A young executioner narrowly avoids his own execution as he takes his first steps towards mastery over life and death.
BOOK REVIEW GENE WOLFE THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER 1980 Gollancz
The first volume of Wolfe’s The Book Of The New Sun quartet, and the opening work in Gollancz’s Fantasy Masterworks collection. This is often voted as the best modern fantasy novel of all time. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, a work omitted from the Masterworks series, is possibly the only one to beat Wolfe’s novel in such opinion polls.
Shadow is the story of apprentice torturer and executioner, Severian, who fares badly in his job by showing mercy to a woman he was due to torture, by assisting her in her suicide.
Severian expects execution himself but he is cast instead into a semi-exile, with orders to travel to another city, Thrax, and establish himself there as a torturer. As a parting gift he is awarded a magnificent sword, Terminus Est, possibly the greatest sword in fantasy literature after Excalibur and Stormbringer.
Severian finds himself in several adventures on his journey to his new home. He meets a giant and becomes involved with a group of travelling actors. He upsets a shopkeeper who covets the great sword, and challenges Severian to an unusual duel. The weapons are poisonous plant leaves. The plants grow in a strange graveyard where the dead are buried in a mangrove swamp. Severian almost drowns in this, but in being rescued he somehow brings a dead girl back to life too. Later, he mysteriously survives the poison from the plant leaves too, and receives instructions to execute his own fellow duellist.
These matters are unresolved as the first book ends with Severian moving on in the next phase of his journey.
A fascinating story with mysterious characters and a great deal of religious symbolism. Severian is being steadily elevated to a God like control of life and death. It is very easy to see why this book, and its three sequels are so highly regarded.
Arthur Chappell.
