book 5 of The Book of the New Sun

by Gene Wolfe

isbn: 0312863942
subject: SF, Fiction and Literature
finished: 11/17/2001

The Urth of the New Sun, the final installment of The Book of the New Sun, was written sometime after the previous four books; some people don't like it on the grounds that everything important in it was implied by its predecessors. I would say that since an awful lot was implied by The Book, there are still plenty of reasons to read this one.

Urth has two parts: in the first Severian travels to another universe, Yesod, to be tested to determine if he -- and by extension, humanity -- deserves a new sun, a second chance at life. In the second part, a transformed Severian travels widely in space and time before landing in Ushas: the transformed Urth. This is some of Wolfe's best work, and that's saying a lot.