Books for Prep | |
by: Gene Wolfe  List Price: $15.95 Amazon.com's Price: $10.85 You Save: $5.10 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780312873639 Edition: 1st ISBN: 0312873638 Label: Tor Books Manufacturer: Tor Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: May 04, 2001 Publisher: Tor Books Studio: Tor Books Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Gene Wolfe has stymied and delighted smart science fiction readers for years. His complex, multilayered narratives, untrustworthy narrators, and puzzle-box characters send those of us who like that sort of thing into paroxysms of thrilling speculation, re-reading, and just plain guessing what it all means. In Green's Jungles is the middle book of Wolfe's opus trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun (the first is On Blue's Waters). It is by no means necessary to start with his other series, The Book of the New Sun and The Book of the Long Sun, in order to enjoy what is most likely the final examination of the universe Wolfe has created. But critics and fans are mostly in agreement that they are best read in order, and that the Short Sun series is the best of an astonishing bunch. In Green's Jungles follows narrator Horn as he voyages to the planet Green (Blue's companion) and to the abandoned generational starship known as the Whorl in search of the godlike Patera Silk. As Horn recounts his adventures, his own identity becomes muddled, and we find out his interactions with the vampiric inhumi of Green and the strange alien Neighbors were deeper than we knew. In fact, Horn may not be himself at all anymore. Tantalizing story details drip slowly from Wolfe's pen: Through the ring a Neighbor saw him, and she came to him in his agony.... she said, "I cannot make you well again, and if I could you would still be in this place. I can do this for you, however, if you desire it. I can send your spirit into someone else, into someone whose own spirit is dying." So who is Horn? Has he become Patera Silk--it seems so, for people begin mistaking him for the heroic leader. Is he the warrior king Rajan, or is he something entirely new, formed by the strange places and people around him into a savior of worlds? Identity, love, and faith weave through the themes of In Green's Jungles, and Wolfe has added another masterpiece to a shelf full of them. --Therese Littleton Product Description: Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles is the second volume, after On Blue's Waters, of his ambitious SF trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun. It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest from his home on the planet Blue in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Now Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft in orbit that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien inhumi. There, he led a band of mercenary soldiers, answered to the name of Rajan, and later became the ruler of a city state. He has also encountered the mysterious aliens, the Neighbors, who once inhabited both Blue and Green. He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. At some point, he died. His personality now seemingly inhabits a different body, so that even his sons do not recognize him. And people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. In Green's Jungles is Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, building toward a strange and seductive climax. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Here and there and back here again, but you're all differentI'm certainly glad I wasn't reading these as they came out or else I would have been very confused in trying to remember exactly what was going on. I don't think Wolfe writes series as much as a long sustained novel with defined breakpoints, thematic or otherwise, which makes reading the entire trilogy straight through a much easier prospect than over the period of a few years. This is more pronounced here than in the previous Long Sun series, which while intricate, was nothing like ... Read More Rating: - Challenging--but as brilliant as it gets(...) The Book of the Short Sun will be one of the finest reading experiences of your life... if you can get through the thing. The difficulty in extracting those rewards out of the text is considerable and not to be lightly discounted. Reading these books will require supreme effort. Willing readers will have to be intensely interested with how individuals relate to historical and semi-mythical figures, religion, and their own personality as influenced by these themes. These books are about ... Read More Rating: - Better than the first book!Gene Wolfe can be a frustrating writer: his prose is often elliptical, his plots and characters unusual, his text obscure and dense. He's a master of indirectness: he'll leave out what for other writers would be "important plot points". In this second volumn of Book of the Short Sun, we spend most of our time *not* in Green's jungles, but the intersecting plots and deft, subtle interplay of the different characters leave us with both a clear picture of the main character's (Horn/Silk) time ... Read More Rating:  - Fine -- but LackingIn Green's Jungles covers Horn's second stop on his way home to the Lizard. Contrary to its title, the novel only barely touches on events, many of them major, that took place on Green. Most of the story focuses on a war between two neighboring cities. I found In Green's Jungles more difficult to enjoy than volume 1, and was often annoyed at Wolfe's unnecessary convolution of simple events. Moreover, the war between the cities, as well as most of the characters involved, seemed inconsequential. This ... Read More Rating:  - Wolfe torments his readersMr Wolfe is a writer of powerful imagination, but he has a bad habit of leaving out the dramatically most important parts of his stories, tormenting his readers! Herein, he hops from the future to the present to the past, and back without warning, dwells on trivial detail while he omits most all major events in the stories, mixes short stories and nightmare visions into the "plot", so the bewildered reader has no idea what might be really going on. The reader has to work too hard. The writing ... Read More 
In association with Amazon.com | |