The Sword of the Lictor

The Book of the New Sun, Book 3

By: Gene Wolfe

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.

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

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

quirky, hard to read, but worth it IMO

I feel like this was the first in the series that I really enjoyed without much reservation. I suppose it's because it's less grounded than the previous two and begins to really introduce more fantastical elements.

I've had to listen to each book in the series several times and I didn't fully appreciate it until I realized it's not hard sci-fi where you're going to miss something deep and profound if you don't understand something. In fact he often uses words in intentional obtuse ways to try to force the reader to imagine along with the writer.

I'm sure, for this reason, this series is very off putting to some reader's, and that's totally understandable. For me, once I cognized the books in the vein of Alice in Wonderland from the perspective of someone that isn't fully mentally stable, I was finding myself going with the flow and enjoying myself quite a bit.

It's also true that his story arcs are long, reaching across several books. As a result, some things that are baffling in earlier books make more sense in later books, which adds to the satisfaction of reading the older books again.

I guess I'm kind of rambling at this point. These books are not easy reads, but this third book has me feeling like it's worth the trouble.

Lot's have praised these books for the interesting descriptions and turns of phrase, and it's definitely true that several times I've thought to myself how cleverly he conveyed an image with only a few sentences.

Great writing, weaker installment

Book three definitely keeps up with the imaginative and mysterious wonder that captivated me with the first two books. However, the relationships Severius cultivates and the bizarre creatures and entities were less impactful for me than in the first two books, which led me to downgrade to four stars. In addition, some of the language Severius used when discussing his relationship with the boy Severius was off-putting. Despite that, I definitely am still excited to start the next book in the series and recommend this installment to anybody on the fence about moving on in the series and despite it being my least favorite one so far.

Severian on the road

This is the third book in Gene Wolfe's fantastical, literary-aspiring Book of the New Sun tetralogy, and I won't say much about the cycle in its entirety here (see my reviews of the others for that). While the first book had Severian getting acquainted with Urth and its ways, and the second involved him in various intrigues near the city of Nessus, this is the one where he finally makes it to his posting as jailer/executioner in the provincial city of Thrax. Not surprisingly, circumstances eventually compel him to move on to points further.

Compared to Shadow and Claw, this one is more of a road-tripping book, and thus is more episodic in structure. There’s not much going on that really advances the plot, unless you want to read it at an allegorical level, but I enjoyed getting a wider glimpse of the world, which, as you've no doubt figured out by now, is South America in the distant future. There's a cliffside city, an encounter with an old evil high in the mountains, and a strange fortress on a lakeside. Severian battles an Alzabo, one of the creepiest monsters I've come across in fiction in a while. And Wolfe does shed more light on the nature of characters and objects we've met already, such as Dorcas, the Claw, Agia, the Pelerines, the offworlders, and Doctor Talos and Baldanders. The science fiction elements of the story, always in the background, come more to the fore.

As before, most significant events are occasions for some philosophical musings from Wolfe, which might get to be tedious for some readers, though I found them interesting. There are thoughts on the meaning of justice, being human versus being animal, and the impossibility of finding utopia without surrendering what drives us to seek it. Wolfe even seems to comment on his own goals as an author.

“I fell to thinking about the worlds that circled [other] suns... At first I thought of green skies, blue grass, and all the rest of the childish exotica apt to inflict the mind that conceives of other than Urthly worlds. But, in time, I tired of those puerile ideas and began in their place to think of societies and ways of thought wholly different from our own... worlds where there was no currency but honor... worlds in which the long war between mankind and the beasts was pursued no more...”

Sometimes a third book in a fantasy series will derail my interest in continuing it, but I'm pleased to say that that wasn't the case here. Something about the writing feels less fragmentary and more self-assured, too. I've mentioned before that Jonathan Davis is a great audiobook narrator, but I'll say it again.

