There are many things to like about Shadow of Torturer. Sentences that make you want to kiss its feet. Sentences that are both profound and beautiful. Take this beautiful passage alluding to quantum mechanics in a way
Perhaps when night closes our eyes there is less order than we believe. Perhaps, indeed, it is this lack of order we perceive as darkness, a randomization of waves of energy (like sea), the fields of energy (like a farm) that appear to our deluded eyes - set by light in an order of which they themselves are incapable - to be the real world
So in a book that started out with beautiful sentences and thoughts like these. Then, bam! this shows up
If we desire a woman, we soon come to love her for her condescension in submitting to us, and since if we desire her she always submits in imagination at least, some element of love is ever present.
And I wish that was an anamoly. Its equal parts boomer-ish and teenage boy pandering when it comes to women, with more than necessary real estate to Agia's exposed boob (which btw, convenient).
Despite these awkward moments, the world is intriguing and the writing can be real nice, so there's a part of me that wants to read the next one but I dont think i can endure it
Whenever TBotNS is polarizing it’s always regarding Severian’s attitude towards women. All the cringe isn’t Wolfe’s actual views, but it is deliberate here and serves, I think, a thematic purpose. While his resentful, sexualizing attitude toward Agia is probably the most extreme, his *actions* toward others later are arguably worse. There are some plot points in Claw that add some complexity to Severian’s character, but it’s not necessarily for the better. I agree with Mickey that the philosophical musings don’t stop, and they can beautiful even when they are patently wrong. If you’re genuinely on the fence now, I’d suggest at least reading through Claw as it will likely clear up any of the indecision for you one way or the other.
Hey you, I read this book because of your review on Gideon. Hi :) "All the cringe isn’t Wolfe’s actual views, but it is deliberate here and serves, I think, a thematic purpose" I dont know, man. I dont think thats true. Sure, there are some medieval viewpoints that though outdated can be justified for Severian. But the choice to make Agia meet with an accident in such a way that her dress was torn exposing her boob and then reference said boob eight other times throughout the book is a deliberate choice as a writer. And once you notice that, its hard to really trust the author to justify sleaze. And yes, you can argue. Agia was trying to trick Severian and the whole self-sexualizing is actually justifiable to distract Severian. Sure, sure, that's a good enough reason for some 80s B-movie, not for Wolfe who seems competent enough to make her (sexually) distracting without over indulging in adolescent fantasies (which he did too by making Agia go on that wheel barrow race thing. The whole sexualization piece was just unnecessary). This is not coming from some moral or political anger, this is just deep disappointment from a reader who has been let down after that excellent first third of the book.
^sorry it seems like I'm venting at you. But mainly I'm just big sad.
No worries. I'm glad you're giving TBoTNS a try, even if you wind up bouncing off of it! Without getting too spoilery, I think thematically Wolfe was trying to get at how depraved someone could be while still being a christ figure/redeemer of humanity. Of course, does he need to have Severian repeatedly and callously ogle Agia to serve this purpose? Perhaps not. I don't want to go too far defending Wolfe's treatment of women characters, because while I'm quite convinced he's not a misogynist, it is certainly one of his weak points. There's going to be other sexual sins and breaking of taboos later on in the books, some overt and others hinted at, and Agia serves as a bit of a foil for those since Severian's actions towards the others are different in attude and action (still reprehensible, but qualitatively different). I still think you should try and give Claw a read. There's a plot point that's similar to something in Gideon the 9th and it adds some psychological complexity to future Severian while coloring some of his past. (And with that in mind I am interested in whether you think I should give the other 9th novels a shot).
I won’t tell you that the cringe goes away if you keep reading but I will tell you that neither does the beautiful prose and strange possibly anachronistic waxings philosophic. I think that part of the beauty of tBotNS is that Wolfe built out so many narrative layers and possibility for unreliability that even (especially?) his strange sexualizing choices can be explained away as sins of his narrator. Is that overly apologetic to the man? Almost definitely. But I do think there’s something to be said for a narrative and world being full enough that it might be able to wash away some of the fallibility of its author.
"Is that overly apologetic to the man? Almost definitely." I don't think this is overly apologetic. I think this is explicitly what he was trying to do in his depiction of Severian and Severian's worldview. Whether he was successful is up for debate; whether it was the intention is not. And I say that as someone who absolutely does not care for these books (as with Wolfe's beloved Nabokov, the tricksterism and games wear thin with me very quickly).
See my comment above for the rest of your take but this below. "But I do think there’s something to be said for a narrative and world being full enough that it might be able to wash away some of the fallibility of its author." Thats probably the only reason I'm still on fence. Accept the sleaze, accept that the author contains multitudes and just focus on the good parts and hope that it makes up for the worse bits.
I totally agree that the way he describes woman is maybe the worst part of the book, but it's also, if you read the whole thing, probably the most blatant and constant intentional reminder that our narrator is a terrible person, and why he must be for the story's discussion of Catholicism to work. I say "if" you read the whole thing because Shadow really is just part 1 of 4 of a single book, and treating it as a complete story is a mistake if you do want to "focus on the good parts"; if you are totally put off and don't want to, that's more than fair, too. Most of the magic of BotNS comes from how the entire story fits together and how each thread makes you look at the other threads differently. If you just read Shadow (or even just Shadow and Claw) on its own, it's always going to be a fun but sleazy 80s fantasy page turner, without much of what makes people regard it so highly. At the risk of a minor spoiler, you don't even know who the major characters are in the most literal sense yet (or why keeping that a secret is thematically important and not just a cool writing trick).