Gene Wolf

[Anonymous No.20900532]

Currently reading Shadow & Claw, and just ordered Sword & Citadel.
Are any of his other books worth reading, or am I covered with these?
Does quality go down or up after the first ones?

[Anonymous No.20900535]

He does have some superb short stories if that's your thing

[Anonymous No.20900548]

>>20900532
The quality is consistent throughout. He has lots of other books worth reading. I wish I could recommended his short stories cause I know they're great but I've only read his novels and one novella. His early career is generally considered to be better than his later career, as it includes New Sun and other of his most acclaimed novels like Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, and the first two Soldier of the Mist novels. However some of his best stuff was also written after the year 2000 like the Book of the Short Sun, The Wizard Knight, and The Sorcerer's House. His last novels that he wrote before he died which is short because of his declining health is considered to feature some of his best prose. But he does have a few weak novels from various periods of his career.

[Anonymous No.20900549]

>>20900535
Thanks, but no. Not really into short stories

[Anonymous No.20900562]

>>20900548
Sounds like it'd be easier for you to just name the not so good ones.
Ok, anon. Which ones should I stay away from? Which ones don't live up to Book of the New Sun?

[Anonymous No.20900564]

"Peace" was his best book in Gene's opinion. It is also his least genre-ish novel.

[Anonymous No.20900596]

>>20900562
Pandora by Holly Hollander, Pirate Freedom, Home Fires
Those are the ones I see named most often. I only read Home Fires and I liked it. But he never wrote anything else like New Sun. The series set in the same universe is very different. The one I'd put above New Sun is Fifth Head of Cerberus. It's just an extremely good and interesting scifi novel. It has an experimental structure that's split into three novellas that each have their own style.

[Anonymous No.20900602]

>>20900532
He’s a hack

[Anonymous No.20900609]

>>20900532
Latro in the Mist is fun.

[Anonymous No.20900909]

Wizard Knight was a slightly offputting but interesting read.

[Anonymous No.20901420]

>>20900909
Offputting, how so?

[Anonymous No.20901818]

>>20900532
Who is your favorite character, bros? For me it's Jonas.

[Anonymous No.20902394]

>>20900532
I've been hearing the alzabo soup podcast and it's hilarious. They have such a hate boner for Severian that in one scene where Severian is nice to a little girl they cope saying Thecla must be possessing him, because they think Severian is such a psychopath they don't understand why isn't he raping the little girl.

[Anonymous No.20902418]

>>20902394
Why are you listening to podcasts?

[Anonymous No.20904138]

>>20900532
>Are any of his other books worth reading
all of them
but probably the best is fifth head of Cerberus triogy

[Anonymous No.20904437]

>>20902394

[Anonymous No.20905666]

>>20902418
It's funny to laugh at the bullshit they come up with.

[Anonymous No.20905868]

>>20900532
It only gets better. If in doubt, check the charts.

[Anonymous No.20907634]

>>20905868
>check the charts.
Are those even trustworthy?

[Anonymous No.20907639]

>>20907634
Yes

[Anonymous No.20908189]

>>20900532
More like Genre Wolfe lol

[Anonymous No.20908211]

I'm reading the Book of the New Sun
Feels weird man
I bought Shadow and Claw and had it on my shelf and my sister saw it and asked if she could borrow it and I said sure and told her that it was 'supposed to be a really great book'
A few months later she returned it to me and said she read it and since I hadn't read it yet I didn't question her about it but she said she 'really liked it'
What do you think she felt about it?
t. currently reading about how one prostitute's breasts were bigger than the other

[Anonymous No.20908217]

>>20902394
Wew. Good few of the times Severian acts particularly sadistic probably is because of Thecla, who was explicitly confirmed to have tortured prisoners for fun.

[Anonymous No.20908239]

>>20900532
If you're into fantasy / SF you should read all his books because he's one of the very few genre author who can write.

>>20902394
Sadly Wolfe attracts midwits who read YA and fantashit their entire life and aren't smart enough to read an actual book.
Big example is how they come up with "theories" because they were told the book was deep but they can't into analysis so they come up with Mat Pat ideas.

[Anonymous No.20908382]

>>20908211
Solar Cycle is very hard to go through. It's one of those series where your love for them kicks in after you're finished reading them. Nobody really likes reading New Sun, especially the Shadow of the Torturer. That book is a mess which will only begin to make sense when you're done with the Citadel of thr Autarch.

