Book Rating
Rated 3 (Highly Recommended) by: 6 people
Rated 2 (Recommended) by: 2 people
Rated 1 (Suggested) by: 2 people
Rated 0 (Reviewed) by: nobody
Total Votes: 10 people
Average Rating: 2.40 (Recommended)
Score: 2.40 (Recommended)

Shadow & Claw collects the first two volumes of The Book of the New Sun – Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator. Since the narrator picks up the story in Claw a few months after he left off in Shadow, it's handy to have these two together so that the reader immediately knows that they're not suffering amnesia.

A fan can therefore own the complete five-part New Sun saga by buying three volumes: Shadow & Claw, Sword & Citadel, and The Urth of the New Sun.

Other Comments:

This four book series, Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, Sword of the Lictor, and Citadel of the Autarch are extremely complex but delightful renderings of a world so far in the future that it is hard to recognize as our own. Yet Severian, the torturer who shows mercy, becomes a strange Everyman, who shows us decency and wonder in a strange, but absorbing place. Christians will not find an obvious tract here: this is a dense literary journey, but it will bless you. – Diane Joy Baker