The Short Sun series is shaping up to be the best thing Wolfe has written since The Book of the New Sun. This second volume continues the narration of the quest to recover Silk.

Lupine surprises and unanswered(?) questions abound, and to discuss the events relayed in this middle volume would be to spoil the joy of discovery for other readers--besides, until the final volume is published and we've reread the whole thing a few times, we probably won't fully know the story. Wolfe's work, like life and unlike so much fiction, grows richer with each return; like old friends, his novels reward attention and familliarity breeds delight rather than contempt (born out of boredom).

The manner in which the story is presented is, as in On Blue's Waters, complex even for Wolfe--multiple time frames and threads of narrative are blended expertly. The way Wolfe works his magic through the guise of a "rambling" and "unskilled" narrator is truly beautiful. One of the best things about this book is its extended use of a device employed with great skill in The Citadel of the Autarch: Wolfe transforms what might be an artifical narrative technique into a moving commmentary on that most fundamental of human activities, the telling of a story.

For, in the end, it isn't the brilliant prose or the narrative genius that makes this a great work. Rather, it is the moving, wise, and loving exploration of what it means to live and love, to feel the immense pain of consciousness and to do good and evil that justifies the elaborate machinery--to tell a lie beautifully is unfortunate, but to tell the truth with skill and beauty is to achieve greatness.

Reviewer: Alex David Groce