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A review by teapup
The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas by Gene Wolfe
3.0
3.5 Stars.
This book, which I believe was Wolfe's first, is a series of three novellas that all take place on the same alien worlds. It's my first experience reading Wolfe, and I had to read the first two novellas twice. Why? Well, on a per-word basis, they're easy enough to understand, and the sentences are easy to get through. But there are oddities: characters who shift identities, language that seems unable to properly convey the world it tries to express, and puzzles hidden in the text. At times, the puzzles seem overly clever - discussions of dream scenes lead to 'correct' explanations that Wolfe hopes you pick up on. But these don't often get in the way of my enjoyment; I think there are well-developed characters and themes that are fleshed out well.
It's also worth mentioning style, because Wolfe is a virtuoso. It's almost difficult to believe that the first and second novella are by the same author. The book also uses quite a few techniques of modernism and postmodernism. The stories seem to explore the deep ambiguity of characters and the ways that identity can change. The planets in the book's world feature aboriginal people whose identities have mixed so thoroughly with human colonists that it's unclear whether the aboriginals were wiped out or not.
Ultimately, this was a dense, thoughtful, and morose book that I mostly enjoyed.
Update: re-read the final story, so now I've read every story twice. Mostly the same impressions as before. Wolfe's 'puzzles' still loom large for me: I wish there weren't so many; I wish understanding the book didn't rely so heavily on picking up on the solutions he wanted you to make. I do like the book slightly less because I didn't understand it all, and I think too much of its complexity detracts from book rather than adds to it. I suppose this is more a case of needing to vent at the parts of the book that I found frustrating than actually strongly disliking it.
This book, which I believe was Wolfe's first, is a series of three novellas that all take place on the same alien worlds. It's my first experience reading Wolfe, and I had to read the first two novellas twice. Why? Well, on a per-word basis, they're easy enough to understand, and the sentences are easy to get through. But there are oddities: characters who shift identities, language that seems unable to properly convey the world it tries to express, and puzzles hidden in the text. At times, the puzzles seem overly clever - discussions of dream scenes lead to 'correct' explanations that Wolfe hopes you pick up on. But these don't often get in the way of my enjoyment; I think there are well-developed characters and themes that are fleshed out well.
It's also worth mentioning style, because Wolfe is a virtuoso. It's almost difficult to believe that the first and second novella are by the same author. The book also uses quite a few techniques of modernism and postmodernism. The stories seem to explore the deep ambiguity of characters and the ways that identity can change. The planets in the book's world feature aboriginal people whose identities have mixed so thoroughly with human colonists that it's unclear whether the aboriginals were wiped out or not.
Ultimately, this was a dense, thoughtful, and morose book that I mostly enjoyed.
Update: re-read the final story, so now I've read every story twice. Mostly the same impressions as before. Wolfe's 'puzzles' still loom large for me: I wish there weren't so many; I wish understanding the book didn't rely so heavily on picking up on the solutions he wanted you to make. I do like the book slightly less because I didn't understand it all, and I think too much of its complexity detracts from book rather than adds to it. I suppose this is more a case of needing to vent at the parts of the book that I found frustrating than actually strongly disliking it.