what does /lit/ think of Shadow of The Torturer? I finished reading it a couple weeks ago, and some of the parts in the story flew over my head, while some were really interesting (I think my favorite part was when Severian was walking and talking with Master Ultan, or when they explored the gardens)
>>25380759The whole series is wonderful
>>25380761Nice, I'm excited to continue with Claw of the Conciliator
>>25380759I think its a bit overrated, and probably my least favorite of New Sun books.
>>25380772Can you explain why? And what is your favorite then?
>>25380773Much of the book is basically a con attempt, with glimpses into more interesting parts of the world being way too brief. Thecla plays a very central role in Severian's life, and yet, I feel like I barely experienced their relationship. Part of it is that Severian is lying about the extent of the relationship in the first book and pretends he didn't have sex with TheclaAnyway, Sword of the Lictor I think is the most consistently great of the New Sun books. Claw and Citadel have very amazing sections too though. It is really just Shadow that I didn't jive with, and I am surprised to find that it is many people's favorite of the New Sun books.
>>25380759Massively overrated. But /lit/ sucks it off thinking it's smart and that there is hidden depth in its obscurantist prose.
>>25380759Easily the best in the series and the only one that has a claim at masterpiece status. Yet the most boring entry in the entirety of the solar cycle after Calde of the long sun.
>>25382005I am just under halfway through Calde and I am loving it. I am waiting for it to 'get bad', but I half expect that people just got filtered.
There was a post on i09 about genre less or genre defying books and it appeared as the example of yhe writer for the article. It had hundreds of suggestions but I cant find it. Has anyone seen what im talking about?
>>25380759I think Sam Hyde has shit taste and that you're a fanboy.
>>25382622kek I haven't thought of that nigga in like 5 yearsseems like he lives rent free in your head
I deeply dislike prose that lack clarity or stink of pretentiousness.Thus I hated Shadow and dropped it after 3 chapters. Though I could tell it wasn't for me in the first paragraph. Personally I think it's massively overrated. It's fantasy for people who think they are too good to read fantasy. In otherwords it's for fart sniffers who think they are far smarter than they actually are, and care a great deal about how they appear to others in very superficial ways that don't actually matter. Not only do I not like the book, but I deeply dislike the people who shill as some sort of masterpiece when it isn't even good.
>>25382666>didn't even read the book and still gives an opinion about itSeriously nigger?
>>25382550the tunnels turn a lot of people off. i think it has to do with the extended world building while you eagerly await silk to arrive that just gets under the readers' skin. the payoff is massive whether you enjoy it or not, however. personally, the whorl is one of the most fascinating settings in the entire series.
>>25382666>he didn't even get to triskelelmao. filtered.
>>25382679You don't have to eat a full plate of shit to know you dislike the taste.
>>25382691You got filtered, it's okay bud. It happens.
>>25382694The phrase "shit eating grin" comes to mind. What kind of person is proud to eat shit?
>>25380852based>>25382666it has shit prose. it is workmanlike, basic prose that manchildren who have only ever read genre fic think is "deep" and "challenging">>25382679>>25382686>>25382694Manchild
Bro really thinks he cooked with that one kek
>guy walks around and gets captured and then he escapes and walks around again and gets captured and this is repeated 72 times>also everyone he meets is secretly a shapeshifting alien god from the future
>>25380759ah, Shadow of The Torturer, monsieur? that novel is the sark and chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting and splurting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribed azotea like argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panic grass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the wolves howling in the desert while we saw the judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.
>>25382759I would honestly bet everything I own that you're sub-100 IQ.
>>25380759I read about half of all Wolfe's novels a few years ago, several of them are very interesting and make me want to reread them and write book reviews.
It's a notch above the usual fantasy slop, but I didn't find it all that impressive.
>>25382841fuck off manchild>>25382765>wolfe fanboy uses negro slangthey act like intellectuals yet reveal themselves as subhuman zoomer millenials raised on slop
>>25382867you're only capable of talking in buzzwords and posting reddit-tier memes. Unironically kys and stop polluting the board with your retardation.
>>25382872you are a manchild trying to pretend genre slop is literature.go back to /sffg/
>>25380759Extremely boring and unsatisfying quadrilogy (fuck you I'm not reading the lore book).
>>25382874I'm not even defending new sun, you're just spamming like a fucking retard. again, kys for shitting up the board. i can't believe i have to share a board with fucking mongoloids who can't read.
>>25382759pretty good list anon
>>25382878>newfag doesn't realise anti wolfefag has been posting against wolfe for years at this pointhow new are you/
>>25380759I wanted to like it but it felt pointless and wasn't very enjoyable to read.
