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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780312872915
ISBN number: 0312872917
Label: Orb Books
Manufacturer: Orb Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 544
Printing Date: April 01, 2000
Publishing house: Orb Books
Sale Popularity Level: 260990
Studio: Orb Books
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Product Description:
Litany of the Long Sun contains the full texts of Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun, that together make up the very first half of The Book of the Long Sun. This great work is set on a huge generation starship in the same future as the classic Book of the New Sun (also available in two volumes from Orb).
Amazon.com Review:
Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun tetralogy ranks as one of the greatest literary achievements of 20th-century science fiction. Litany of the Long Sun, comprising the very first two books in the series, is suffused with looming transcendence and theophany. Wolfe takes familiar speculative fiction tropes and embeds them in a tale so complex and wonderful that readers may find themselves wondering whether what they're reading is science fiction, fantasy, or something different altogether. Or whether it matters.
The story of Patera Silk, a devout priest whose destiny is wrapped up with the gods he serves, takes place within the Whorl, a vast, cylindrical starship that has traveled for generations and is crumbling into disrepair. Through a strange and amazing series of events, Silk finds himself descending to base thievery, running afoul of a notorious crime lord, befriending a cyborg soldier, and encountering at least one of the gods of Mainframe.
She shook her head almost imperceptibly. 'All that abstinence! And now you've seen a goddess. Me. Was it worth it?'
'Yes, Loving Kypris.'
She laughed again, delighted. 'Why?'
The question hung in the silence of the baking sellaria while Silk tried to kick his intellect awake. At last he said haltingly, 'We are so much like beasts, Kypris. We eat and we breed; then we spawn and die. The most humble share in a higher existence is worth any sacrifice.'
But when Silk encounters the Outsider, who may be a God of a very different sort, all his beliefs are shaken to the core, and his life swiftly takes a messianic turn. In a rousing climax, Silk becomes the reluctant leader of a political rebellion against the corrupt Ayuntamiento, who rule the city-state of Viron.
It is not necessary to have read Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, which takes place many centuries earlier, to enjoy the Long Sun novels, but keen-eyed readers will find many clues as to the origin of the Whorl and its gods in those stories. Further, although Wolfe's reputation for literary precision and trickery is well deserved, the Long Sun series (which continues in Epiphany of the Long Sun) is one of the more accessible places to start appreciating the author's treasures. --Therese Littleton
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Rated by buyers 
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It's a slow and simple start; the action of this book takes place over only two days. However, if you've read any of the Short Sun books, or better yet all of them, you owe it to yourself to read these. You may not recognize the tone as Wolfe seems to have attempted conciliation with us mere mortals who try to comprehend his works. It is closer in style to the Knight and the Wizard books but good readers will realize that simpler style does not mean a culling of his message. Readers looking for a ripping good yarn full of action and excitement will be fully disappointed by this very first book of four. Wolfe apostles will see this for what it is...just the beginning.
