My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
A young man breaks the cardinal rule of his guild and
instead of the expected torture and death is sent out the only home he’s known
to be a travelling executioner. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
is the first volume of the The Book of
the New Sun tetralogy following the life of Severian, a apprentice torturer
who betrays his guild and brothers.
Raised within the ancient Citadel of Nessus by the Seekers
of Truth and Penitence, aka the guild of torturers), Severian almost drowns in
the River Gyoll and with some of his fellow apprentices goes into a necropolis
where he encounters the legendary revolutionary Vodalus robbing a grave and
helps him in fight with volunteer guards, earning him a gold coin from
Vodalus. Later just before Severian
becomes a journeyman, he meets a new client Thecla who is being used as a pawn
to get to one of Vodalus’ associates.
Because of her position, she asks that Severian talk with her and the
two becomes friends even though Severian knows she’ll get tortured
eventually. After her first torture
session, Severian gives her a knife and after she slits her throat he turns
himself in. Instead of torture and
execution, Severian is sent out into the world as an executioner and given sword
named Terminus Est. Venturing out
further into Nessus than he ever had before, Severian scares people and is
advised by the local guards to put something over his executioner’s garb. The next day after sharing a room with two
charlatans he goes to a rag shop and when buying a mantle is challenged by a
cavalry officer to a duel using an alien plant.
The shop’s owner feeling responsible for this happening in his shop
tells his sister, Agia, to show Severian how to prepare for the duel. The two journey around city to get his plant
weapon and are joined by the mysterious Dorcas, who Agia dislikes though
Severian is intrigued with. Facing his
challenger, Severian survives a strike from the plant weapon surprising his
opponent who attempts to run but onlookers attempt to stops him but he attacks
him and kills several of them before he’s arrested by guards. The next day Severian wakes in a hospice and
learns he is needed for an execution, visiting his client he finds Agia and her
brother, who was his challenger, then realizes how naïve he was. After Severian executes Agia’s brother, he
and Dorcas meet up with the charlatans while looking for some religious
fanatics that Agia stole from only to learn they’ve left the city. The story ends on a cliffhanger because
Severian decides to finish writing at that point.
There were a lot of things happening in this volume, which
resulted in the story being both engaging and disengaging. The first person narration made the story
very intimate, but also didn’t allow for the traditional world building which forced
the reader to figure a lot of things out while trying to get a grip on the
story itself. Yet once you figure things
out the story becomes intriguing until Severian confronts the brother and sister
in the prison cell and the brother’s reasons for challenging Severian are
stupid. And the ending of Severian just
deciding just to quit writing at the end of the story is weird as well. The fact that an older Severian is “writing”
means that readers know he survives whatever happens, thus forcing Wolfe to
take another direction which had both good and bad points.
The Shadow of the
Torturer is a good story overall, though there are issues in the beginning
and at the end that are somewhat disconcerting for a first time reader. Gene Wolfe created a very interesting
protagonist and created several interesting twists throughout the story though
some didn’t pay off as well as others while also laying seeds for future
stories around Severian. This is an
enjoyable volume that I’ll have to revisit with a reread in the future after
completing the rest of the tetralogy.
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