I would rather reread Princess of Mars and Gods of Mars than BOTNS because while both are about a man wandering through the ruins of a decaying civilization with mysterious lore John Carter focuses on telling a fun adventure story foremost while BOTNS the point of the story is to play mind games with the reader, not to entertain. I'm sure that I could spend hours picking over every little detail in BOTNS but if I didn't enjoy it the first time I read it I probably wouldn't the second time.
>>25382867This is such a truke because you constantly see wolfefags talk about how much better wolfe is than other sci-fi and then you read the series and it literally has shit like the morlocks from time machine or not-cthulhu Abaia or his own oc don't steal version of newspeak. Half the tropes in Book of the New Sun are from pulp fantasy or comic books.
>>25382915If Wolfefags accepted they were reading (relatively well written for the genre) sci fi slop then nobody would care but they try to make excuses and pretend their favorite series is somehow literary fiction on the level of proust and joyce and shakespeare
The only good stab at literary fantasy is Gormenghast. Wolfe could never.
>>25382759I have read everything on that list and loved it (except Zanzibar which I have not read)
>>25380759ps2 rock band guitar hero algorithm
Fifth Head, Peace, and Short Sun are Wolfe's true masterpieces. The fact that Wolfe's readership prefers BOTNS, goes to show they aren't as smart as they think they are.
>>25380759>>25382666One thing I want to make clear, is that I don't believe Wolfe to be "a bad writer", quite the contrary, the world he has come up with is fascinating. The problem is that he is a stupid writer.Why you say? Well...Lets compare him to Lovecraft, someone who by no means I consider extraordinary, but who, nevertheless, played always to his strengths. Lovecraft gets accused of being a basement dweller on the daily; but knowing full well conversation was not his forte, he tells his stories through letters, musings, and an impersonal narrator that presents us with new evidence being unearthed. Wolfe on the other hand, comes across as an absolute sperglord because he cant write dialogue for shit, and chose a road trip adventure as the structure of the story.On account of characters, to me, Severian was probably the most unlikable protagonist I've had the displeasure to walk alongside on a fictional road trip, I can understand people defending the series, but never defending this insufferable walking powerfantasy of the most brooding of omega-autist. He fucks every woman character that gets a name, I'm not even joking, even if this last part sound interesting to you, you are out of luck, because Wolfe will just fade to black and write "and that night.......... he penetrated her" and that's it.At some point some anon tried to refute this point, he was adamant than this series was not, in fact, an edgy teenagers wet dream where the protagonist fucked the meat clam of EVERY female character. "Waaa waaaa You don't get it!" - he sneered - "¡He's an unreliable narrator, you see! ¡Just because he says those women got banged it doesn't mean it actually happened!"And so he scrambled for evidence of Severian not being a reliable narrator, andproceeded to reveal his trump hard, his ultimate proof. Remember that one pivotal female character from book 1 he absolutely promised his guild he wouldn't fuck? Well, grab on to your chair, for it turns out it was indeed, actually, also fucked by our protagonist. Absolutely fucking hysterical.I'll recommend the Dying Earth and Gormenghast over wolfe any day of the week; those books are everything the book of the new sun attempts to be (sans the fart sniffing ofc).
>>25380759>some of the parts in the story flew over my headThis is inevitable. Parts of the first book don't make sense until the final volume.After finishing the series, you'll need to read it again ...
>>25380852>obscurantist proseSemi-literate pulp enthusiast detected.Go on, tell us how great Jack Vance is ...
>>25382759muy filtrado
>>25382793Nurse!
>>25382874>unironically has three different pics for seething about WolfeGet help for your unhealthy obsession.
>>25382998I liked gormenghast, but peake seems to be of the opinion that "literary = glacial pacing with little emphasis on plot"
>>25382898>to play mind games with the reader, not to entertainMind games are entertaining. But first you need a mind ...
>>25383023>>25383684manchildren>>25383691newfag
>>25383968What, no pic this time? I am disappoint. Try harder.
>>25382898I really got to get around to reading the John Carter stories. I love other pulpy action adventure stuff from that era so I would almost certainly enjoy it, but I tend to avoid stories that involve space travel and the like since usually stories like that end up being boring more often than not. Similar to why I avoid stories that mainly take place on boats.
>>25384001There's no space travel in the John Carter series. It's science fiction without the science. So, fantasy.
>>25384006Good to know.
>>25384001It gets boring by the extremely formulaic third book but you can just stop reading there since it's the last book where Carter is the protagonist. Chessmen has some really interesting ideas but I didn't care for the story at all. I can't remember anything about Thuvia.
>>25382915>Half the tropes in Book of the New Sun are from pulp fantasy or comic books.In fact, it is overwhelming at times.
