# books

title: The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition
sort: Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition, The
timestamp: 2012-03-25 11:06:04+00:00
pubdate: 2011-06-05 04:00:00+00:00
path: Neil Gaiman/The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantas (7018)
uuid: ac54b9a1-a132-4aa1-9224-7e14018bde7c
last_modified: 2013-04-26 20:00:49.649000+00:00
author_sort:
Gaiman, Neil & Hand, Elizabeth & Parker, Rj & Reed, Robert Rentoul & Wolfe, Gene & Yu, Charles & Horton, Rich


# comments

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<div><p>Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction work of the 1980s, offered his second collection of short fiction in 1990 to universal acclaim. This is a hefty volume of over 30 unforgettable stories in a variety of genres-- SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream-many of them offering variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales, and including two stories, "The Cat" and "The Map," which are set in the universe of his New Sun novels. Wolfe's deconstructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, and resonant. This embarrassment of literary riches is a must for all Gene Wolfe fans, and anyone who loves a good tale beautifully told.<br></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction series of the 1980s, offers his second collection, a hefty volume of over 30 stories in a variety of genres--SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream. Many of them are variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales; Wolfe's deconstructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, resonant. Occasionally, too, they seem intentionally enigmatic. Two of the stories, "The Cat" and "The Map," are set in the universe of his New Sun novels. "A Cabin on the Coast" tells of a promising politician who loses his lover to the fey folk living in the sea. He strikes a bargain for her return, promising to undergo 20 years of servitude. When his lover finally returns, he has lost his youth, and with it, we assume, his future. "In the House of the Gingerbread" is a variation on "Hansel and Gretel" rewritten as a contemporary detective story; and "The Detective of Dreams" is an Arabian Nights tale as told by G. K. Chesterton--its spiritual subtext is made explicit in the end. A predominance of excellent stories makes this a rewarding book. <br>Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Genetic engineering brings mythology to life in "The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholtus" and "The Woman the Unicorn Loved," while a college experiment in social systems goes dangerously awry in "When I Was Ming the Merciless." Wolfe's second collection of short stories exemplifies the sometimes elusive, always challenging vision of an author whose love of language exceeds the boundaries of genre. For most libraries.-- JC<br>Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>A brothel keeper's sons discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his shadow double; and a political prisoner tries to prove his identity, not least to himself. Gene Wolfe's first novel consists of three linked sections, all of them elegant broodings on identity, sameness, and strangeness, and all of them set on the vividly evoked colony worlds of Ste. Croix and Ste. Anne, twin planets delicately poised in mutual orbit. </p><p>Marsch, the victim in the third story, is the apparent author of the second and a casual visitor whose naïve questions precipitate tragedy in the first. The sections dance around one another like the planets of their settings. Clones, downloaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are lots of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others. </p><p>It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers. <em>--Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Gene Wolfe is unique. If there were forty or fifty of this first-rate author--no, let's be reasonable and ask Higher Authorities for only four or five--American literature as a whole would be enormously enriched." --_Chicago Sun-Times_  </p><p>"One of the major fictional works of the decade...Wolfe's novel, with its elusiveness and its beauty, haunts one long after reading it." --Pamela Sargent  </p><p>"A richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality." --Malcolm Edwards, <em>The Science Fiction Encyclopedia</em>  </p><p>"SF for the thinking reader..The style is highly literate and the ideas sophisticated and handled with sensitivity." --_Amazing SF_  </p><p>"One of the 100 best science fiction novels...A truly extraordinary work. One of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern SF, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, and apparently casual revelations." --David Pringle  </p></div>


