The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, #1)

One of the things that I absolutely adore about "The Shadow of the Torturer" is definitely the setting. The story takes place in the far future, after humans built enormous cities, walls, citadels and most importantly spaceships that could reach other stars. It's mostly a mystery of what happened since then, but during the timeline of the book we're left with a planet that's full of marvelous technologies, bordering on magic and a class of nobility that can still somehow utilize it. Yet, the vast majority of the population are simple folk, cast back to an equivalent of the middle ages, who don't understand the world around them at all and to them, technology is more akin to myth and legend.

The story itself follows Severian - an apprentice in the guild of torturers, who due to some certain events leaves his home to perform his work somewhere else (I'm trying to spoil too much alright?). He sees many wonders along his path of life and he's trying to understand the world around him, but in the end he experiences first hand how cruel life can be.

Now, I think the prologue itself is quite amazing, but after that the book lost a lot of its charm in my eyes. The characters Severian meets since then are rather flat and just leave (or die) after fulfilling their purpose. Somehow Severian ends up with multiple lovers and he's a guy who just can't look at a woman and not desire them, which I guess can be natural, but I can't help but cringe on such descriptions in most books. It made my remember why I disliked the Witcher. Another issue is that the language in the book is stylized as ancient. It means there are a ton of Latin and archaic words, plus a lot more made-up ones. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, it enhances the atmosphere, but it did make the book hard to follow.

Overall I quite liked "The Shadow of the Torturer", all things considered, but I'm still not sure if I'm going to come back to the series.

I liked this book less and less as I got through it, then I went and read some 5-star reviews for it, and they loved the things I did not. So you may wish to invert my reasoning!

I got tired of the archaic language - descriptions written solely in words I don't know don't intrigue me, they just annoy now (Charles Stross invokes this for me as well). It doesn't make me imagine the otherness, the Dying World vibes, it just means I don't know what's going on.

The second two thirds of the book feels like a fever dream, and I just hated it. The protagonist wanders from place to place and seems to accept literally anything he's told by anyone. Just not my cup of tea.

Weirdly there's both less torture in this than a Joe Abercrombie book, and also in some ways it's worse. The clue is in the title, though.