book 4 of The Book of the New Sun

by Gene Wolfe

isbn: 0671496662
subject: SF, Fiction and Literature
finished: 7/27/2001

Although it's as obscure and surreal as the previous three books, The Citadel of the Autarch is much more satisfying because it answers many questions and ties up a lot of loose ends. Was it Chekhov who said that if there's a pistol on the wall in the first act it should be fired by the fourth? Anyway, Wolfe certainly took this advice to heart: in the final few chapters of Citadel dozens of pistols that have been sitting around for hundreds of pages finally go off, leading to some great scenes including my favorite, which ends like this:

The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.