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<p class="description"><br>Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person—while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return.Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>World Fantasy Award–winning novelist Wolfe (_An Evil Guest_) spins a complex, spellbinding web of otherworldly sorcery and hauntings. When scholar and ex-con Baxter Dunn arrives in the Midwest town of Medicine Man, he learns that a mysterious benefactor has deeded him a rambling old house. As the building grows around him, Bax encounters a number of wonders and terrors, including family secrets, windows into Faerie, and a murderous animal dubbed the Hound of Horror. However, the greatest challenge Bax faces may be his twin brother's jealousy and rage. Both terrifying and touching, this book of wonders speaks eloquently about the nature of responsibility and family, but Wolfe's unforgettable world is marred by stereotypes—a flighty and submissive Japanese woman, a scandalmongering journalist, a rapacious and sadistic dwarf—and a rushed, incoherent ending. <em>(Mar.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“A complex, spellbinding web of otherworldly sorcery and hauntings. Both terrifying and touching, this book of wonders speaks eloquently about the nature of responsibility and family.”<br><em>—Publishers Weekly</em>  </p><p>“_The Sorcerer’s House _is, without qualification, a masterpiece. A fascinating novel that repays close reading with a tale of delightful subtlety, wit, and true insight.”<br>—SFRevu.com  </p><p>Praise for Gene Wolfe:  </p><p>“If any writer from within genre fiction ever merited the designation Great Author, it is surely Wolfe.”<br><em>—The Washington Post Book World</em>  </p><p>“Gene Wolfe is as good a writer as there is today. I feel a little bit like a musical contemporary attempting to tell people what’s good about Mozart.”<br><em>—The Chicago Sun-Times</em></p></div>


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<div><p><em>There Are Doors </em>is the story of a man who falls in love with a goddess from an alternate universe. She flees him, but he pursues her through doorways-interdimensional gateways-to the other place, determined to sacrifice his life, if necessary, for her love. For in her world, to be her mate . . . is to die.<br></p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>The door between fantasy and reality springs ajar as a man's love for an immortal woman casts him adrift in a world whose rules he cannot fathom and in which he risks being lost forever. Deceptively simple in tone, Wolfe's latest novel brings the world of dreams and desires across the border into the "real world" in a style reminiscent of his Free Live Free . Recommended. JC<br>Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"It may well be Wolfe's most perfect story."--Orson Scott Card<br></p><p>"Intricate, glowing, fascinating work."-<em>Kirkus Reviews</em><br></p></div>


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<div><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Severian, formerly a member of the Torturers' Guild and now Autarch of Urth, travels beyond the boundaries of time and space aboard the Ship of Tzadkiel on a mission to bring the New Sun to his dying planet. Wolfe demonstrates his mastery of both style and content in this complex, multilayered story of one man's eternal quest. Containing enough background material to make it accessible to series newcomers, this sequel to the four-volume Book of the New Sun is highly recommended. JC<br>Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"<em>The Urth of the New Sun</em> is a fine coda to what is arguable the finest piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced, the four-volume <em>Book of the New Sun</em>."--<em>Chicago Sun-Times</em><br></p><p>"Gene Wolfe's new book soars, falls free, runs like the river that runs through it from universe to universe, between life and death and life again. The groundnote of it all is human pain, so that this fantasy has the weight of vision."--Ursula K. Le Guin<br></p><p>"Gene Wolfe's four-volume magnum opus, <em>The Book of the New Sun,</em> is one of the modern masterpieces of imaginative literature--an evocation of a world so far in the future that magic and technology, poetry and science, are indistinguishable,a world heavy with time but yet bereft of hope, a world brought to life by Mr. Wolfe's unique blend of slightly archaic diction and ever-surprising vocabulary. Readers familiar with these volumes will find much to enjoy in <em>The Urth of the new Sun.</em>"--<em>The New York Times</em><br></p></div>


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<div><div>First publication</div><div>Full Spectrum 5, 1995</div><div>Wolfe collection(s)</div><div><br></div><div>Strange Travelers</div><div><br></div><div>Summary</div><div>A man going through a divorce is visited by his family in a remote mountain cabin during a snowstorm. Time-traveling women attack and abduct one of his step-daughters.</div></div>


