I Read Books: Shadow Of The Torturer

 

The Shadow Of The Torturer

In the far future Urth (Earth) Severian is an apprentice torturer, later a journeyman. After an encounter with Vodalus a famous rebel where he saves him he falls in love with Thecla, an Exultant (noble?) prisoner of the guild of torturers. She is put to torture, a machine putting an unbearable thought in her, so he smuggles her a knife to kill herself. Rather than report this or execute Severian and bring dishonour on the guild, the masters decide to exile him, sending him to Thrax, the city of windowless rooms, where they have requested an executioner.

Severian leaves the Citadel and heads through the city of Nessus, having a number of strange encounters. He’s told to cover his fulgrim (ultra-black, vanta-black) uniform as it causes panic. Taking shelter in an inn Dr Talos, a travelling actor and playwright, tries to recruit him. Going to buy a mantle to cover his clothes the owner offers to buy his sword Terminus Est which he refuses. He’s then mysteriously challenged to a duel. Agia, the sister of the shop owner, takes him to the botanical gardens there to get an avern, a dangerous flower, for the duel. On the way they crash the fiacre* into a temporary temple of a peripatetic religious order. Agia is accused of stealing an artefact (a gem known as The Claw Of The Conciliator) but is searched and it is not found.

The botanical gardens are very strange, each garden seemingly larger on the inside, with climates that may be extra-temporal or, like the avern, extra-terrestrial. At the lake where the avern grows, he learns that it is used to sink the dead. He falls in, and when he comes out he brings with him a young woman named Dorcas. She’s amnesiac, and Agia tries to get rid of her. With no better idea Dorcas joins them. They encounter one of Voladus’s companions who helps Severian gather the avern. He and the two women go to an inn near the dueling grounds. Severian receives a note warning one of the women but it’s not clear who. He goes out to fight the duel, is struck by an avern petal but mysteriously survives.

Waking in a lazaret (clinic) that is part of the garrison of the city wall, Severian finds Dorcas waiting for him, and having identified himself, he is asked to perform an execution. He agrees, to discover it is Agius, Agia’s brother from the shop. They conspired to kill him to steal the sword and sell it. Severian executes Agius, and discovers amongst his own belongings the Claw Of The Conciliator, which Agia stole and hid in his belongings. Learning the religious order has gone ahead, he follows, only to meet Dr Talos putting on his play which he and Dorcas join in. The next day they go out the great gate, meeting a man named Jonas, some sort of confusion breaks out in the gate tunnel and then the volume ends.

Severian claims to have perfect recall, yet at various times he seems confused, is unsure, has odd visions, strange moments that do not make sense to him. At times he addresses us, the reader, as though we know who he is and where he will end up, and indeed the nature of the ending of the tale – that the old tired sun will become a New Sun (this is the first volume of the Book Of The New Sun). In others he takes it as though we are ignorant of all things. Having read the whole sequence, though some years ago, I can see how various ideas, characters, and other elements have been layered in and introduced, some clearly, some subtly, and some misleadingly. Though set in a far future Urth, some of the references are contemporary. This world and story feels obscure because it is strange, and because it is alive and complicated, and because this story is (in fiction and to a certain extent outwith) metaphor and instructive text and memoir.

This is a complex, layered book, though also one that has a simple – if episodic and arbitrary – adventure tale. Women come out of nowhere and attempt to seduce Severian. People try to attack him and he fights them off. He accidentally sees strange visions, learns about events in the House Absolute (the palace of the Autarch that may hide, or hover, or move, or slip between dimensions), and joins an acting troupe. Do I like it? Yes, on balance I do.

Read This: Extraordinary adventures full of allusion and wonder
Don’t Read This: Confusing backdrop of torturer who makes his way through a city, causing chaos in his wake

* A carriage of some sort. This future earth mixes and matches technology, super-technology, and most of all terminology**

** Wolfe, in the appendix, continues the fiction by declaring he has translated the text from a future language, choosing already existing words to represent various things. By making them unusual and unfamiliar ones we become aware that we are askew from our assumptions of things; this carriage is pulled by a creature like a horse but not one as we know.