In Green's Jungles: The Second Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun'

IN GREEN'S JUNGLES is the second volume of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Short Sun, which is (to put it briefly) the story of Horn's return to the Whorl to bring Silk to Blue.The narrator's identity is again a mystery. He believes himself to be Horn, but remembers things falsely and is constantly identified as Silk. Having escaped from Gaon, where the throne was forced upon him in virtual imprisonment, the narrator comes to the town of Blanko, whose citizens believe him a magician and seek his council in their war. Thus, he is drawn into yet another bloody conflict, underscoring the need of Silk on Blue, in order to save its colonists from their fighting (and their original sin). Unlike ON BLUE'S WATERS, where the narrator reflected happily on the first leg of his voyage to the Long Sun Whorl, Horn's remembrances here, of terrifying Green, are told shakily. Horn's death on Green, spoken of in the first book, is but the last of a series of crushing experiences on that dangerous whorl, and Horn cannot face them outright.Other surprises await the reader. Our narrator discovers that he can astrally project himself to other worlds in his dreams. This sort of mysticism evokes fond memories of THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN. And in a tear-inducingly beautiful passage, Wolfe's Christian allusions manifest themselves with an inadvertent Eucharist, which may be the most moving thing Wolfe has ever written.More readable then ON BLUE'S WATERS due to its gripping plot machinations and surprising developments, IN GREEN'S JUNGLES continues the satisfying trend of the Book of the Short Sun.

This latest novel is the middle book in a trilogy called The Book of the Short Sun. The Book of the Short Sun is (we are told) narrated by Horn, who was born on the generation ship called the Long Sun Whorl, and who was a teenaged boy during the events of Wolfe's earlier tetralogy, The Book of the Long Sun. At the time of this new series, he has lived on the planet Blue for something over 20 years. He has a wife and three sons, and he is a papermaker. Blue is one of two twin planets, the other called Green, to which the generation ship brought many colonists from Earth. The first of the trilogy, On Blue's Waters, told the story of his quest for the city of Pajarocu, which had a still-functional lander (a "shuttle" capable of interplanetary flight), in which he hoped to return to the Long Sun Whorl and find his beloved teacher, Patera Silk, the hero of The Book of the Long Sun, who he hopes will restore order to the decaying society of his colony city, New Viron. At the end of that book, Horn and his estranged son Sinew were on the lander, ready to take off.As the title of the new book hints, the lander did not make it to the Long Sun Whorl, but rather was diverted to Green. Green is the home of the blood-drinking, shape-changing, inhumi, creatures who seem to take on the characteristics of their prey. (Some inhumi have infested Blue, including a young male who Horn "adopts" in the first book, but they are more numerous on Green, and they seem to keep human slaves.) Both books are narrated after Horn returned to Blue from Green, however. And the Horn who returned seems oddly different. He has all Horn's memories, but some others as well, and he has changed physically. This was clear in On Blue's Waters, but is made much clearer in In Green's Jungles, and there are many hints as to what or who Horn might now be, though no answers are given. The story in both books is told on parallel tracks: one revealing ongoing "present time" events on Blue after Horn's return, and another consisting of a book that Horn is writing as we are reading it, more or less. Especially in the latest book, the narrative is thus intricately structured, and Wolfe uses this structure to considerable effect.Horn has left the town of Gaon, where he was acting as Rajan, the ruler, during the first book, and he has come to a town called Blanko. His appearance, and his companion, the talking bird Oreb, cause people to regard him as a strego, or magician. He is taken in by the leading farmer of this city, who is trying to prepare for an invasion by a neighbouring city. Horn befriends this family, and eventually helps prepare their defence. At the same time he is continuing to write his account, which includes some stories of his terrible time on Green, where he is imprisoned by the inhumi, but with the apparent help of the previous natives of Blue, the Vanished People, he manages to escape only to lose both his real son, Sinew, and his adopted son, the inhumu Krai

