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I'm making my way through Soldier of the Mist on Audible. Audiobook is not really the best format for Wolfe's writing - there are a lot of places where I wanted to go back and check something but couldn't because I was listening while driving. Oh well. Overall the plot seems a bit easier to understand than Book of the New Sun. The only part that I really don't get is what's going on with Eurycles and Drakaina. My best guess is that Drakaina is the serpent woman who appeared earlier in the book, and she somehow ate Eurycles' identity from the inside out? Is that a reference to some Greek mythical creature?
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Jan 31, 2022 03:49
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felicibusbrevis posted:Kind of. The triple goddess has Latro deliver the snake to eurykles who then yes transforms- she says she was a princess of Colchis (Medea) but she also seems to be like the gorgon creature that feared iron. So the snake introduced to his drink by the triple goddess. Cheers, I almost forgot about the snake in the wine. Finished Soldier in the Mist now, and lol at me thinking it would have a proper conclusion instead of just ending in the middle of poo poo. I think I'm going to get physical copies of the whole series instead of listening to them. Although the narrator did do a good job of it.
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Feb 1, 2022 06:33
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Totally Huge posted:I've read through BOTNS twice and Urth once (after the re-read). My first time was around 2010 or so and while I went in blind and missed a ton I loved every sentence. My second read through was probably 5 years ago. In between I read a lot about the books here and other places. I've never read any other Gene Wolfe. My problem is that when I start thinking about him it just makes me want to re-read BOTNS again because it's so good. Peace is very good if you don't mind reading a story that's mostly set in the real world. I probably think more about Peace than I do about BotNS.
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Feb 1, 2022 06:37
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I've definitely met communists who talked like they were in the first stages of Ascian brain worms.
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Feb 10, 2022 09:35
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Segue posted:Severian's adventures shrink Wolfe's world as he gets easily mixed up with the Autarch and Vodalus so that the politics are so slight in this grand mystery Wolfe has constructed.
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Feb 14, 2022 08:30
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My favourite is Tracking Song. It's the most akin to Book of the New Sun out of the ones I've read, in that it's an entertaining picaresque on the surface with other things going on beneath. A lot of his stories have too much of the above-mentioned "throwing knives" for my taste.
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Jul 23, 2022 09:27
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Big Bizness posted:By the end of his journey in BOTNS isn't it hundreds of people in his mind, thanks to the succession of autarch brain eating? From what he says in Urth, I think he mainly has access to Thecla and the previous Autarch. The others are buried progressively deeper in his subconscious. When he goes back in time and meets that kid who'll one day be Autarch, Severian isn't even 100% sure if the kid is stored in his brain or not.
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Aug 10, 2022 00:25
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I gave a copy of Peace to my partner's dad for his birthday. He's a literary fiction guy whose favourite authors are Marquez and Knausgaard, so I'm curious to see if he enjoys it. I feel like maybe despite being technically not SF, Peace still somehow has an SF vibe or hits the same buttons (e.g. trying to puzzle out what's going on).
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Sep 5, 2022 01:21
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Pistol_Pete posted:I hate the bit in Wizard Knight when Abel rocks up on a ship, insults the captain to his face and eventually murders him and chucks him off the ship 'cos he failed to show proper respect or some poo poo and never seems particularly sorry afterwards. He definitely does feel sorry about it imo. I think one of the defining features of Able's narration is that he rarely describes his own emotions (or moral judgments) except in oblique asides. But there are a few conversations later in the book where he tells other people about his regrets.
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Jul 17, 2023 11:26
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