Epiphany of the Long Sun: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun (Book of the Long Sun, Books 3 and 4)

The prequel to PowerHouse, this is a fascinating, character-driven story from the perspective of Paul, a brilliant, OCD 13-year-old with the misfortune to be born into the Stockton family. Great writing, dark humor, and chilly psychological suspense make this book impossible to put down.

Gene Wolfe is my favorite author so any review I give is glowing. But, he's my favorite author for a very good reason. Too deep, too complex and too moving on so many levels to give a detailed description here. But I think The Long Sun series is wonderful.

This is Gene Wolfe at his best. There are more layers here than the normal human brain can fully comprehend. It is excellent on any of those levels.

Enjoyed the story and the whole saga! Compelling and fun to follow. I would certainly recommend it to any reader.

Reading makes your smarter. My interpretation of the content is arbitrary and irrelevant. 5 stars because it is indeed a book with words.

very good

A couple decades ago, I remember tuning into a panel discussion show on TV because it featured Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison, two authors who I really enjoyed reading. There was also a third author on this program, who for many years, I essentially thought of as "the other guy." It would take till just a couple years ago for me to figure out that this other guy, namely Gene Wolfe, was also worth reading, in ways completely different than either Asimov or Ellison. Epiphany of the Long Sun is the concluding half of Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. Like the previous volume, Litany of the Long Sun, Epiphany is actually an omnibus of two books in the Long Sun tetralogy: Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus of the Long Sun. Altogether, the four books are over 1200 pages of complex plotting. (The Long Sun books themselves fit into the middle of a larger sequence including the Book of the New Sun and the Book of the Short Sun.) As Litany had concluded, the protagonist Silk had been elevated, almost against his will, into the position of Calde, a high-ranking position that is half administration, half monarchy. In Calde of the Long Sun, civil war erupts in the city-state of Viron, as not all people are happy with Silk's promotion. By Exodus, things stabilize a bit (although not all is settled) and the focus is more on the nature and destiny of the Whorl itself. The Whorl is the space colony/generation ship that Silk's people have inhabited for centuries. The societies that exist within this Whorl are both advanced and rather medieval, with both high-end technology alongside more primitive devices. Silk, who also acts as a kind of priest known as a patera and as an augur who sees the future in animal entrails, has become something of a prophet as well. In the Whorl, gods are worshipped and occasionally even seen, but Silk is driven primarily by an outsider god known, quite naturally, as the Outsider. I can only scratch the surface of this densely plotted story, and there's too much to really summarize well. Wolfe is a good writer, but this is not always an easy read. The Book of the Long Sun is ambitious and has a certain artistic merit to it, but for all its admirable qualities, I personally find it to not be great but merely very good, worthy of a high four stars. There isn't really anything wrong with it, but it never completely won me over either (I guess it's a chemistry thing). Do not start this book without having read Litany of the Long Sun. The two volumes are really one long story and the breaks between volumes (and the books within) are more arbitrary than conclusive. With that caveat, if you are a fan of science fiction, this is a worthwhile read.

New characters and threats are revealed. Patera Silk continues to grow in unexpected ways. Mysteries are solved only to open up new complexities. If you have already enjoyed other works by Gene Wolfe, you will be right at home here. Pay close attention, read huge chunks at a time, and just enjoy both the story and the language. I will add these volumes to my "read again" list.

5 Stars for Gene Wolfe. 1 Star for Amazon's packing abilities. Miraculously the books arrived without serious damage.

I have read a LOT of sci-fi and IMO Gene Wolfe's Short and Long sun series are as good as it gets, certainly good as any sci-fi book I have ever read, I enjoyed them more than any other , but thats hard to say possibly as if you are reading a really absorbing, immersively written book then that;s the one you rmemeber best, still, its a long time since I fell into another world so convincingly. yes some of them require a bit of work or patience on the part of the reader, perhaps this one more than the others but that's a game you realise you have entered into with the writer, he is watching you as you read, or his spirit feels like it might be, it's a little challenge he might have set us, but I love that - sink into it, go along with it, you will be rewarded by being transported to an environment you never want to leave, because as an observer, you are safe. absolutely loved this (and the rest) and was sad when I had finished them. I went on to read everything I could find by him after but these are his best

Perfect, THANKS

Typical Gene Wolfe book - very good but you'll have to work at it. The structure of the book does not lend itself to easy reading and is hard going. If you are prepared to put the effort in, you'll find an amazing intelligent novel. Like most of GW's work what the book is about is not obvious and many questions will be left unanswered. The book is not perfect by any means, there are a large number of character and keeping track of them can be hard (the who's who at start of the book is probably there by the publishers request, this does help somewhat); the book does jump ahead at points (you only find this out several pages later); lots of technical stuff is missed out (in reflection a good thing as the book is about people not so much about technology). All in all a work of epic proportions, that does not take the easy way out. Should this be your first GW book? - maybe not, "The Fifth Head Of Cerberus" might be a better place to start and the books of the New Sun are worth reading before hand to give you some grounding in this universe (but the connection between the stories is so loose that you don't have to read the books of the New Sun to understand these) The story does continue with the books of the Short Sun...

The sequels to book of the new sun get significantly fewer accolades than the first series, but I found these to be a delight. Gene Wolfe at probably his most accessible, still genius. There are some great lines in these books, and some subtle profundities. I enjoyed the first half better though, I think