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<div><p>While struggling to satisfy the gods aboard The Whorl, a giant spaceship sent out from Urth to colonize a distant planet, Patera Silk unwittingly discovers a new god and nearly sets off a revolt. Reprint.</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Wolfe's first novel since Pandora by Holly Hollander (1990) is a vivid and compelling evocation of life inside an interstellar spacecraft so huge that a whole world of cities and wildernesses exists within it, and so old that its origins and purpose are mere legends to its inhabitants. Patera Silk, a young priest in one of the city of Viron's poorest temples ("manteions"), receives a mental message from one of his gods, an enlightenment which invests his life with urgent meaning. On the same day, however, he learns his manteion had been sold for back taxes and may well be dismantled. Armed with the conviction of his revelation, Silk enlists the aid of a local but decent-hearted thief, intent upon breaking into the mansion of Blod, the new owner of the manteion, to convince (or even force) him to guarantee its survival. From that point on, Silk is drawn even deeper into the shady world outside his temple walls. But for all its interest, the plot is hardly the most powerful element. The atmosphere of Wolfe's spacecraft seduces and amazes, details and mystery piling upon each other to yield a sense of palpable otherworldliness. The environment of the long sun--so called because the ship's cylindrical interior is lit by a central tubular "sun" extending the length of the ship--comes energetically alive, and readers will be grateful that this book begins a four-volume series. If this first taste is any test, Wolfe has embarked on an epic to rival his acclaimed Book of the New Sun. <br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Inside the giant spaceship known as the Whorl, the gods speak to their worshipers through a complex system of augury and technology until one man discovers the existence of a new god and unwittingly begins a revolution. Wolfe's stylistic genius allows him to infuse standard elements of mystery and adventure with multiple layers of nuance and symbolism to create a transcendent and mysterious whole. Resonating with undertones from the authors' "Book of the New Sun" saga, this first in a four-volume series is a strong addition to any library's sf collection.<br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<div><p>To save his parish buildings, Patera Silk, a young priest, embarks on a quest that takes him on an odyssey into the hidden secrets of his world and into a huge spaceship illuminated by an artificial long sun.</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Wolfe continues the saga begun in Nightside the Long Sun with this curious mix of science and medieval culture in which gods possess people and robotic police patrol mysterious underground passageways. Patera Silk, a young cleric, attempts to ransom his parish buildings from creditors; in the process he uncovers a larger conspiracy involving the government of Viron and even the gods he worships. Emerging from the underground with his new knowledge, he finds himself chosen as leader ("Calde") of the masses and is simultaneously arrested. As a hero, Silk is good-natured but he lacks the energy and complexity required by his role. He often seems slighty lost, a lack of direction mirrored by the slowly developing narrative, which picks up only shortly before the finish. While the language is often inventive ("deadcoach" for horse-drawn hearse), it proves equally distracting; nor are the secondary characters distinctly depicted. Reference is made to the next volume of Wolfe's projected tetralogy, increasing the sense that this book is little more than a bridge between more important segments. <br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>When his parish is threatened by financial difficulties, Patera Silk finds himself embroiled with gangsters, prostitutes, and thieves as the accidental leader of a grassroots political movement. Set aboard a giant generation-starship whose populace has forgotten its history and original purpose, this sequel to Nightside the Long Sun ( LJ 3/15/93) takes its hero on a questlike journey in which truth is discovered at the expense of innocence. Wolfe imbues his straightforward narrative style with a wealth of nuance and subtextual complexity. Stylistic excellence and topnotch storytelling recommend this title for most libraries.<br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<div><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Patera Silk, a young priest aboard the generation ship known as the Whorl, finds himself both the unwitting leader of a band of revolutionaries and the pawn of godlike forces trying to reshape a stagnant society. The latest installment in Wolfe's "Book of the Long Sun" series offers tantalizing hints of an ancient history lost to the Whorl's inhabitants. The author continues to prove himself one of the genre's most literate writers and luminescent thinkers. A familiarity with earlier series books is helpful but not absolutely necessary. Most libraries should own this title.<br>Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Booklist</h3><p>Recently reissued in one volume as <em>The Litany of the Long Sun</em>, the first two parts of Wolfe's tetralogy introduced the Whorl--a massive, hollow spaceship--and one of its citizens, Patera Silk, a poor cleric struggling to save his church from crime lords. The saga now continues as Silk wins over the local militia to his cause of revamping the government and becomes the first new <em>cald{‚}e</em>--an official wielding both religious and political power--in more than a century. After becoming acquainted with the tunnels and secret political players below the Whorl's inner surface and having regular contact with the "gods" on nearby video monitors, Silk gets a startling glimpse of the Whorl's greater dimensions and gains a real purpose beyond his own limited ambitions. Some may be pleased to notice the links Wolfe here makes to his earlier New Sun tetralogy, while others may find his predilection for rich characterization and cultural detail frustrating. Still, Wolfe's genius for world building has been equaled only in such works as Frank Herbert's Dune series. The Long Sun books represent science fiction at its most impressive. <em>Carl Hays</em></p></div>


