{"id":941,"date":"2010-03-08T21:33:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T03:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=941"},"modified":"2013-03-16T00:17:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T05:17:59","slug":"in-which-i-fail-to-review-gene-wolfe%e2%80%99s-the-sorcerer%e2%80%99s-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=941","title":{"rendered":"In Which I Fail to Review Gene Wolfe\u2019s The Sorcerer\u2019s House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gene Wolfe<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/076532458X?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=lawpershompag-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=076532458X\"><b>The Sorcerer&#8217;s House<\/b><\/a><br \/>\nTor, 2010. $24.99<\/p>\n<p>So, once again I\u2019m faced with the problem of how to review a Gene Wolfe book. This is much akin to explaining to radio listeners what a great dancer Fred Astaire is: For those who have seen him, such an explanation is unnecessary; for those who haven\u2019t, such an explanation is impossible. (\u201cAw man, you should have seen that move! It was totally graceful! Trust me\u2026\u201d) I\u2019ve managed (somewhat) the feat before, having reviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0765347016?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=lawpershompag-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=0765347016\"><b>The Knight<\/b><\/a> in <i>The New York Review of Science Fiction<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Such it is with <b>The Sorcerer\u2019s House<\/b>. I started a standard review, with a standard plot description (educated man just out of prison mysteriously given deed to house he was squatting in), discussed Wolfe\u2019s literary experimentation (the book is told in epistolary format), and generally tried to jump through the usual hoops of a book review. Then after about three paragraphs, I read what I had written, and went \u201cDamn, this is awful! If I had never heard of Gene Wolfe, this review certainly wouldn\u2019t inspire me to pick it up!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So: You should read <b>The Sorcerer\u2019s House<\/b>, because it\u2019s very good, it\u2019s tricky, and it\u2019s better than <b>An Evil Guest<\/b>. It&#8217;s got a fox woman, antique dueling pistols, an impossibly old samurai sword, a trapped vampire, werewolves, and a house that just seems to get bigger as it goes along, and, strangely, it all works. <\/p>\n<p>But most of all you should read it because it\u2019s Gene Wolfe.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, it also has a scene where the protagonist tells his newly incarcerated twin brother that he shouldn\u2019t go on about how excellent to food was, since he knows prison food is bad. And then he spends the next page or so describing what he ate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gene Wolfe The Sorcerer&#8217;s House Tor, 2010. $24.99 So, once again I\u2019m faced with the problem of how to review a Gene Wolfe book. This is much akin to explaining to radio listeners what a great dancer Fred Astaire is: For those who have seen him, such an explanation is unnecessary; for those who haven\u2019t, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,137,5],"tags":[288,1973,171,287],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fantasy","category-science-fiction","tag-book-reviews","tag-books","tag-gene-wolfe","tag-the-sorcerers-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10223,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/10223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}