[Anonymous No.20908505]

>>20901420
WK is fucking weird. I don't know how to describe it.

[Anonymous No.20908508]

>>20908382
Says who? I liked reading it
What a gay reddit post

[Anonymous No.20908569]

>>20908508
Return to Abaia, frog

[Anonymous No.20909421]

>>20908382
>Solar Cycle is very hard to go through
Hard disagree. You only "appreciate" it in hindsight but I had a blast going in blind and treating it as a sequence of surreal vignettes.
You don't have to fully understand what's going on to think that a duel with alien flowers that kill you instantly if you touch them is fucking cool.

[Anonymous No.20909560]

>>20908211
Is your sister single?

[Anonymous No.20909585]

>>20909421
I was so into Agia when she first appeared. I imagined her to look like a Twitch streamer I like and I was hoping she'd go all yandere for Severian. Her ripping her dress going through the botanical garden is a very memorable scene early on in the books.

[Anonymous No.20909591]

>>20908211
>recommending your sister a book with lots of incest

[Anonymous No.20909608]

>>20909421
>You don't have to fully understand what's going on to think that a duel with alien flowers that kill you instantly if you touch them is fucking cool.
NTA but I thought it was pretty fucking lame when I first read it.
>what if, get this, what if they dueled for honor, but instead of SWORDS it was FLOWERS, BUT they're ALIEN FLOWERS that kill you if you touch them
I don't know, I didn't like it

[Anonymous No.20909619]

>>20909608
A lot of the time these books feel like reading the plot of an anime.

[Anonymous No.20909657]

>>20902394
I knew they were not going to be very charitable to Severian when episode two they're just like
>remember he LITERALLY MURDERED a guy
Yet come the time we start going into the con that Agia and Agilus were pulling we're supposed to feel bad for them or understand that they were in some way desperate.

[Anonymous No.20909665]

>>20909585
>I imagined her to look like a Twitch streamer I like and I was hoping she'd go all yandere for Severian.
So this is how zoomers read books

[Anonymous No.20909771]

>>20909665
I imagine books in different ways. The Solar Cycle was always a "what if celebrities I like played the characters" e.g. I imagined Maytera Mint to be played by the female chaser from the Chase, and Hyacinth as played by Celestia Vega. I imagined Dune books as stage plays set in a single room. I imagined Ubik as a cartoon played by characters from Brickleberry. Tarnsman of Gor looked like that painting by Boris Vallejo, but not the one you may think of first.

[Anonymous No.20910334]

>>20909585
For me it's Jolenta. I pictured her as Vylerria.

[Anonymous No.20910373]

>>20910334
hmm.... hmmmmmmmm... yes..... YES!!

[Anonymous No.20910389]

>>20910334
Bros, if Jolenta looked like this, then I'm just like Jonas. Call me a simp of you want. I don't care. I love beauty.

[Anonymous No.20910394]

>you will never celebrate feast of st. Catherine with the boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFufOGZBwFM

[Anonymous No.20910448]

>>20910334
Yikes

[Anonymous No.20910588]

>>20910334
>>20910389
>Eventually I came to resent Jolenta's sleep. I abandoned the oar and knelt beside her on the cushions. There was a purity in her sleeping face, however artificial, that I had never observed when she was awake. I kissed her, and her large eyes, hardly open, seemed almost Agia's long eyes, as her red-gold hair appeared almost brown. I loosened her clothing. She seemed half drugged, whether by some soporific in the heaped cushions or merely by the fatigue induced by our walk in the open and the burden of so great a quantity of voluptuous flesh. I freed her breasts, each nearly as large as her own head, and those wide thighs, which seemed to hold a new-hatched chick between them.
Is this the best description of a woman's bush in literature?

[Anonymous No.20910595]

>>20910588
Imagine the texture

[Anonymous No.20910607]

>>20910588
This was NOT rape.

[Anonymous No.20910645]

Why did Severian not have friends/retainers with him at the start of Urth? Had to go on that quest alone or something? Trying to be obtuse to not spoil stuff for people

[Anonymous No.20910675]

>>20910645
He had servants floating around but yeah I think he had to go alone.

