From: "Alice Turner" <akt@attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v028.n174
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 20:48:16 


Welcome (and a peacepipe) to Steve, who wrote:
 
> Please don't crucify me. . .
> 
>     I got started on Wolfe when I was sick in the hospital.  My parents 
> offered to pick up some books to help pass the time and I suggested a book I 
> had heard of called The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.  The only Wolfe 
> books Border's had were the last two books of the Long Sun series.  Frankly, 
> I'm glad it was these two or I wouldn't be posting on this list today.  I 
> loved Calde and Exodus and immediately began to try to read all the Wolfe 
> books I could find.  I ordered the Book of the New Sun as a single volumn 
> from the book club I was in.  Upon reading it I was extremely dissappointed.  
> I didn't think it was near as good as the Long Sun.  To me, it seemed like a 
> strange, disjointed fairy-tale that kinda wanted to be sci-fi.  I admit, the 
> mood of the entire work was beautifully haunting, and when I get arround to 
> reading it a second time I'll probably find a hundered things I missed, but 
> in my view New Sun was the worst, Urth of the New Sun was little better, and 
> Long Sun was best.  Short Sun is shaping up to be the best yet.  Well, that's 
> my two bits.  I just felt I had to defend the Long Sun, because it's what got 
> me hooked.  If I had started on New Sun, I don't think I'd be a Wolfe fan.

You're certainly entitled to think this way--and it's nice for LS to have a defender! What absolutely floors me, though, is that you were able to come in on the middle of the series and enjoy it thoroughly. So much for my defense of elegant plotting!

-alga



*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/