My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Outside the walls of his home city for the first time, a
young executioner on a mission finds himself amongst strange locations and
stranger people. The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe is the second volume of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy
continuing the journey of Severian, an exiled torturer figuring out the world.
Picking up shortly after the last volume, Severian is in the
mining village of Saltus with a new travelling companion Jonas after being separated
from Dorcas and the theater company at the gate of Nessus. Severian believes he sees Agia, but after
searching for her returns to his inn to take his mask and cape to execute an
accused witch. Later that night he
travels to an old mine, fights off man-apes, and comes face-to-face with Agia
but doesn’t kill her even though he tricked him to get him there so see could
have revenge and get possession of the titular Claw that she put on Severian’s
person during the events of Shadow
and Severian used during his fight with the man-apes. Severian and Jonas are then taken by associates
of Vodalus, who they kill as they get to the revolutionary’s hide out in the
forest. Severian and Jonas join Vodalus
after taking part in a cannibalistic ritual, before heading off to the House
Absolute on a mission from Vodalus. The
two are captured by the guards and in a holding room are attacked, which
results in Severian learning that Jonas is a robot with human skin. Using the knowledge acquired from the
memories of the person they ate, Severian finds a way out of the holding room
and Jonas leaves to find a way to get repaired.
Severian wanders around the grounds, finding his sword, coming across
the Autarch, and then is reunited with theater group and Dorcas. The five perform a play during which
Baldanders turns and attacks the crowd resulting in the group running for
it. Severian meets with them again on
the road heading north, he and Dorcas head to Thrax while Dr. Talos attacks the
other member the troupe resulting in her joining them and is attacked by a
poisonous bat which results in her death in the ruins of a city while meeting
with associates of Vodalus who perform a mystic ceremony.
This story was all over the place and it felt like the
quality of everything connected with it was the same. There was significant worldbuilding with
Severian getting out into the wider world as the previous fantasy feel was
joined by sci-fi elements to create this unique landscape of future Earth. However while Wolfe created this interested
background, the plot and the first-person narration were all over the place and
whatever elements that were good were very much outweighed by the bad, in
particular the nonsensical play that added nothing for approximately 15 pages
and was just to set up Baldanders’ attack in the next very short chapter. And frankly every time Severian seems to
become interesting, though by his own account, he does a 180 by disclaiming his
own “perfect” memory or puts himself down.
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