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<div><p>The long-awaited conclusion to "The Book of the Long Sun". "Wolfe may already have established himself as the definitive voice in science fantasy. If he has not, "Long Sun" is likely to do the job".--"Chicago Sun-Times". A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year.</p><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Wolfe's recent multi-volume novels have invited interpretation as religious allegory. In the "Book of the Long Sun," the fourth volume of which is <em>Exodus From the Long Sun</em>, religion is at least an inspirational starting point. This book is set on a starship, the Whorl, whose inhabitants have lost track of the fact that they are on a journey. Indeed their origins are mysterious to them, and the starship's vestigial communications system is understood to bring messages from unknown gods. One priest, Patera Silk, discovers the truth about the Whorl, and the gods his people worship. Silk must prepare his people for the revelation. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The long sun, which stretches from one end of the Whorl to the other, shows signs of instability. The gods of Mainframe, once dependable, now appear to be in conflict with each other. Mysterious fliers haunt the skies, social unrest is on the rise and signs and portents are everywhere. In the city of Viron, Calde Silk, once a humble priest and now ruler by the gods' decree, fights a dirty and chaotic war with the city's corrupt former government. An army approaches from the city of Trivigaunte, ostensibly to support Silk, though its commander may have an ulterior motive. A former criminal, Auk, receives word from the gods that the Whorl, which was earlier revealed to be a planet-sized starship, is failing and must be abandoned by its seething millions. In this fourth volume of his Book of the Long Sun (after Calde of the Long Sun), Wolfe, winner of two Nebula Awards during his 26 years in SF, concludes one of the major SF series of the decade. Tangentially related to the author's acclaimed Book of the New Sun, the Long Sun series displays many of Wolfe's greatest strengths. The complex language is lovingly crafted. The culture of the Whorl, particularly in its religious manifestations, is presented in rich and fascinating detail. Silk makes for an engaging protagonist, and one whom Wolfe surrounds with a host of crotchety secondary characters, some human, some not. This completion of the series doesn't stand alone, depending on the other novels for its context and meaning; but the series as a whole is a bonafide masterpiece. <br>Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<p>Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wonderful ways. Severian is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and now journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est. </p>


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<p>Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wonderful ways. Severian is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and now journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est.</p>


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<p>Banished for the sin of mercy, Severian, one of the ancient guild of Torturers, flees from exile. In a mountain wilderness he meets the Alzabo, in whom those eaten seem to live on, adopts as son only to lose him in battle, discharges an old debt to vengeance, encounters fanged aliens who hide behind masks of beauty, and helps the people of the floating islands in their unending battle for freedom.</p>


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<p>"#4 The Book of The New Sun Series. Severian the Torturer continues his epic journey across the lands of Urth, a journey as fraught with peril as it is with wonder. Exiled from his guild, he is an outcast wanderer in the world. But his travels are woven about the strange portents"</p>


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<p class="description">02 The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene 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. Sword &amp; Citadel brings together the final two books of the tetralogy in one volume:The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will forever alter the realm known as Urth."Brilliant . . . terrific . . . a fantasy so epic it beggars the mind. An extraordinary work of art!"-Philadelphia Inquirer"The Book of the New Sun establishes [Wolfe's] preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping."--The New York Times Book Review The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene 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. Sword &amp; Citadel brings together the final two books of the tetralogy in one volume:The Sword of the Lictor is the third volume in Wolfe's remarkable epic, chronicling the odyssey of the wandering pilgrim called Severian, driven by a powerful and unfathomable destiny, as he carries out a dark mission far from his home.The Citadel of the Autarch brings The Book of the New Sun to its harrowing conclusion, as Severian clashes in a final reckoning with the dread Autarch, fulfilling an ancient prophecy that will forever alter the realm known as Urth."Brilliant . . . terrific . . . a fantasy so epic it beggars the mind. An extraordinary work of art!"-Philadelphia Inquirer"The Book of the New Sun establishes [Wolfe's] preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping."--The New York Times Book Review</p>