Gene Wolfe has occasionally been accused of misogyny in his writing, or of stereotyping his female characters to the point where they rarely achieve more than two dimensions. I'm happy to report that in this new book (dedicated to his daughters, as its prequel, ON BLUE'S WATERS, was dedicated to his sons) he proves that he is indeed capable of creating female characters--not just one but three of them--with rich inner lives and distinct, appealing (not altogether appealing--this is Wolfe, after all) personalities. All three are young, apparently between 13 and 19, and all three become in some sense Horn's daughters. This is the same--well, not quite the same--Horn who raped Seawrack, to whom he also stood in loco parentis, in the last book; he is still atoning for that act. As well he might, says this reader--but his compassionate and heroic actions in this book have led me to forgive him and then some.Horn is the first of Wolfe's series heroes ever to change and mature within the series; this makes him the most interesting and human of them. I disagree with the reviewer here who found IN GREEN'S JUNGLES to be a "link" book. To me it seems much richer, both in imagery and emotion, than the first one, and it opens up the series to such a degree that I find myself regretting, well in advance, that there will be only one more book to explore these worlds. Wolfe changed his mind once before, adding a fifth book to the original New Sun quartet. Maybe he will do it again!

For those of us who have been reading Wolfe avidly for years now, it is stunning to think that ten additional volumes have now been released in this wondrous series since the debut of The Shadow of the Torturer in the early '80s. Wolfe is the unrecognized genius of modern fiction, and the appearance of In Green's Jungles cannot be compared with the latest releases of our Jordans, our O'Brians, or our Rowlings. For this work is not merely another installment in an ongoing series of independent picaresque adventures. Rather, it represents a deepening and a refinement of Wolfe's epic exploration of the human condition. And the universal condition as well. The series follows the spiritual journies of its three protagonists: Severian, Silk, and Horn, but no less than the Mahabarata or Faust celebrates the beauty of the universe, human frailty, and the elusiveness of the divine. These themes and others meet and diverge throughout the great work, playing themselves out with complexity and profundity. Yet at no time does Wolfe lose momentum, cohesion, or dramatic force: the varying strains combine in a symphony of metaphysics and human character, and a passionate and beautiful symphony it is.In Green's Jungles encompasses a continuation of the travel journals of Horn as he wanders through war torn settlements on the hostile worlds of Blue and Green, upon which are scattered the last shipwrecked remnants of human civilization. Horn pursues a forlorn quest: to find Patera Silk, the priest, teacher and revolutionary whom many believe may be the only person capable of saving mankind from self-destruction or destruction at the hands (and teeth) of Green's vampire race of Inhumu. In Green's Jungles is rich in plot, language, and surprises for the reader; any attempt to summarize the plot would do the work material violence. If you have been keeping up with the series right along, you won't need me to urge you buy this book. If you have not, do NOT buy it, yet. Rather, start at the beginning with the Shadow of the Torturer and delve into one of the most unusual and majestic stories ever put to paper. I envy you: you have ahead of you all of the joys of reading Wolfe for the first time.

The Short Sun series is shaping up to be the best thing Wolfe has written since THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. This second volume continues the narration of the quest to recover Silk.Lupine surprises and unanswered(?) questions abound, and to discuss the events relayed in this middle volume would be to spoil the joy of discovery for other readers--besides, until the final volume is published and we've reread the whole thing a few times, we probably won't fully know the story. Wolfe's work, like life and unlike so much fiction, grows richer with each return; like old friends, his novels reward attention and familliarity breeds delight rather than contempt (born out of boredom).The manner in which the story is presented is, as in ON BLUE'S WATERS, complex even for Wolfe--multiple time frames and threads of narrative are blended expertly. The way Wolfe works his magic through the guise of a "rambling" and "unskilled" narrator is truly beautiful. One of the best things about this book is its extended use of a device employed with great skill in THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH: Wolfe transforms what might be an artifical narrative technique into a moving commmentary on that most fundamental of human activities, the telling of a story.For, in the end, it isn't the brilliant prose or the narrative genius that makes this a great work. Rather, it is the moving, wise, and loving exploration of what it means to live and love, to feel the immense pain of consciousness and to do good and evil that justifies the elaborate machinery--to tell a lie beautifully is unfortunate, but to tell the truth with skill and beauty is to achieve greatness.