Welcome to Litsy!

Even though it was the standard Gene Wolfian nigh-impenetrable mystery box, I felt a bit more prepared for the narrative shenanigans of In Green‘s Jungles than I was with On Blue‘s Waters.

Have Horn and Silk merged personalities which was alluded to in the previous book? Decidedly yes. How? Eh, says Wolfe, it‘s really not that important.

Reptilian space vampires! Oreb is back! Dream teleportation! New Sun references!!! One more book to go.

While his plots are obscure, Wolfe always writes about spiritual matters with brilliant clarity.

Just as Severian investigated & evaluated his relationships with the Increate and the Conciliator (roughly God & Jesus) in the Book of the New Sun, Patera Silk casts off the false gods of Mainframe to follow the one true God, the Outsider, in the Book of the Long Sun.

Horn, his protégé, continues that relationship here in the Book of the Short Sun.

My students asked me what this is about.
*deep breath*

Horn (in-universe author of the previous 4 books) set out to find Silk (who the 4 books were about). Silk and Horn merge minds in a vague way.

Now he‘s Incanto (or Rajan in the previous book) & is writing about things that are happening to him as well as what happened to him in the past while sometimes skipping ahead to mention things he will be telling us about later.

Also space vampires.

#Starting

I am well aware that my current headspace might not be conducive to a super-dense science fantasy with multiple layers of unreliable narrators and text that will need to be continually reread to unlock its mysteries... but that‘s just how Gene Wolfe rolls and I‘m still aiming to finish his 12-book Solar Cycle this year.

This will be the first of his books that I‘ve read since his passing...

So let's peel this narrative onion: Horn, in-universe author of the preceding 4 books about Patera Silk, leaves his family on the ocean planet Blue to search for Silk.

He wrote of this search as an old man, the captive mayor of a city-state at war.

These writings were found by his lost family who provide editorial comments.

Timelines blend in the Gene Wolfiest of ways. Also space vampires. Also maybe Silk and Horn have merged? Or something?

So our narrator Horn is an old man writing of his adventures on the planets of Blue & Green in search of Patera Silk. Horn is the in-universe author of the preceding 4 books about Silk in the series & reveals to us that sometimes he was making things up when he wrote them.

But also we get editor‘s notes from Horn‘s children in this book, about preserving this, their father‘s work, for posterity.

That is some textbook Gene Wolfery right there.

#Starting the first Book of the Short Sun, the trilogy which closes out Gene Wolfe‘s 12-book Solar Cycle.

Full confession: There were some stretches where The Book of the Long Sun felt like work, so I‘m going in a little hesitant.

Also that... that is not a great cover.

Okay, so massive chunks of this were a slog. The worst parts of the previous book were about characters stuck in tunnels and Patera Remora. This kicks of with like 40 pages of Remora in some tunnels.

But still I like Patera Silk and his efforts to save everyone he can in his generation starship, and I was touched by the sincerity of his religious revelations. The ending was so beautiful I came out of it with a smile.

The 1st and 2nd books followed naive priest Silk as he turned rather clumsily to crime to save his failing abbey and then discovered surprising truths about the gods he worshipped and the massive generation starship in which he lives.

In the 3rd Book of the Long Sun, the city of Viron erupts in a violent political revolution lead by those seeking to make Silk their caldé (kind of a mayor) which is just not on Silk‘s list of things to do.