>>25382915Holy filtered hahahahahahahhaah Start with the Greeks li'l buddy. You'll get caught up with us eventually.
>>25386265it's a goofy science fantasy story dudethe climax of the book is severian finding out he'll get his dick cut off if he makes the aliens mad
>>25386870I was mainly joking but it's full of biblical and classical references, moreso than pulp to my eye. >the climax of the book is severian finding out he'll get his dick cut off if he makes the aliens madNot to me it wasn't. The book doesn't even really have a climax except for the very end maybe, or more specifically what it and the start of the next book imply happened in between. Or maybe the fight with Agia's brother. It's a picaresque it doesn't follow slop """fundamentals""" too tightly.
>>25386874sev coming home, changing his gowns from black to white, reforming the torturer's guild and going into space to get his dick chopped is clearly the climax or "falling action" of the book. idk how you could argue it's not.
>>25382666>not liking genre fictionslop is pretentious>uses fartsniffer unironicallyI can smell your oversized, barbecue sauce-stained Marvin the Martian graphc t-shirt from here
>>25386884I thought we were talking about the shadow of the torturer specifically, there are four books not counting Urth and Otter. Id argue realizing that he *is* the New Sun is the main climax and that can happen multiple different places. The place you mentioned is the most obvious one. Once you figure it out the end isn't as dramatic.
>>25386919Sorry no, that's me.
>>25380759>this genreshit capeslop book was really hard for me to understandWhy does this book and Dune have an endless army of browns claiming that it's the most difficult book in existence? It's not that difficult to follow. It's actually incredibly straightforward. Given how common this sentiment is, it really just outs your average SFF reader as being genuinely pretty low-IQ.
>>25386966Because Manchildren don't read literature.Manchild-Core is masculine-oriented genre slop that's slightly better than shit like sanderson and airport reading material so it allows midwit manchildren who want to appear literary, cultured and intelligent to appear so without putting the effort into reading difficult material.if you're a manchild who can't read poetry, or literature written before the year 1900 then you'll flock to shit like wolfe and mccarthy and tolkien because it's like your favorite dark souls vidya or warhammer slop and uses babby's first literary techniques like unreliable narrator and lets you feel like you're a based intellectual. It's why subhumans on 4chan read it so much.>Oooooh... what's this? A book written in the last 50 years that has blood and gore and violence and esotericism?>I'm literally so deep and intellectual, under my incel veneer I can enchant any woman if only they got to know me and my dark triad jungian nietzchean based tradcath traditionalist spirit>btw i act like patrick bateman despite being 290 lbs but its ok because sam hyde does it and he's my idol and totally not a loser
>>25386976Middling IQ + autism>>25386966Did you even read it? What's your interpretation of young severian.
>>25386976holy basedi am fucking sick of these retards
>>25386976I half agree with you. I feel though that if people actually appreciated Wolfe, they would read more than just New Sun. If they liked McCarthy, they would read more than Blood Meridian. But it is a LARP to a lot of these people.
The seething autists can never stay away from these threads. You just love to see Wolfe live rent free in their heads.
>>25387076we all know autists hate sff lmao. fucking retard
I started it a couple days ago. It was good while he was still at the torturer's guild, then started to feel more and more random as he met Agia and went to the botanical gardens, and I'm currently at the part where he plucks the avern.
>>25380759Note there will of course be spoilers in this threadI enjoyed the descriptions encouraging you to think about what Severian is actually observing, his inferences are often limited. The "giant red building floating above Nesses and suddenly disappearing" being later revealed to be a burning tent. The miracles, such as surviving the duel, that build up to the ultimate reveal. I think it's easy to categorise it as a "puzzlebox" book, but I also feel Wolfe's typical deep humanity and spirituality come through.
>>25387659it'll all make sense, a few thread start in the first book
I don't understand why some people have such hostility towards Wolfe. I haven't seen any claims that it's high literature, just enjoyable reading. Maybe it really is just that one guy posting for years.
>>25387659>started to feel more and more randomNothing is remotely random. Keep reading.>>25387713Insecurity. They're filtered midwits.
>>25387779wolefag calling anyone else a midwitLMAO>>25387713wolfefags have spent years unironically claiming their genre slop is on the same level of proust, joyce, shakespearenaturally people on this board get pretty annoyed about it
>>25388538deranged
>>25388555not an argument, wolfefag
>>25388555Why shouldn't a fantasy novel be held up as a great work of literature?
>>25380761This. Hotheads and contrarians are plain wrong, don't listen to them OP
A key plot point of this book is that aliens are castrating people if they fail a test and passing the test is required for restoring the sun. Nobody brings this up or how cringe it is.
>>25389096>infertility being antithetical to birthing the new sun is cringe
>>25390650You didnt need to save this thread anon.
