This book made my third eye hurt.

My favorite bit (out of oh so many GREAT bits) is the riff on the legend of Theseus, here made into a battle against an ogre disguised as a ship. It has precious little to do with the main storyline (I think) (so far) but it was just so carelessly virtuoso, especially how it worked in the very Jorge Luis Borges trope of one man creating another by dreaming him bit by bit, night by night, until his creation is perfect. I had already decided that if Borges had ever gotten around to writing novels, Gene Wolfe’s novels would be them, and then I hit this.

Already reading the second 2-1, Sword & Citadel and stunned and amazed yet again. I suspect I will read nothing but Wolfe until I’ve downed the whole danged Solar Cycle.

I’ll try to write more coherent praise later. I’m under the influence of sleep deprivation and Urth. And philology. Oh, the philology!

Rereading a classic work of dark fantasy.