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by: Gene Wolfe  List Price: $17.95 Amazon.com's Price: $12.21 You Save: $5.74 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.52 EAN: 9780312872915 Edition: 1st ISBN: 0312872917 Label: Orb Books Manufacturer: Orb Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 544 Publication Date: April 01, 2000 Publisher: Orb Books Studio: Orb Books Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun tetralogy ranks as one of the greatest literary achievements of 20th-century science fiction. Litany of the Long Sun, comprising the first two books in the series, is suffused with looming transcendence and theophany. Wolfe takes familiar speculative fiction tropes and embeds them in a tale so complex and wonderful that readers may find themselves wondering whether what they're reading is science fiction, fantasy, or something different altogether. Or whether it matters. The story of Patera Silk, a devout priest whose destiny is wrapped up with the gods he serves, takes place within the Whorl, a vast, cylindrical starship that has traveled for generations and is crumbling into disrepair. Through a strange and amazing series of events, Silk finds himself descending to base thievery, running afoul of a notorious crime lord, befriending a cyborg soldier, and encountering at least one of the gods of Mainframe. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. "All that abstinence! And now you've seen a goddess. Me. Was it worth it?" But when Silk encounters the Outsider, who may be a God of a very different sort, all his beliefs are shaken to the core, and his life swiftly takes a messianic turn. In a rousing climax, Silk becomes the reluctant leader of a political rebellion against the corrupt Ayuntamiento, who rule the city-state of Viron. It is not necessary to have read Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, which takes place many centuries earlier, to enjoy the Long Sun novels, but keen-eyed readers will find many clues as to the origin of the Whorl and its gods in those stories. Further, although Wolfe's reputation for literary precision and trickery is well deserved, the Long Sun series (which continues in Epiphany of the Long Sun) is one of the more accessible places to start appreciating the author's treasures. --Therese Littleton Product Description: Litany of the Long Sun contains the full texts of Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun, that together make up the first half of The Book of the Long Sun. This great work is set on a huge generation starship in the same future as the classic Book of the New Sun (also available in two volumes from Orb). Average Rating:
 Rating:  - It's slow going at first.It's a slow and simple start; the action of this book takes place over only two days. However, if you've read any of the Short Sun books, or better yet all of them, you owe it to yourself to read these. You may not recognize the tone as Wolfe seems to have attempted conciliation with us mere mortals who try to comprehend his works. It is closer in style to the Knight and the Wizard books but good readers will realize that simpler style does not mean a culling of his message. Readers looking for a ... Read More Rating: - The gods are in the window and the windows are behind the curtainsGene Wolfe may be the smartest writer that SF currently has (or maybe ever, though I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the genre), possessing prose that is of definite literary quality and able to convey subjects in a multi-layered style that forces you to do a little bit of work on your own to put it all together. He acts with the trappings of SF but presents it in such a clear-headed fashion that you could see it being genre literature in a world where the events described in his novels ... Read More Rating: - absolutely fantastic book!What a great couple of books! As in the "New Sun" series written earlier, the story is told by an unreliable narrator- albeit one that is very, very different (at least on the surface) from Severian; but he shares several characteristics with other Wolfe narrators: he's forgetful; sometimes a poor observer, he seems to lie (primarily to himself), and he assumes you understand the context of what he says. The settings are amazingly drawn through the off-hand descriptions of things Patera Silk thinks ... Read More Rating:  - Extremely Boring Lush Prose Filled Morality TaleThis book failed the one hundred pages test. Meaning if after the first hundred pages, I can write the entire plot in one small paragraph, the novel fails (to hold my interest). So basically the book is about Father Silk who receives a vision (or imagines he does) from a God known as [the] Outsider. He interprets the vision to mean he must take personal responsibility to save his parish from being sold off from back taxes. To help his interpretation, he spends a good 30 pages buying a ... Read More Rating: - took 2 triesIt took me two tries, separated by a few years, to get going on this. The first time I tried to get into the book I just didn't click with the rhythm of Gene Wolfe's writing, but the second time I did, and then I couldn't put the book down - zipping through both Litany of the Long Sun (books 1 and 2) and Epiphany of the Long Sun (books 3 and 4). Yes, I actually said zipping. Reading some of the other reviews, including some of those giving this 4 or 5 stars, you might think that this book is going ... Read More 
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