/lit/ - Literature

>>8732598
Ain't got shit on the centipede press limited editions

Overall, disliked it. It is about 900 pages of a bland, uninspired story with lots of Christian and North American mythological imagery and metaphor layered over it. The truly disappointing thing about it is that every character's story is more interesting than Severian's . Piecing together what happened to Dorcas in Shadow was great, but she only gets a handful of pages, and then we're back to ignoring this potentially amazing story of a woman having a son and being dead for years only to come back with no memory of him in favor of Severian doing something completely uninteresting. Figuring out what Jonas is before Severian is great, but we can't have a story about an ancient robot scouring the Earth for the most beautiful woman he's ever seen because he has to go in for repairs while Severian once again goes off to do something completely uninteresting.

It is beautifully written. A lot of people take issue with Wolfe's prose, but I found the archaic, poetic style perfect for the setting. It was also probably the best way for him to get his symbolism across, because otherwise it would have just seemed tedious. Sev carries his sword like Jesus carrying a cross, isn't that neat? Hey, water symbolizes both life and death, that's pretty cool huh? The fact that he at least wrote scenes out in what you'd expect from a Biblical translation made the constant "hey, look, look at my layers" messaging more tolerable. Even enjoyable at some points. There just needed to be an engaging story underneath that, and there wasn't one.