Nightside Long Sun

NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN is the first volume of Gene Wolfe's four-volume work The Book of the Long Sun, which is a story of political intrigue, revolution, and Christian allegory set in a starship sent from Earth to colonize a distant planet.Gene Wolfe rose to fame with his magisterial work The Book of the New Sun, which is one of my most cherished books. The Book of the Long Sun takes place, in fact, in the same universe as Wolfe's masterpiece. However, differences abound. The Book of the New Sun is a first-person narrative in which the narrator stands between the reader and a clear view of his world. The Book of the Long Sun, on the other hand, is told in third-person and the setting is richly illustrated by Wolfe's prose. That is not to say that there are no mysteries in the Book of the Long Sun, it is of course a Gene Wolfe novel, but the plot is much more straightforward and clear than in Wolfe's earlier triumph.NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN slowly introduces the plot that will later rage through the city of its setting and by the end of the four-volume work utterly change the world in which the characters live. NIGHTSIDE opens with the enlightenment of Patera Silk, an augur (i.e. priest), in Viron, one of the cities within the Whorl, the gigantic starship sent from Urth. The rather pagan inhabitants of the Whorl worship a pantheon of deities based upon the ruler who sent out the starship and his family. Silk's enlightener, however, is an obscure god called the Outsider, because he abides even outside the Whorl, who is quite possibly in fact the Christian God. The Outsider has called upon Silk to save the local church and school, which have been sold for back taxes to a criminal named Blood. Silk, in a bit of bravado, proceeds to break into Blood's mansion in hopes of getting his property back. This attempt at breaking in, along with an exorcism of a bordello, are the sum of NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN. It's a slow and simple start, the action of this book takes place over merely two days, but in the following books the pace builds exponentially.The Book of the Long Sun may not be as poetic and full of sophistry as The Book of the New Sun, but it's immensely good reading. Wolfe's use of Christian allegory (much stricter here than in the earlier work), and a plot full of revolution, war, and political mystery is a fine work. After NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN, the reader should be voraciously desiring the next book in the series, LAKE OF THE LONG SUN.

This was my first encounter with Gene Wolfe, and indeed it was all I'd been told to expect. While not a whole lot of action takes place in the course of the story (indeed, another, lesser writer might have told the same tale in less than 50 pages), the writing and characterization are such that you simply cannot put the book down. Silk is a remarkably multi-faceted character, exhibiting at turns confidence, doubt, fear, compassion, and naivety. Most enjoyable of all, he's more clever than he tends to let on; on several occasions, the reader wants to shout the answer to a puzzle to Silk, only to find out later that he knew it all along. Masterful writing by Wolfe. Now if only these books weren't so hard to find-- I've gotta read #2!

Equally as rich as, but far more accesable than, Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

Gene Wolfe is an excellent writer, who captures the imagination. I have found most science fiction to be short of good writing or well constructed characters. Wolfe's characters feel and act real, not as the lab rats most sci-fi authors release in their novels to show how well constructed their tech. is. All the books in this series are excellent, one of the few sci-fi books I would give to a friend.