The best of the series

I just finished the 4th book and I would have to say that this one by far is the best of the series. There is plenty of action and if examined closely enough, you can see things starting to form. It's hard to go into detail without spoiling anything. However if you recall, in the first book it was a lot of history (yes I know this story is a history in itself but the book kind of dragged a little). In the second book, there was more meat to it and the second half of the second book moved things along quite readily. This book, while some make think it's a pointless wandering reunites some characters while setting the preface for the fourth book. If you've decided to continue this story, I don't think you will be disappointed with this book.

Great performance

Jonathan Davis is one of the best audio book performers I’ve heard. This series is dark, fantastical, and deep.

Wow

Loved it ! I listened to this series on the recommendation of a literature professor. He hailed this book as having some of the penultimate elements of good character archetypes and development. Was not disappointed

The Sublime Failure to Grasp the Ungraspable

By the beginning of The Sword of the Lictor (1982), the third novel in Gene Wolfe's unique science fiction masterpiece, Dorcas and Severian have finally reached Thrax, City of Windowless Rooms, where Severian has become the "master of chains," the lictor of the Vincula, the prison shaft bored into the side of the mountain, along both sides of which the shackled prisoners await torture or death. By closing off unnecessary tunnels and diligently attending court sessions, Severian is doing his best to restore the honor he believes that his torturers' guild deserves, but Dorcas is unhappy. On their way to Thrax, they were equal lovers and friends, but now she is the paramour of the lictor. And Severian's tour with Dorcas of the Vincula has so traumatized her with the stench and misery of the prisoners that, despite her hydrophobia, she has repeatedly stood beneath the waterfall in the public baths in an attempt to cleanse her hair of the smell. Worse still, she has begun to remember who and how she was before she met Severian. Dorcas' depression and Severian's apparent helplessness to assuage it are devastating. There is more pain in The Sword of the Lictor, as in the sweet relationship between Severian and little Severian, a boy he later meets in the mountains.

But the novel is not all grief, being primarily his experience with the sublime. In writing his history, Severian recounts his encounters with various sublime phenomena, involving space, time, nature, artifacts, alien Others, or the divine. Numerous awe-inspiring, perception-changing, identity-threatening things impress Severian with beauty and scale: mountain peaks, oceans of air, mountain-sized statues, ancient cities buried in mountains, limitless depths of starry space. Severian also finds the sublime in small things, as when his contemplation of a black, luminous "claw" erases his mind into a higher state. And he meets beings and creatures from other worlds that appear terrifyingly monstrous or beautiful to human eyes.

In addition to dizzying Severian and opening him to beauty, the sublime orients him towards the ineffable: "the beauty of the sky and the mountainside were such that it seemed they colored all my musings, so that I felt I nearly grasped ungraspable things." And the wonderful and reassuring point is that even when he fails to gain "insight into immense realities," as he knows he must, he accepts his failure with "happy obedience" to something beyond his comprehension.

Severian also engages in plenty of stimulating philosophical speculations, as when he imagines different ways of living on different worlds or wonders whether the human-eating alzabo is moved by its own predatory instincts or by those of the people it has already consumed when it tries to eat their surviving family members, and whence comes instinct at all. And the novel has at least as many interesting characters, dramatic situations, and exciting or poignant scenes as Severian's first two books. And unlike them, it even ends with a comprehensible climax with a satisfying resolution.

As always, Jonathan Davis reads the audiobook version of the novel with great wit, sensitivity, and skill.

As Severian says, "the greatest adventures are those that act most strongly upon our minds" (even to the point of maddening us), and because his life-history is a great adventure, it is rewards working hard to read and understand and enjoy it.

Outstanding!

The book of the new sun is absolutely beautiful in every way. excellent narration

The best Science Fiction series ever written

Jawdroppingly good. The best performed audiobooks ever and some of the best stories ever. Lovely.

Excellent

Darker, scarier, and hornier than the first two books. The Salamander, the Alzabo, and the cacogens...creepy stuff.