strange and random happenstance: Gene Wolfe

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
Published by: Orb Books
Publication Date: 1972
Format: Paperback, 252 Pages
Rating: ★
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The sister planets of Saint Anne and Saint Croix were founded by French colonists, long since gone, but their influence can still be felt along the streets of Saint Anne. At 666 Saltimbanque Street is a house that the gentlemen of Port-Mimizon are known to frequent. High up in this house lives a young boy and his brother David. Behind the barred windows they can hear the clients down in the garden and up on the rooftop, surrounded by orange trees. Though it is their father and the woman, Madame, they find far more intriguing. One day the boy is brought to his father's study and told he will be called Number Five and visit him nightly to run tests. Previously Number Five and his brother David were taught by Mr. Million, a robot that acted as nanny and tutor, drilling the kids in science and rhetoric and often taking them to the library and slave market. Now that Number Five is older he will also start to pull his weight around the house, they all have their work cut out, his father keeps the girls clean, and now Number Five will be acting as gatekeeper for the brothel. But it's the tests his father puts Number Five through that are destroying him. He suffers immensely and has long blackouts, sometimes lasting months. Number Five finally realizes that he must kill his father, only this has implications for one of their clients. John V. Marsch is an anthropologist who was working on Saint Croix, searching for the lost Annese, the aboriginals of the planet. He came to the house on Saltimbanque Street in search of Dr. Aubrey Veil to ask about Veil's Hypothesis, wherein the doctor posited that the aboriginals could mimic the settlers so completely that they killed them and took their place. Dr. Veil is in fact Number Five's aunt and the Madame of the brothel and this means Marsch often visits resulting in him being arrested for the murder Number Five commits. While stuck in prison Marsch chronicles his imprisonment and his research on Saint Croix. He even assembles a story about the early aboriginals. Yet how could a man born on Earth know so much about a culture that has moved into the back of beyond if it even exists? The answer might lie in Veil's Hyposthesis and the young man, V.R.T., who claimed to be half-aboriginal and whom Marsch hired to take him out into the wilderness for years. In a future world where cloning is possible does it seem that far-fetched that shapeshifters could exist too?

There are books that people go back to and read over and over again because they feel like they keep missing something the last time they read it. They feel that the book hides new discoveries that will be revealed to them one day if they are patient enough and work for it. While I am a proponent of rereading a book on the other hand if the book is elliptical and dense and just too much work to read it the first time I think it is the definition of insanity to attempt to read it again. And that is how I feel about The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It's dreamlike, it's dense, and whatever it was trying to tell me, well, I don't care to find out because reading every single line in this book was painful. I finished it. I did that much at least. But I just don't get it. Because while the structure of the three connecting novellas initially works, what increasingly annoyed me was that this book felt less and less like something written with an audience in mind and more and more like a writing experiment that Gene Wolfe did to entertain himself. I'm all for experimentation in writing, but at the end of the day you still have to be able make it intelligible. The elliptical writing that purposefully omits details, jumping around in the timeline without reason, and then not bothering to write full sentences, and randomly changing the narrative voice, this does not make me a happy camper. And as for the "dreamquest".... If I had wanted to read bad origin myths like I was forced to read as a freshman in high school where a lady was trying to have sex with a worm but it turns out it was a stick, well I would have gone back and read that book again, you know, for nostalgia. I would not have chosen this. In fairness, Gene Wolfe perfectly aped that style of writing so on one level it succeeds, on another it just drove me crazy. Plus there are so many big moral issues handled in such a clumsy manner. We have cloning, slavery, sex work, and all of it is just part of the world and not really a problem. Well, to me it was a problem. When the only woman of power is a famous doctor who ends up working as a madame and all the other women are sex slaves to men we have issues. But issues that I will not delve further into because I will never pick up this book again to peal back the layers of the onion as it were.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Cloning, Dreamlike, Elliptical, Experiments, For the Love of Book Clubs, French, Gene Wolfe, John V. Marsch, Number Five, Sex Workers, Shapeshifter, Slavery, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, V.R.T., Veil's Hypothesis

The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
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The official patter:
"In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I - the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human - just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined - but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.

Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele - not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart - especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?"

I've been wanting desperately to read The Golem and the Jinni for years... well, guess what just got itself moved to the top of my to be read pile?

All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue
Published by: Walker Books US
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card - and then disappears.

After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.

Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily's gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find - even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism."

I might be a tad tarot obsessed and this book ticks all the boxes in the most unexpected ways.

Rabbits by Terry Miles
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 432 Pages
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The official patter:
"A deadly underground game might just be altering reality itself in this all-new adventure set in the world of the hit Rabbits podcast.

