Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist.

The Short of It

Plot: Latro forgets everything: he must keep a close record on a scroll. Even his meetings with gods. 

Page Count: 335

Award: 1987 Locus Fantasy

Worth a read: No
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail
Technobabble: Nah.
Review: A lot of fun elements that do not quite gel. All of the basic elements of story are good: interesting cast of characters, particularly the cameos from different gods; cool settings as we wander through ancient Greece; generally good pacing. It is the central conceit of this book that makes it hard to read: it feels like 20% of the text is Latro either being informed or informing others that his memory does not work. It gets exhausting - and while the rest of this is better than competent, it's not enjoyable. Also, Wolfe's terrible at ending books.

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free

Gene Wolfe is an excellent writer in the purest sense of the word. Word choice, cadence, style, and so on, are all top notch. He is, nonetheless, an extremely frustrating author to read.

As noted above, there is nothing really wrong with this book, which makes it hard to critique. There are plenty of fun moments, often built around brilliant side characters. Dialogue and interactions are sharp. If Wolfe had opted for a simple Ancient Greece adventure story, while less noteworthy, this would be a better book.

Instead, short term memory loss. Imagine if Memento was dramatically longer, and every scene began with Leonard explicitly saying that he forgets things - that's how this book feels. Some quick word counts, from searching the eBook:

• Recall: 32x
• Remember: 140x
• Forget: 66x
• Forgotten: 46x
• Memory: 19x

And a few more, because he writes everything in a scroll:

• Write: 99x
• Writing: 32x
• Wrote: 30x
• Stylus: 13x
• Scroll: 58x

It's constant and it's irritating. A remarkable amount of page space is devoted to Latro's memory issues: sometimes him explaining it to new people, sometimes him noting it to his future self in the scroll, sometimes others telling him about it. And then here we are, the reader, knowing it the whole time. The device chosen to make this more than just sword and sorcery ends up overwhelming the story itself. And there's nothing wrong with sword and sorcery, sometimes, son! 

This whole story is contained within a framing mechanism: a historian has found the scroll, and this is the tidied-up translation of it. Does this make it more interesting? No. Does this cause more issues? Yes. It's a baffling and poorly considered choice. Usually it's easy to forget, until one reads a sentence like this:

Do you know, I think half of 'em would swallow the whole rigmarole as solid fact.

Really? That's the translation? Latro was writing in the vernacular and including "rigmarole" in his notes-to-self?

It does help Wolfe with his favorite activity: ending books abruptly. You guys ready to have the last sentence of this party spoiled?

(These are the last words of the first scroll.)

That's not how you end a book! Goddamn! 

If this is the moment you wish to relive, consider using the link below! I'll get a few cents at no extra cost to you.

Link of the Mist

The Long of It
Spoiler Free

I do not have much to add with spoilers, because the story itself is not that prominent, and avoids easy spoil-ability. There are a few really great scenes here, scenes which are underserved by the rest of the text. Pretty much any meeting with a god is fantastic. 

Then the old man began to flute.

And I to sing. I cannot write the words here, because they were in no tongue I know. Yet I understood as I sang them, and they told of the morning of the world, when the slaves of the Rope Makers had been free men serving their own king and the Earth Mother.

They told too of the King from Nysa and his majesty, and how he had given the King of Nysa to the Earth Mother to be her foster son, and to the Boundary Stone.

The slaves of the Rope Makers danced as I sang, waving their weapons and skipping and hopping like lambs in the field, and the black man and Pindaros, and the woman and the child danced with them, because the knots that had bound them had been only such as little children tie, knots that loosen at a shaking.

At last the song died at my lips. There was no more music.

Wolfe is capable of evocative and touching writing; there are moments here, particularly when Latro struggles to recall his family, that convey a depth of emotion.

This is, unfortunately, lost beneath wave after wave of repetition, constant reminders of the central conceit of the story. It is a book both distinguished by and undermined by the author's attempts to make it remarkable.

It is a frustrating read.

Also, this is neither here nor there, but the cover design is lame.

Maybe in some cases it's okay to judge books by their covers, Stranger.

And don't forget to read a book!