The Claw of the Conciliator

Volume two of four. Severian, now a journeyman of the torturers’ guild, travels north toward the city of Thrax carrying a relic he did not mean to take, and the book widens from his own story into the older histories, plays and legends of a dying Earth.

Context: the middle of a single four-volume narrative, so it is not a starting point — read The Shadow of the Torturer first. a16z carded the series whole, on the strength of its prose and its refusal to explain its own world.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from; Fantasy section, Book of the New Sun series entry.
• Gene Wolfe — the author.
• The Shadow of the Torturer — volume one.
• The Sword of the Lictor — volume three.
• The Citadel of the Autarch — volume four.
• Science Fiction — the genre border the series sits on.
• a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates the list.