It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air - 4:44 p.m. You check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize the date is April 4 - 4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444.

Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas.

Since the game started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown.

So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself.

But the deeper you get, the more dangerous the game becomes. Players have died in the past - and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin.

Enter K - a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, rumored to be the winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts, or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing.

Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline: Eleven begins.

And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake."

I freely admit I've never heard of the podcast where this book is set, but now I HAVE to learn more about all of it because isn't a better Ready Player One?

The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton by Eleanor Ray
Published by: Gallery Books
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"For fans of The Keeper of Lost Things and Evvie Drake Starts Over comes a funny and tender debut about a reclusive artist whose collection has gotten out of control - but whose unexpected friendship with a pair of new neighbors might be just what she needs to start over.

Amy Ashton once dreamed of becoming an artist - of creating beautiful objects. But now she simply collects them. Aquamarine bottles, bright yellow crockery, deep Tuscan red pots (and the odd slow-cooker) take up every available inch of space in her house. Having suffered a terrible tragedy - one she staunchly refuses to let herself think about, thank you very much - she’s decided that it’s easier to love things than people. Things are safe. Things will never leave you.

But when a new family moves in next door with two young boys, one of whom has a collection of his own, Amy’s carefully managed life starts to unravel, prompting her to question why she began to close herself off in the first place. As Amy embarks on a journey back into her past, she has to contend with nosy neighbors, a meddlesome government worker, the inept police, and a little boy whose love of bulldozers might just let Amy open up her heart - and her home - again.

Quirky and charming, big-hearted and moving, The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton proves that it’s never too late to let go of the things that don’t matter...and welcome the people who do."

Because if this past year has taught me anything it's that we need to let go of the things that don't matter and hold on to those who do.

The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A British actress discovers the dark side of Hollywood when she is the only witness to the sudden disappearance of a woman she meets at an audition, in this electrifying psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water and Mr. Nobody.

Once a year, actors from across the globe descend on the smog and sunshine of Los Angeles for pilot season. Every cable network and studio is looking to fill the rosters of their new shows, enticing a fresh batch of young hopefuls - anxious, desperate, and willing to do whatever it takes to make it. Careers will be made, dreams will be realized, stars will be born. And some will be snuffed out.

British star Mia Eliot has landed leading roles in costume dramas in her native country, but now it’s time for Hollywood to take her to the next level. Mia flies across the Atlantic to join the horde of talent scrambling for their big breaks. She’s a fish out of water in the ruthlessly competitive arena of back-to-back auditioning. Then one day she meets Emily, another actress from out of town and a kindred spirit. Emily is friendly and genuine and reassuringly doesn’t seem to be taking any of it too seriously. She stands out in a conveyor-belt world of fellow auditionees. But a simple favor takes a dark twist when Emily disappears and Mia realizes she was the last person to see her. And when a woman knocks on Mia’s door the following day claiming to be Emily and isn’t the woman Mia remembers at all, Mia is deeply troubled.

All Mia has to go on is the memory of a girl she met only once...and the suffocating feeling that something terrible has happened. Worse still, the police don’t believe her when she claims the real Emily has gone missing. So Mia is forced to risk the role of a lifetime to try to uncover the truth about Emily, a gamble that will force her to question her own sanity as the truth goes beyond anything she could ever have imagined.

Actress and author Catherine Steadman has written a gripping thriller set in a world close to home that asks the question: In a city where dreams really do come true, how far would you go to make the unreal real?"

As a fan of Catherine Steadman I had NO IDEA she was a writer until now, and this book is deliciously close to the bone!

The Family Tree by Steph Mullin and Nichole Mabry
Published by: Avon Books
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The DNA results are back. And there's a serial killer in her family tree...

Liz Catalano is shocked when an ancestry kit reveals she's adopted. But she could never have imagined connecting with her unknown family would plunge her into an FBI investigation of a notorious serial killer...

The Tri-State Killer has been abducting pairs of women for forty years, leaving no clues behind - only bodies.

Can Liz figure out who the killer in her new family is? And can she save his newest victims before it's too late?

A gripping, original thriller for fans of My Lovely Wife, Netflix's Making a Murderer, and anyone who's ever wondered what their family tree might be hiding..."

I like that this is like the reverse of how The Golden State Killer was found!

Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 528 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by the Washington Post.

The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Wolfe’s most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly and “one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century” by the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in this four-volume epic, the tale of young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession- showing mercy toward his victim.

The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.

This new Tor Essentials edition of Shadow and Claw contains a new introduction by historian and novelist Ada Palmer, author of the award-winning Too Like the Lightning."

I read a one of Wolfe's books for book club and have since been wanting to read more, so this book is perfectly timed.