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<p class="description">On Blue's Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story continues in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl. Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by The Washington Post. A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Prix Apollo. On Blue's Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe.It is the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells us his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves.But Horn is the only one who can locate the planet's great leader, Silk—and the only one who can convince Silk to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now-legendary Patera Silk.The story continues with In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl. "On Blue's Waters is a rich enough work to stand on its own merits and is further evidence that Wolfe is the finest living writer in his field."—The Seattle Times"By any standard, Wolfe's beautifully composed, meditative, thrilling, and tricky-beyond-belief 'science fantasy' is a work of the highest art."—The Washington Post Book World"Sentence by sentence, Mr. Wolfe writes as well as anyone in science fiction today."—The New York Times"If all you care about in speculative fiction is delightfully inventive ideas, then Gene Wolfe should be one of your favorite writers. If all you care about is deft, witty, dead-on writing, then you must already be reading Wolfe."—Orson Scott Card"Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today . . . There is nobody who can even approach Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning."—Michael Swanwick</p>


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<p>In the second volume in a trilogy that began with On Blue's Waters, Horn leaves his home on the planet Blue to search for the great hero Patera Silk, but now Horn's own identity has become ambiguous as he begins to recall a number of prior lives and events that seem to have no link to his own. Repri</p>


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<div><p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW:</p>
<p class="description">Gene Wolfe''s "Return to the Whorl" is the third volume, after"On Blue's Waters" and "In Green's Jungles", of his ambitious SF trilogy The Book of the Short Sun . . . It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Horn has traveled from his home on the planet Blue, reached the mysterious planet Green, and visited the great starship, the Whorl and even, somehow, the distant planet Urth. But 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. Perhaps Horn and Silk are now one being. *Return to the Whorl* brings Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, to a strange and seductive climax.</p></div>


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<p>In times long past the gods still walked the Earth, and nowhere more so than amid the glory that was ancient Greece. It is 479 B.C. Latro, a mercenary soldier from the north, has suffered a head wound that has robbed him of his companions, of his past and above all of his ability to remember from day to day. His is a constant struggle to exist in an eternal present, aided only by a written record he attempts to keep, and must re-read every morning. But in compensation he can see and talk with the gods and their companions, can penetrate at will the veil of the supernatural. Here, then, are the gods and goddesses, the ghosts, demons and werewolves who inhabit the land and affect the lives of others, all unseen. Except by Latro. And therein lies both triumph and danger.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Wolfe's forgetful protagonist Latro continues the odyssey through classical Greece begun in Soldier of the Mist . Serving in King Xerxes's army during the Persian attempt to conquer Greece, in the fifth century B.C., Latro received an injury that makes him forget each day's events. In compensation, he records his experiences on a scroll, the ostensible text of this book. Now a Greek slave in the service of the shipmaster Hypereides, he travels from Sestos, after its fall, to Thrace, where he fights alongside Amazons, and onto the cities of Thought (Athens) and Rope (Sparta). Accompanied by the child Io, who calls herself his slave, and by a fellow captive soldier, Latro seeks to regain his friends, his memory and his freedom. One effect of his curse, or illness, is that he can see and speak with gods, mythical creatures and the dead. The shifting perspective provided by Latro's need to relearn his life and his world every day, with incidents and people portrayed in varying terms each time he writes about them, makes for a many-layered and complex narrative. It is virtually mandatory to read the first volume, although a synopsis here might have precluded the necessity. This is a rich book and a rewarding one for the persevering reader. <br>Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Simultaneously cursed with the inability to remember his past and blessed with the ability to speak with gods, a soldier formerly in service to the Great King of Parsa (Persia) seeks answers to his many questions amid the fractured, war-torn landscape of the ancient world. Latro's second-hand view of reality lends a dreamlike quality to a story that mirrors the struggle of human consciousness to explain events beyond its comprehension. In this sequel to Soldier of the Mist, Wolfe achieves a rare blend of history and myth, forming a single shimmering vision of a world unmarked by modern preconceptions. Highly recommended.<br>Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p></div>


