Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe
September 15th 2007 05:39
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I was recently browsing through the sci-fi and fantasy section of Borders bookshop and stumbled across a beautifully designed copy of Gene Wolfe's Latro in the Mist. Gene Wolfe's unique contribution to sci-fi literature is to give the genre a highbrow, literary makeover. His most famour work is The Book of The New Sun, of which I remember reading the first page and giving up reading the rest. I don't like scifi that much but am a sucker for fantasy and this one was had an ancient history setting, so I couldn't resist buying it.
Latro in the Mist is a collection of two novels Soldier of the Mist and Solder of Arete. (Curse my luck, I have found that there is a third novel in the series, Soldier in Sidon, recently published, only after considerably investing in this costly omnibus collection). I haven't read the second novel yet, so I will review only the first novel.
Latro is the name of a Roman mercenary who has fought on the Persian side in the Greco-Persian Wars. The Greeks has just succeeded turning the Persians back. Latro is wounded in the war and is left with a debilitated memory. In short, he forgets everything while he sleeps. To remedy that, he has begun keeping a diary wherein he records his daily experiences. Though wounded, Latro acquired a unique ability, that of seeing and talking to Gods.
One god he meets tells him that he has been cursed by the Great Mother and the resolution to his problem can only achieved by her. So the wounded mercenary begins a convoluted journey through a landscape ravaged by war and confused by victory and the withdrawal of the Great Army of Xerxes, gathering a motley group of characters including Pindarus the poet, Io his slave girl and others along the way.
The prose, I admit, is picturesque, though in many places, it is hard to argue how Latro could have recorded all he does . Normally, I wouldn't have pressed on this point so much but the novel itself draws attention to the fact so many times that one can't avoid it. The narration is a bit oblique but not too much to snap your patience. I am not an expert in the area but would a narrator in 5th century BC resort to such a sophisticated and oblique way of telling his story? The writers of the period were pretty straightforward and I dodn't know they dabbled with hard-boiled realism or stream-of-consciousness narrative gymnastics. Remember, Latro is on the move and he is not such a literary heavyweight either. Again, I would give this a pass but Wolfe puts in additional props such as the preface where a modern day collector has apparently found the scroll which Latro has left behind. Such anamolies are annoying in so condescending an author.
The blurb on the book is positively rapturous about the originality of the work. For me, it read like a combination of Memento and The Sixth Sense, although presented in an exotic and beautiful context. The book was written in 1986 so I can't say Wolfe copied these movies. If anything, it goes to show that the premises that genre fiction operates on are out there and commonly shared. They are moulded to different purposes by different people. If Wolfe has originated these concepts, I am impressed.
Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe, an omnibus collection of Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete
I was recently browsing through the sci-fi and fantasy section of Borders bookshop and stumbled across a beautifully designed copy of Gene Wolfe's Latro in the Mist. Gene Wolfe's unique contribution to sci-fi literature is to give the genre a highbrow, literary makeover. His most famour work is The Book of The New Sun, of which I remember reading the first page and giving up reading the rest. I don't like scifi that much but am a sucker for fantasy and this one was had an ancient history setting, so I couldn't resist buying it.
Latro in the Mist is a collection of two novels Soldier of the Mist and Solder of Arete. (Curse my luck, I have found that there is a third novel in the series, Soldier in Sidon, recently published, only after considerably investing in this costly omnibus collection). I haven't read the second novel yet, so I will review only the first novel.
Latro is the name of a Roman mercenary who has fought on the Persian side in the Greco-Persian Wars. The Greeks has just succeeded turning the Persians back. Latro is wounded in the war and is left with a debilitated memory. In short, he forgets everything while he sleeps. To remedy that, he has begun keeping a diary wherein he records his daily experiences. Though wounded, Latro acquired a unique ability, that of seeing and talking to Gods.
One god he meets tells him that he has been cursed by the Great Mother and the resolution to his problem can only achieved by her. So the wounded mercenary begins a convoluted journey through a landscape ravaged by war and confused by victory and the withdrawal of the Great Army of Xerxes, gathering a motley group of characters including Pindarus the poet, Io his slave girl and others along the way.
The prose, I admit, is picturesque, though in many places, it is hard to argue how Latro could have recorded all he does . Normally, I wouldn't have pressed on this point so much but the novel itself draws attention to the fact so many times that one can't avoid it. The narration is a bit oblique but not too much to snap your patience. I am not an expert in the area but would a narrator in 5th century BC resort to such a sophisticated and oblique way of telling his story? The writers of the period were pretty straightforward and I dodn't know they dabbled with hard-boiled realism or stream-of-consciousness narrative gymnastics. Remember, Latro is on the move and he is not such a literary heavyweight either. Again, I would give this a pass but Wolfe puts in additional props such as the preface where a modern day collector has apparently found the scroll which Latro has left behind. Such anamolies are annoying in so condescending an author.
The blurb on the book is positively rapturous about the originality of the work. For me, it read like a combination of Memento and The Sixth Sense, although presented in an exotic and beautiful context. The book was written in 1986 so I can't say Wolfe copied these movies. If anything, it goes to show that the premises that genre fiction operates on are out there and commonly shared. They are moulded to different purposes by different people. If Wolfe has originated these concepts, I am impressed.
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