Product Description

ON BLUE'S WATERS is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. Horn sets sail in a small boat, in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story will continue in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216473 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Story-telling and the art of writing.
Once again Gene Wolfe draws us into another series and another incredible world of his creation, through the uncertain and ultimately "human", voice of "Horn" who feels he can never measure up to our previous hero - Silk.

Horn is the disciple and the unreliable, but compelling narrator and protagonist of what are two separate stories, which are interwoven masterfully by Wolfe, who at the same time "pretends" to the reader that this is all just a stream of consciousness form Horn.

As well as two stories, we also get a continuous commentary on the difficulty of writing and of conveying any meaning in what is at best a subjective art - Horn is never sure who he is writing for or why, but he is compelled to continue and in the same way the reader becomes compelled to follow and whle we always know what the future ulimately holds, we still want to know how Horn gets there, what strange adventures he has on the way and more about the other characters.

Are the "inhuma" really evil, is the siren, human or part of another race, who is the "Mother" - can she really be a god or just an inexplicable relic of another alien species?

And most of all we want to know more about "Green", whose shadow, both literally and metaphorically hangs over the narrative and demands that we read the next in this series : "In Green's Jungles".

I defy anybody who reads this book not to buy the next installment!! I know I won't be able to resist.

Someone hand ambrosia to Gene Wolfe...
... because the day this man stops writing will be a truly sorry day for the world. I found the "Book of the Long Sun" initially a chore and much harder to get into than the "Book of the New Sun", and infinitely slower paced. Regardless I knew good things were to come, and it paid off, "Long Sun" was almost as superb as "New Sun".

There is no problem with pace with "Short Sun", from the moment I started it I was hooked. I won't go into detail because the other reviewers have summed it up splendidly. I just had to add my five stars. Brilliant.