The shadow of the torturer

This book is superb and unique, the first volume in a fantasy saga of deep beauty and horror. It is set on a far future earth, where alien life has blended with native species under an ageing sun which will soon fail and deprive the planet of life-sustaining light. In the southern hemisphere, a "Commonwealth" is ruled by a supreme leader called the Autarch. Punishments under the law include torture and execution, to be carried out with utmost precision by members of the guild of torturers. The protagonist and narrator, Severian, is kicked out of his guild for malpractice, and begins a journey which leads to him becoming the new Autarch.

That summary of the setting and the basic plot doesn't explain the dreamlike mysteries of this future world. Severian is narrating his story after gaining almost supernatural insights into the earth and its history. But the events he recounts begin at a time when he was clueless, living as an apprentice in the cloistered world of the torturers. Strange, inexplicable things happen, and the young Severian seems as bewildered to encounter them as we the readers are. But Severian the narrator knows more. He's always holding out on us as he rations out his story. Later explanations of events produce twice as many mysteries.

Narrator Severian repeatedly interjects in his own tale, with philosophical musings on the nature of the reality he describes. At one stage he compares his storytelling to his work as an executioner, staging the events to satisfy the varying demands of a bloodthirsty crowd, an exacting judicial system, and victims of crime demanding justice. He admits that there is a bit of theatre and manipulation in the processes of both execution and storytelling, trying to keep everyone happy. Severian is also apologetic at times for presenting a story filled with so many paradoxes and complexities.

The moral dimension of the story is also unsettling. Clearly a system involving brutal torture and public execution is abhorrent. But Severian's loyalty is to the guild, and his greatest shame is betraying his vow to practice its brutal arts to perfection. He never seems to waver in this, even as he feels love and sympathy, outside his profession, for people and even animals he is not required to torment with detachment and exactitude.

I've yet to encounter any analysis of the book which provides an overarching theory to make sense of this saga. On one level, it's not supposed to make sense. If you accept that, then you enter a dimension where the book makes perfect sense, on its own terms.

The tale is loaded with religious references and theological musings, arising, it would seem, from Gene Wolfe's own Catholicism. Severian is imbued with some of the traits of a Christ figure... yet his unflinching role as a torturer belies this description. The book is explicitly written to have a different meaning for every reader. I find it hard to see how a broader Christian morality can be extracted from it. Then again I am a rabid atheist, so it shows how successful Wolfe has been at creating a book which generates a different response in every reader.