Kris’ Book Reviews

Dark profession of tortures isn’t to often described in fantasy literature. Wouldn’t it be fun to read how they torture people ? Probably for some psychos Fortunately this book focuses more on other aspects of torturers life.
We are following the life of a young apprentice in the Guild of Torturers which learns his profession.

He is just starting his ways in the Citadel (a large set of buildings that contain many guilds). The Citadel is located in a big city surrounded with a great black wall. During reading the novel we will learn more about this city and the world where it is situated. The story starts like a normal fantasy but as we read more it occurs that there are some advanced technologies in it but people mostly forgot how to use them so it still feels like fantasy. More over the world is like our Earth in few hundreds of thousand years in the future when the Sun will start dying and the world will be a lot colder.

Alright, enough about the plot, time take a look at disadvantages. The writing style of Gene Wolfe is pretty stiff the only thing that pushed me further was curiosity about the world and why it turned away from the technology. The characters act in completely unpredictable way and more importantly they have no depth. Story is also very short I would expect more of it even in so few pages.

I don’t recommend this book. I myself would read the following parts only because I am interested in the world and not in the main character or plot. You should check others comments on amazon page below, I saw that most people liked this book so you might check it out if you want.

Rating 3/10

Read comments (or buy if you like) The Shadow of the Torturer

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Fantasy, Gene Wolfe . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.