wizards, princesses, and the depths of their desires and fears.
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Fafhrd/Gray Mouser
- By melody333 on 08-21-08
By: Fritz Leiber
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Elric of Melniboné
- Volume 1: Elric of Melnibone, The Fortress of the Pearl, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf
- By: Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 24 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the '60s into one enduring archetype.
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Skip the first chapter, it's not Moorcock.
- By Ted C. on 02-17-22
By: Michael Moorcock, and others
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The Darkness That Comes Before
- The Prince of Nothing, Book One
- By: R. Scott Bakker
- Narrated by: David DeVries
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both 2,000 years past and 2,000 years into the future, untold thousands gather for a crusade. Among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasûrimbor Kellhus - part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence - from lands long thought dead. The Darkness That Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion.
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Finally in audiobook!
- By Andy on 06-28-12
By: R. Scott Bakker
What listeners say about The Shadow of the Torturer
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Ryan
- 03-20-10
great writing, won't appeal to everyone
There was a time when the fantasy genre didn't just exist to entertain, but sometimes aspired to a higher level of artfulness. The Shadow of the Torturer is such a book. Set in a far distant future, when Earth's sun is fading and human society has lost much of its technological aptitude, Wolfe's novel has a haunting, elegiac quality. It's written in a voice reminiscent of 19th century writers like Poe or Dickens, which adds to the melancholy beauty. Fortunately for the squeamish, though torture is part of the story, it's not described in much detail.
In terms of plot, The Shadow of the Torturer isn't a complex novel. The protagonist grows up under the protection of a strange, cloistered society, learns a few things about the outside world, betrays his guardians, and is thrown out to seek his own fortune -- familiar fantasy stuff. But what sets the book apart from standard swords-and-sorcery fare is the richness of its language and the great imagination in its details; the difference is like comparing a fine oil painting to a crude computer graphic rendering. It has subtlety that forces the reader to pay attention. Wolfe messes with time and space, contemplates philosophical ideas, writes long exchanges whose import isn't immediately clear, and relies on the audience to make sense of the strange, slightly dreamlike events that unfold in the story, rather than spelling out how they're connected.
Without a doubt, this is a book that will absorb some readers and alienate others. Wolfe's ornate, college-level English, though not difficult, is not for everyone. Nor will everyone relate to the protagonist's detached, clinical voice. Basically, if you're looking for a light, Harry Potter-style book with instantly charismatic characters, you're better off going elsewhere. But, for readers who appreciate sophisticated writing and atmospheric, textured imaginary worlds, this is a great read.
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166 people found this helpful
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- Jefferson
- 10-21-12
"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.
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70 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 04-11-12
Original, Difficult and Well-Crafted.
I am almost anti-fantasy. I find most derivative at best and banal to the extreme. Wolfe's first book in his famous The Book of the New Sun tetralogy, however, is genre fiction at its finest. Original, difficult and well-crafted, it is easy to see how Wolfe is regarded as a writer's writer.
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38 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Charlotte A. Stanford
- 10-24-10
Great reading of an intellectual masterpiece
Thought-provoking, image-rich and intricately plotted. This series has had a prized place on my bookshelf for years and I was thrilled to see it available as an audiobook. Even better, Jonathan Davis as narrator has a moderately slow (but not too slow) pace, great voice characterization, and handles the author's challenging and singular vocabular with ease.
Wolfe is subtle, profound writer and demands close attention from his readers/ listeners; this is not a surf-along novel. If your attention is distracted for a minute, you could miss something vital, and need to rewind -- I sometimes have had to do that as I listen. But most of the time I am completely engrossed. This is one of the best finds I've made, ever.
I hope to see more Wolfe audiobooks- beginning with this series' sequel/ continuance, "The Urth of the New Sun".
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34 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Lauffeuer
- 02-23-10
Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.
This is maybe one of the saddest books I've read. An overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness pours out of each line. It is deeply emotional book, and I don't think such a book is for everyone.
If you need constant action, hope, a quest, a hero with a purpose, and so on, this is not the book for you. There isn't even the hope of redemption for the protagonist and he really could use it. The story really is something quite dark and often times aimless.
Now, I completely enjoyed the book and found myself easily lost in the story. I don't doubt it is due a good deal to the excellent narration. The random wandering, discoveries, and encounters keep the story moving along and interesting. It is a very dream-like tale.
