The Shadow of the Torturer

Yet another novel that was on my reading list and whose source of recommendation I had no recollection any longer: The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe. The back cover (the little I peeked at it) claimed it to be a science fiction classic (published in 1980) and apparently Neil Gaiman at some point rated it above Neuromancer and The Left Hand of Darkness on his list of the three greatest scifi novels. I wouldn't myself think of it that highly and I'm not so sure about the science fiction either.

From the books I've read previously, I would compare The Shadow of the Torturer to Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. It's similarly a coming-of-age story where the protagonist is in a profession (or at least being trained to) related to dealing death. He's likewise telling the story from a first person perspective from the future (and claims to have an eidetic memory).

Fortunately, unlike Hobb's Fitz, Severian is not dumb and fail at everything he attempts. Admittedly he doesn't strictly behave as he's supposed to either and gets into trouble in the guild of torturers -- or the "Seekers of Truth and Penitence". But it's not a complete disaster. The guild masters partially caused it too, which is why Severian got off so lightly.

After the incident, the novel gets kind of an odd atmosphere. Severian travels across the city of Nessus, getting into all kinds of encounters with all sorts of people. In the end things turned to be not as weird as they appeared along the way but I still found the storytelling a bit unusual.

In the book's world, the planet's moon has been terraformed and people have even traveled to the stars. You'd think an advanced civilization like that lived in a very high-tech environment. Instead, the everyday life is practically medieval. It's like the people had regressed or were left behind. There are some devices around like light bulbs that burn year after year. I got the impression that no one knows how exactly they work or how to make them anymore, even if people still know the purpose of the devices and how to use them.

One little detail that made me think was a certain prisoner told Severian that she'd like to found a cult once she gets out. Severian asked what the cult would be based on and found the answer contradictory. The prisoner told him that kind of bases are the most durable. I started to wonder if it was an actual observation on religions and if there was truth to it.

I read The Shadow of the Torturer as a Finnish translation (by Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo). There were a few words that perplexed me. For instance, 'cuirass' apparently has a direct translation as kyrassi -- which is a terrible word, if you ask me, because it doesn't respect the Finnish vowel harmony. I would've gone simply with rintapanssari ("breastplate") myself.

I may check out the novel's two sequels eventually -- Wolfe apparently wrote the whole trilogy before its first volume was published.

Edited 2024-04-11: Corrected few typos.