Have any of you read the Book of the New Sun? What did you think of it?

Have any of you read the Book of the New Sun? What did you think of it?

I read it this year. I enjoyed Shadow of the Torturer the most. Overall, the series was an enjoyable read, though there were many words I had to look up along the way.

A favorite between the ages of 18 and 24, and thereafter.

I liked it a whole lot, so much so I went back and read all of it a second time. Its pretty impressive how subtle Gene was about dropping hints about future plot points.

...

>>>/kys/

I read Shadow of the Torturer years ago and didn't really like it, mostly because of the protagonist. I intend to give it another shot at some point and try and finish the series because of how much praise it get but it isn't high on my priorities.

great book.

I thought this author was a joke. when did you guys start taking it seriously. I haven't been here in a while.

Death of Dr. Island is a legitimately great short story

Read about 20 pages in the first book, then dropped it.

Might've been because I had just finished The First Law trilogy, which was abysmally bad, and wasn't in the mood for something that sounded similar.

Might've been because it was bad.

We may never know.

I started the first book last week and am now halfway through the third book. It's difficult for me to really decide how I feel about the series so far. It's very clear that this series fits alongside pomo writers such as Eco. The many layered and bracketed stories and the increasingly diminutive way they are told, the unreliable narrator, the misleading descriptions of things and events came together to make it a work well worth reading and (what I believe will probably be a necessity of the books) rereading.

>increasingly diminutive way they are told
Sounds interesting, but what do you mean by this?

>The First Law trilogy, which was abysmally bad
tumblr, please.

Yes. Good.

One of the things I love about this story is actually something that seems to turn people off from it, and that is the slow pace and meandering of the plot. I loved Moby-Dick for the same reason. It was really very special and wonderful to let the story wander off into the weeds as Severian wandered through his fascinating world, learning about time and life and history.

The novella "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is an absolute masterpiece. The other stories in that book are good as well, but that first story is just amazing.

it made my reoccurring nightmare worse

liking anything with terry written on the cover.

The story starts in the present tense with an (apparently) eidetic narrator who is writing a chronicle of his life. Throughout the meanderings of his life (which mask the actual happenings of the story) there are memories, stories told, visions, readings from books etc. That is what I mean about the increasingly diminutive way of the telling of the story.

first book was the best. the gets weird as you progress. the sequel "the urth of the new sun" is WAY out there weird.

please elaborate.

..... How the fuck does a novel which starts riffing off In Search of Lost Time in style and way it deals with impressions in those 20 pages even remotely similar to a book which doesn't even have fucking descriptions?

Is the first book stand-alone? When I finish it, will I want to read the second immediately after?

It's a single novel split into 4 parts for publishing reasons.
Like say Anna Karenina usually comes as two volumes.

it made this one worse somehow
>pasted from another thread i posted in

sometimes I wake up over and over in my dreams, because something feels deeply wrong and after about five or six I became trying to wake myself up. At this point, i feel like I am having a stroke and have difficulty speaking or moving in the dream. One time I attempted to pry my eye open with my hand, but when I woke up I found my mother cut in half (vertically) so I ran to my room where a giant wall of static slowly approached me and as it consumed me I woke up shaking and unsure if i am actually conscious.
Apparently, it's called a type 2 false awakening and I have them every once in a while. Afterwards, I'll be paranoid about becoming schizophrenic for a few days, because I keep thinking i see things out of the corner of my eyes.

so I'll want to read the second immediately after?

The last paragraph or so Book 1 brings this question up to the reader directly.

I've read it all in 3 days, on the next read in 5.
I couldn't stop, so yes.

Something very similar used to happened to me a lot. I used to sleep on my belly, for years and years I did. And whenever I would sleep on my back something like this would happen. A particularly horrible instance, I was dreaming that I was a tv station, or rather a tv signal, for some reason I had the sense that I was the North Korea television broadcast. Something happened to make me very quickly expand, almost explode. I wake up in such extreme mental and physical pain, I very seriously considered suicide for the next few hours. I've only slept on my back since then, which was years ago, and so far I've had maybe one or two further incidents, and these have been much more mild.

Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I cannot blame you. It is no easy road.