The only issue I had was that the author does ramble more than once, even to the point of being annoying in a few instances. Once during the book, I did sigh and think, "Can we get on with it?" However, this did not spoil my overall enjoyment.
In short, it's a great story if you can appreciate a great setting where hope isn't offered as the protagonist wanders aimlessly into exile.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 05-15-12
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.
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Overall
- Robert Kenyon
- 01-16-10
Worthy
I am so glad I have found another author that I can trust to deliver a worthwhile experience. It is really a bad deal to take a gamble on a new writer and feel you 'wasted' your credits.
When the reviews are skimpy, I run to other review sites to see what others say. It appears that the titles have been changed a bit from the original works. At first, I thought the book left off in a ridiculous place until I realized that I only d/l'ed the first of 2 parts. I have already d/l'ed the 2nd book so there will be no waiting.
I rarely write reviews but since there are so few, I thought I would say a word or two to others who spend their credits cautiously. This writer is sophisticated and dark. I think of Robin Hobb's strong character development mixed with Robert Jordan's poetic skill. Any would be writers would do well to humble yourself observing this writers mastery.
If you are looking for something after this, I strongly recommend R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series. Pretty much, most works pale in comparison to R.R. Martin's.
I hope this is helpful.
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- Katherine
- 09-11-10
It's time to read it this epic!
The Shadow of the Torturer introduces Severian, an orphan who grew up in the torturer's guild. Severian is now sitting on a throne, but in this first installment of The Book of the New Sun, he tells us of key events in his boyhood and young adulthood. The knowledge that Severian will not only survive, but will become a ruler, doesn't at all detract from the suspense; it makes us even more curious about how he will get there and what he experiences on the way.
What makes Gene Wolfe's epic different from everything else on the SFF shelf is his unique, evocative storytelling style. The reader isn't given all of the history and religion lessons (etc.) that are often dumped on us at the beginning of a fantasy epic. Rather, Severian's story is episodic and seems like it's meandering lazily, taking regular scenic detours, as if there's nowhere to go and plenty of time to get there. Because the story isn't a straight narrative, we don't understand the purpose or meaning of everything Severian relates ??? we have to patch it together as we go. By the end of the book, we're still clueless about most of it and we're starting to realize that Severian is kind of clueless, too. Much of the power of this novel comes from the sense that there is world-building and symbolism on a massive scale here, but that explanations and revelations for the reader would just cheapen it and remove the pleasure that comes from the experience of discovery.
In addition to being unique in style, The Shadow of the Torturer is a gorgeous piece of work: passionate storytelling (heart-wrenching in places), fascinating insights into nature and the human condition, beautiful prose.
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- Jim "The Impatient"
- 09-01-12
The Tortuered Reader
If you look at the ratings of this book you will see that people are all over the map on this book, as they are with this writer in general. GW has won high praises for this series, along with The Fifth Head of Cereberus and Seven American Nights.
It seems either you get him or you don't. I am afraid that I fall under the crowd that does not get him. Some have said it is the torture that turns people off to the book. No, it is the pretentious use of language that is the biggest problem for me. At times it seems that there is a good story here. A world where a guild of torturers is considered necessary. A young man who does not know his parents and knows nothing, but the life of torture. What a concept! Yet when you try to read it, the language is so annoying and unusual that your mind starts to wonder and you lose track of the story.
There where parts I liked. His compassion for the lady to be tortured, the dog he rescues, the tunnel under the city. There is an interesting plot twist involving a duel, only it is a duel with plants.
There are certain things that turn me off to a book, such as dream sequences like the one this book starts out with and the use of strange languages or made up language or sticking too many high fluent words together in one space, so that your mind gets lost. Some love this or pretend to love, so they don't seem stupid to others. I can admit I am stupid and say I don't enjoy such literature.
The narrator is rather slow and methodical and I found it helped to put the playback on fast.
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- David
- 03-19-10
Excellent Read!
This is a remarkable book. Well crafted, rich language, delicate narrative. Certainly not filled with slashing heroes or delicate heroines and certainly not for everyone, but then neither is 20 year old scotch. If you enjoy language and the magic of words you will love this book. The narrator does a beautiful job bringing the characters to life...perfection.
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