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<div><p>Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story's hold on readers is powerful indeed. The two previous novels, combined in <em>Latro in the Mist</em> (<em>Soldier of the Mist</em> and <em>Soldier of Arete</em>) are generally considered classics of contemporary fantasy. Latro now finds himself in Egypt, a land of singing girls, of spiteful and conniving deities. Without his memory, he is unsure of everything, except for his desire to be free of the curse that causes him to forget.</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Latro, the amnesiac visionary hero of <em>Soldier of the Mist</em> and <em>Soldier of Arete</em>, reaches the Egypt known to Herodotus in Wolfe's splendid historical fantasy. Wounded in battle, Latro has only one day's worth of memory and must write down his experiences so he will know who he is every morning. In compensation, he's able to see gods and supernatural beings and does not distinguish them from the mortals around him. Gaps in the record and Wolfe's Haggardesque device of the manuscript found in a jar make Latro the most postmodern of unreliable narrators, aware that he's writing a text, uncertain of its meaning and unable to keep its entirety in his head. For all Wolfe assures us that ancient Egypt is not mysterious, Latro's journey makes up a leisurely, dreamlike, haunted house of a novel, which brilliantly immerses the reader in the belief systems of the time, drifting in and out of the everyday and spirit worlds until the two become indistinguishable. <em>(Oct.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From Booklist</h3><p>The third novel about Spartan soldier Latro, cursed to forget each day's events, which necessitates faithful diary keeping (hence, the form the Latro novels assume), takes him to Egypt. Wolfe again makes his uneducated protagonist credibly eloquent about what happens and whom he encounters, which is particularly important here because Egypt is the classical world's California, where anything can happen and usually does. The long wait for the latest Latro has been well rewarded. <em>Roland Green</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p></div>


text:
A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Abel and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero. Inside, however, Abel remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, wizards, and dragons. His adventure will conclude in the second volume of The Wizard Knight, The Wizard.With this new series, Wolfe not only surpasses all the most popular genre writers of the last three decades, he takes on the legends of the past century, in a work that will be favorably compared with the best of J. R. R. Tolkien, E. R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, and T. H. White. This is a book---and a series---for the ages, from perhaps the greatest living writer in (or outside) the fantasy genre.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. The teenage boy who wandered into another set of realities in Wolfe's <em>The Knight</em> has attained his ambition of knighthood. Now, as Sir Able of the High Heart, he returns in this sequel riding a steed that's not a horse, wielding his magic sword and bound by oath not to use his new otherworldly powers. Such a summary is like saying a spoonful of tap water constitutes the whole of all oceans. Wolfe's words wash over the reader with transparent grace and charming playfulness as he spins his profoundly imaginative, metaphysically complex, yet ever-entertaining tale with astonishing naturalness. In trademark Wolfian fashion, the memory-altered protagonist acts as narrator, telling the truth whenever possible and to the full extent of his own understanding. This second volume satisfactorily supplies many answers to the riddles and allusions of its tantalizing predecessor, but posits new mysteries as well. The novel stands alone and might even be best if read before <em>The Knight</em>, but will surely drive readers to the first as well. The conclusion hints at possible further adventures. Outstanding fantasy these days is often convincingly and compellingly anti-Tolkien, but Wolfe proves one can tell an epic, myth-based story of honor, loyalty, courage and faith relevant to our own dark times. This is fantasy at its best: revelatory and inspirational. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From Booklist</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> The second volume of the Wizard Knight concludes the story begun in <em>The Knight </em>[BKL D 15 03] by first bringing Sir Able back after 20 years in limbo, with his maturity and prowess increased. He is promptly dragged into a welter of murderous intrigues when somebody murders the king of the giants. The scramble to find the culprits and the intrigues involved in the succession eventuate in a complex, even convoluted tale, with so many characters and subplots that a proper summary would far exceed the limits of a <em>Booklist</em> review. Eventually, Sir Able slays dragons, preserves his honor, allows other knights to preserve theirs, rescues the virtuous and sets down the vicious while trying to tell the one from the other, and ends up being restored to his true love in a world strongly redolent of that of the Arthurian legends. But there is hardly a piece of northern European heroic literature from which Wolfe doesn't borrow with his usual scholarly flare and in his exquisitely turned prose (in Wolfe's hands, even dialect works). Arising from the same sources as <em>Lord of the Rings,</em> the Wizard Knight is one of the few fantasies that can justly be compared with it. <em>Roland Green</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


text:
<p>This third volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including Carol Emshwiller, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Paul Park, RJ Parker, Robert Reed, Rachel Swirsky, Peter Watts, Gene Wolfe, and many others. Selecting the best fiction from Asimov's, F&amp;SF, Strange Horizons, Subterranean, Tor.com, and other top venues, The Year's Best Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.</p>


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