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Return to the Whorl: The Final Volume of 'The Book of the Short Sun' Kindle Edition

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 206 ratings

Gene Wolfe's Return to the Whorl is the third volume, after On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles, of his ambitious SF trilogy The Book of the Short Sun . . . It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Horn has traveled from his home on the planet Blue, reached the mysterious planet Green, and visited the great starship, the Whorl and even, somehow, the distant planet Urth. But Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Perhaps Horn and Silk are now one being. Return to the Whorl brings Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, to a strange and seductive climax.

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Review

"Astonishing literary brilliance." --Interzone

"Sentence by sentence, Wolfe is as fine a writer as science fiction has produced. He demands a lot from his readers. It is worth meeting him more than halfway." --The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by The Washington Post. A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003J5UIGE
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; First edition (1 April 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 600 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 418 pages
  • Customer reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 206 ratings

About the author

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Gene Wolfe
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Gene Wolfe is winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and many other awards. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He lives in Barrington, Illinois.

Photo by Cory Doctorow licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
206 global ratings

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2002
    Can there be any better writer currenly working in this genre? Apparently simple narration which covers the fact that we have an unrerliable narrator who understands as little about what is happening as we do!
    All the clues are there to the real "underlying" true story, but it remains tantalisingly out-of-reach - much like real-life!
    Is this fantasy or science fiction - much like Clarke's view that any technology sufficently advanced could be mistaken for magic - you are never quite sure whether the character's in Wolfe's universe are simply bewildered by what they see and just explaining an ancient forgotten technology as best they can or are truly experiencing inexplicable phenomena?
    The book sometime seem to be more about writing itself and how you tell a story than what is actually occurring - so Horn always makes us aware that we are reading sheets of paper which may run out at any time and that he has written this for his beloved wife - but if she is so much in his feelings why has he left her and been unfaithful numerous times, why does he never return to her?
    Seen as a truly good man and more like a god by most, Horn is presumably only writing this whole account out of guilt for his own shortcomings with regard to his wife and out of a sense of inadequcy in the face of a baffling universe that he never really makes sense of.
    But this is just an example of the many open questions left for you to answer - as others have said : this and it's 5 predecessors repay constant re-reading to yeild up all their secrets - if they ever will?
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 November 2015
    Love Gene Wolf. As advertised and delivered on time!
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2002
    It might seem an absurd claim but the only writer to whom Wolfe can seriously be compared is Marcel Proust. I know of no other writer who can combine massive architectural brilliance with the capacity to transform one`s reading of an entire sequence of novels with a single phrase or sentence. This extraordinary series of books, from the New Sun to this, the final part of the Book of the Long Sun, can only be compared to A La Recherche. In this final volume we have to deal with moral seriousness of the highest order, the paradoxes of memory, identity and the reconstruction of the past, the nature of love . . . . this is simply a wonderful and inexhaustable writer.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2024
    I've been reading the series that reach conclusion in this book for over 40 years. I'm glad they have finally reached a conclusion of sorts, and was surprised to find that this one actually draws the first - the Book of the New Sun, into this, as I'd always thought they were parallel, if seperate, series.
    However the skill and richness of writing seems to have gone. In the early books, and many of the other early stories, Wolfe could write a sentence that had half the words invented and unexplained but still made sense, it was a wonderful experience. But now the convoluted writing has become just that - deliberate complexity and obscureness, but without the underlying clarity and wonder.
    Looking back I can see this decline in writing from the start of the Book of the Short Sun, and it's progression is clear, and you this loss of one of our great writing talents is devastating, as bad in its own way as those others we have lost like Zelazny I'm glad Wolfe managed to finish this, but sad that it became such a struggle.
  • Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 September 2014
    The books is great, and I must say that I don't mind used books at all: not wasting trees and acquiring an item with a lived life is ok by me. Unfortunately it arrived used from a library, with stampings, a non removable plastic coating around the dust cover, and some torn cover pages (from where the RFID was ripped). Disappointing but usable, and considering the cost it's okay.