Rated by buyers -
Gene Wolfe may be the smartest writer that SF currently has (or maybe ever, though I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the genre), possessing prose that is of definite literary quality and able to convey subjects in a multi-layered style that forces you to do a little bit of work on your own to put it all together. He acts with the trappings of SF but presents it in such a clear-headed fashion that you could see it being genre literature in a world where the events described in his novels are quite normal. Most of the time when I read a Wolfe novel I get the impression that I'm missing stuff, not because he's a terrible write but because there are levels of allegory going on that I'm just not intelligent enough to figure out without having reference books near me to get all the hidden meanings. You don't really need to have a library near you to enjoy his books but the fact that could help deepen the experience amuses me greatly. Which is interesting because back in high school if a teacher had trumpeted that aspect of a novel to me, I would have that "That's one more question I'm going to get wrong on the test." It's a funny world sometimes. In this omnibus collecting the very first half of Wolfe's "Long Sun" series, we're introduced to the Whorl and augur Patera Silk. He and his fellow pateras and mayteras both worship the gods of the Whorl and profess their teachings to the neighborhood. When it turns out that the place where they live has been sold, Silk decides to do what he can to make sure everyone can stay put. What Wolfe excels at is stringing tiny details along without explaining everything up front, so that the ins and outs of this society are revealed fully at just the right time, although astute readers could be rewarded by reading between the lines and figuring out early. The plot seems to simply meander along from moment to moment and it's not until you're decently far into it that you realize how much it's been expanding slowly and what started out simply is far vaster than it might seem at very first glance. Patera Silk initially doesn't impress, he's a young man and a modest one and very religious, but he starts revealing more layers as he goes along. More capable than he lets on, he's far sharper than any of the characters realize, often keeping revelations to himself and putting pieces together faster than you'd think. It forces both us and the other characters to constantly underestimate him and yet it never feels like the author playing games with us. On his own he's fascinating and well worth spending the entire series with. Wolfe's Whorl is richly detailed, capturing the feeling of constricted societies and teeming life off the edges of the pages we can't see. His prose can take some getting used to, because it is rather lush, and things certainly don't move quickly, although there are action packed moments and tense scenes. Instead the books work as tiny explosions gradually leading to threads coming together in ways you didn't expect. All the digressions and asides eventually become relevant, not always obviously and not always immediately but it is one of those series you have to stick with before it really sinks in. Hopefully the second half won't disappoint but we'll find out when we get there.
Rated by buyers -
What a great couple of books! As in the "New Sun" series written earlier, the story is told by an unreliable narrator- albeit one that is very, very different (at least on the surface) from Severian; but he shares several characteristics with other Wolfe narrators: he's forgetful; sometimes a poor observer, he seems to lie (primarily to himself), and he assumes you understand the context of what he says. The settings are amazingly drawn through the off-hand descriptions of things Patera Silk thinks of as ordinary, mundane, and generally known. Like much of Mr. Wolfe's work, this is not for the casual reader, or one who is looking for something that's easily digestible - this is a full seven course meal, with ambiance that varies from heaven to hell. Something to savor over the course of several readings.
Rated by buyers 
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This book failed the one hundred pages test. Meaning if after the very first hundred pages, I can write the entire plot in one small paragraph, the novel fails (to hold my interest).
So basically the book is about Father Silk who receives a vision (or imagines he does) from a God known as [the] Outsider. He interprets the vision to mean he must take personal responsibility to save his parish from being sold off from back taxes. To help his interpretation, he spends a good 30 pages buying a bird and sacrificing it. Then he decides to break into the house of the parish buyer for an ambiguous reason, but retains conviction that by doing so he will discharge his god-given task.
The above is the plot of the very first hundred pages. The prose is lush and somewhat dense, approaching the level of Charles Dickens and Tolstoy. However, for a science fiction novel, I didn't notice much in the way the typical science fiction technology or settings. One of the nuns has a cyborg body and her actuators get a mention, oh and float cars.
I don't mind lush prose, evocative detail, or morality preaching. They need action, plot, and good characterization to go with them though. I didn't like this novel because the story took too long to develop, and for all it claims to be science fiction, it could as easily have been set in Victorian England if a few setting details were slightly modified.
Felt too much like historical fiction and not science fiction for my tastes. In short, this novel went extremely slow and I lost interest.
Rated by buyers -
It took me two tries, separated by a few years, to get going on this. The very first time I tried to get into the book I just didn't click with the rhythm of Gene Wolfe's writing, but the second time I did, and then I couldn't put the book down - zipping through both Litany of the Long Sun (books 1 and 2) and Epiphany of the Long Sun (books 3 and 4). Yes, I actually said zipping. Reading some of the other reviews, including some of those giving this 4 or 5 stars, you might think that this book is going to be a long slog through difficult prose. Once I figured out Mr. Wolfe's style, I had had quite the opposite experience. There's nothing shattering or terribly deep about the philosophies presented in the Long Sun, but the writing is beautiful, and the plot and the character-mix are complex and entertaining. Oreb has become one of my all-time favorite literary characters; we all need a bird like him. The last image presented of him at the end of book 4 of this tetralogy, 'Exodus from the Long Sun,' (calling 'Silk? Silk? Silk?') was haunting and a little heart-breaking. Definitely worth the effort.
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