[Anonymous No.20910781]

>>20910588
It's interesting that when he's about to rape her, he imagines her as Agia. I would think he'd be focused on enjoying Jolenta's features for what they are, but the resentment he feels towards Jolenta associates her to Agia in his mind, and he derived more pleasure from imagining himself taking revenge on Agia than he would from the taking advantage of Jolenta in itself.
It's frustrating that more detail isn't given about this escapade. He fucks her numerous times but we don't know if she wakes up during one of those times or after he's spent. We don't get to see her reaction at all. Dorcas flips when they get back to camp but we don't know if they were arm in arm, making it obvous what happened, or if they looked embarrassed, trying to pretend to be normal. I want more details.

[Anonymous No.20910994]

>>20900532
I've been reading Peace. Feels like a bootleg (in a good way) portrait of the artist as a young man.

[Anonymous No.20911488]

>>20910394
This is very pretty.
Here's one I like, it's a more sentimental connection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EbsvIe6ouE

[Anonymous No.20911491]

>>20910994
>David Pringle

[Anonymous No.20911852]

>>20910334
I imagined her as Pamela Anderson, but this girl is hot too.

[Anonymous No.20911870]

>>20911852
Here's a decent example of what Jolenta's waist, hips, and thighs would look like irl. This girl is not as hot as she would be, though. Jolenta would have bigger boobs and fuller lips for starters.

[Anonymous No.20911881]

>>20911870
This is kind of how I imagined Dorcas.

[Anonymous No.20911910]

>>20911881
In terms of her complexion and color, absolutely. But Dorcas is gracile, slender limbs with relatively small curves.

[Anonymous No.20911913]

>>20911910
I imagine all of the girls with amazing banging bodies. Dorcas a bit less than the others. But yeah, that girl is more of a Jolenta bodywise, at least when it comes to those hips and waist.

[Anonymous No.20912205]

>>20910645
He left Valeria and Father Inire to take care of Urth while he's away. I'm pretty sure he has no other friends left.

[Anonymous No.20913614]

>>20908505
All his books are weird

[Anonymous No.20914242]

>>20900909
Wizard Knight meandered a lot in the middle portion of the books in the land of the giants. The momentum from the first half carried me through it though and the payoff was huge. It’s both quintessential and very original fantasy

[Anonymous No.20914934]

Is this the Wolfe thread?

Just checking in to say that I'm a third through Exodus From the New Sun and I'm very glad I didn't drop it after the travesty that was Calde. Marble has become one of my favorite characters just based on how weird her story is, Mint and Remora feel like actual characters now that they get the hostage scene, and even the Auk bullshit is tolerable now that things are actually happening.
I shouldn't have doubted you, Pringles Man.

[Anonymous No.20915149]

>>20914934
Exodus seemed like more of what you wouldn't like of Calde, but the beginning of Calde with the huge sacrifice and the theophany of Echidna is absolutely wild. It's after that that the structure really changes and becomes more fragmented. But I'm glad.

[Anonymous No.20915172]

>>20910588
>I freed her breasts, each nearly as large as her own head
No way. Was she really Lovely Lilith tier stacked?

[Anonymous No.20915235]

>>20900532
Latro of the mist is good

[Anonymous No.20915341]

>>20915172
He is probably exaggerating but it still makes me hard. I have a sleep fetish and once I made this fat young redhead with massive tits pretend to be asleep when I fucked her

[Anonymous No.20915417]

>>20915341
So did Ted Bundy.

[Anonymous No.20915421]

>>20915417
So do I.
>tfw no dead fish girlfriend

[Anonymous No.20915503]

>>20915417
well ummm no you see that's different because-
*grabs you by the throat*

[Anonymous No.20915572]

>Agilus trying to kill Severian

[Anonymous No.20915623]

>>20909591
Fucking basado

>>20908211
You have to get her sword and citadel now
You also have to fugg her :DD

[Anonymous No.20915627]

>>20909608
Bad taste and skill issue

[Anonymous No.20915641]

>Typhoon when he offers Severian food

[Anonymous No.20915656]

>>20910781
>rape
Didn't read your post because you immediately just revealed your own ignorance and retardation

[Anonymous No.20915669]

>>20915572

>trying
He DID kill Sev, anonkun