Top reviews from other countries

  • Barry
    5.0 out of 5 stars Gene Wolfe books
    Reviewed in Canada on 5 August 2023
    Happy happy great thank you
  • stephen hess
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good Fishing! Good Fishing! Good Fishing!
    Reviewed in the United States on 17 February 2011
    I envy those of you who have never read Gene Wolfe. That you still have the opportunity to discover, to experience, to feel in your heart and gut this unique and most talented writer... Wolfe truly deserves to be widely recognized, to be studied and celebrated in literary circles and our schools and universities. Instead he is pidgeon-holed as a science fiction writer, even if that lable is preferenced with accolades.
    I've read nearly all of his work (and how sad that makes me) and maintain THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN is Wolfe's best. And my favourite novel, period. All the SUN novels are fantasatic, and to access SHORT SUN you'll have to read the terrific LONG SUN series first - such terrible punishemnt! But SHORT SUN stands as an acheivement even lovers of Wolfe's work find hard to describe beyond beyond the words "great", "inspiring", "magnificant"... Insert your adjective here. There is really no way to describe this work that comes close to doing it justice. It is a tour de force in writing, first. That anyone could simply write this well is almost beyond comprehension. I found myself stopping and just shaking my head in absolute awe in many places at the brilliance of Wolfe's prose. Then there is Wolfe's respect for the intelligence of his audience. In SHORT SUN as in most of his work, he never disrespects his reader. You have to pay attention when you read Wolfe. If you want simple entertainment, don't read him. If, however, you want more than the novel version of Jersey Shore, Wolfe will reward you like few writers.
    I have read thousands of novels. Most of the classics. The literary giants. The bestsellers, in and out of genre. Wolfe is my favorite writer, and SHORT SUN my favorite Wolfe. If you are willing to invest your attention, you will find no better exploration of spiritual trial, the meaning of identity, of friendship, and, perhaps most important, what it means to be a good person in a fallen world, and just how threatening that can be to everyone around you. Good fishing. Good fishing. Good fishing!
  • Marc Aramini
    5.0 out of 5 stars Don't give up after one reading!
    Reviewed in the United States on 10 January 2002
    Gene Wolfe has done more for the potential of speculative fiction than anyone else. After I read this book for the first time, I was impressed, but I wasn't sure if there was as much beneath the surface as I expected from a Wolfe book.
    After re-reading it and pondering it at great length, I think that Wolfe has done such a good job making supposedly secret things obviously hinted at in the text that we stop looking for the right questions to ask because we THINK we know all the answers. If you think you have figured out everything on one reading of this text about the changes in an individual and in a home that render it impossible to go home again, here are some questions that I have found the answers to (at least, I think so)on a close re-reading (I wouldn't advise reading these questions unless you've read the text at least once):
    When exactly does the majority of Horn's essence leave the narrator to go ride a beast with three horns? (and what is that beast?)
    Why are plant genetics important to the story?
    Why does the narrative technique and tone change so drastically between On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles? Why is that island on Blue made up of big trees, and why is it important? Who and what are the vanished people, and why do the animals with doubled limbs seem so similar to the ones we have on earth? Why does the narrator travel (a debatable word) to Urth, and what is the REAL importance of the secret of the inhumu, which is no secret at all? How many fair young girls in the text are spies? What is the fate of Urth? What really happens to Horn when he falls in the pit, and why do the Vanished People appear to him at that particular time? Why is the fact that Urth's sea is saltier than Blue important? How can we know that there will probably be no more New/Long/Short Sun books? What does the Cummean have to do with the inhumu and the vanished people? Is Chenille really stuck in Sinew's basement on Green? Why does Babbie look more human than Cillinia (Scylla)in the narrator's "dream" travel?
    The didactic message of this text has been exposed on the surface, but the real conflict has been hidden by the master. You have to learn to look for the right questions (as with any Wolfe story) to ask the text (I've tried not to spoil this fine work; but I feel it is impossible to spoil a Wolfe book.) Remember to ask why, and you will find that Wolfe makes much more sense and has plotted out his universe with far more reason and surprising skill than the surface message would indicate.
    I have managed to answer all of the above questions to my satisfaction (but perhaps not to everyones) and hope to find more of the right questions to ask of this masterpiece, Gene Wolfe's best work since The Book of the New Sun (and I believe it MIGHT even contend with that as my favorite book). Never stop asking the text questions, and it will not fail you; believe me.
  • Odin Lightner
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Close to the Solar Cycle.
    Reviewed in the United States on 28 August 2024
    Perhaps my favorite book of the trilogy. It does an amazing job at closing out both the Whorl Cycle and the entire Solar Cycle. Quite the book. Like most Wolfe novels, the true ending or resolution is moreso implied than anything, but unlike most Wolfe novels, it is extremely optimistic, perhaps even cheerful.
  • Christopher C.
    5.0 out of 5 stars A fitting conclusion to a momument to literature.
    Reviewed in the United States on 12 February 2001
    As I was reading RETURN TO THE WHORL, the final volume of the Book of the Short Sun, I wondered how the ending of this work and the wrapping-up of a 12-volume cycle would come across in a... review. Perhaps, I thought, it would be like Dante's vision of God in the Paradiso; the poet's sight is too filled with beauty to communicate what he saw to those below.
    It isn't like that at all. I can't communicate the beauty of this book not because it cannot flow through words but because I don't have a handle on its core essence yet. Wolfe's splendid work ends elusively, causing me not to feel like I have seen the height of his vision, but rather that I have only begun the contemplation that will bring me to understanding Wolfe's view of God. RETURN TO THE WHORL offers closure, certainly, but it also causes one to *think*. Questions are left unanswered, so it seems, but they can be resolved through the subtle clues in the text. What continues to involve the reader after the book is finished is meditation on how the Outsider is present both in Wolfe's world and in our own. Gene Wolfe is a superb writer, and his work appeals to people due to many different things, but I've always found his work to wonderfully reinforce my belief in Catholicism. Yes, reading Wolfe can be a religious experience.
    RETURN TO THE WHORL is an excellent conclusion to the Sun books because of its circular nature. At the end of RttW, the reader can go through the protagonist's return to Blue all over again from the final chapters of RttW to the first chapter of ON BLUE'S WATERS. Or, one can go back to a foggy evening in the Citadel of Nessus, where the Book of the New Sun and our whole saga began.
    After this, 12 books of excellent writing, I echo the same sentiments many fans do, why don't people realize Wolfe is the greatest writer alive?

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