Just finished Long Sun. Please help answer these questions!
After reading and loving New Sun 2-3 times through I am reading Long Sun and honestly I disliked most of it. There were enjoyable things for sure- Concepts like the enzyme trade, the chems, the gods, the spool sun of the Whorl. The scene with Crane and Silk where Lemur is showing off his superhuman body and discovering that his original body had died was probably my favorite part of the whole series.
There are also beautiful details that have nothing to do with fantasy at all: Silk saying he didn’t cry at his mother’s death until he heard the song of the wind-up dancer toy she bought him as a child because to the toy, no time had passed.
But overall, it was too many excruciating conversations that never address the most interesting things I want to hear about. There are some things that get referenced later that I feel like I must have blacked out from boredom and missed.
So please help me out! But also, no Short Sun spoilers! Do I need to read the Short Sun before I start asking these questions? If these get developed further in Short Sun, just tell me to keep reading.
1. Remora is speaking of lost embryos, there is some “chosen one” superhuman child. Gulo thinks it’s Chenille but this is Mucor, right? Because she has strange powers?
2. Exodus, page 248: Why does Wolfe/Horn suddenly use first person here?
“No.” Silk paused, listening to the sounds of hurrying feet in the foyer. “We haven’t time. I accept. We surrender. We can discuss terms when we have more leisure. That was why I hoped you’d remain, Councillor. It would have facilitated—”
At that moment I burst into the room. “They’re coming, Caldé, like you said. A couple of hundred, some on horses.”
“Thank you, Horn.” Silk smiled sadly. “They’ll knock, I believe—at least I hope they will. If they do, delay them as long as you can, please.”
Is that a mistake, like Wolfe was combining two different drafts and the editor missed it? This is bizarre because I had accidentally read a spoiler that Long Sun had a narrator but didn’t know it was Horn. At the end of the book it’s obvious but at this point it just seems like an accident. OR, is it “Horn’s accident” intentionally written by Wolfe? The problem I have if that were the case, is that this doesn’t feel like a book written by Horn, it feels like a Wolfe book. More on that later.
3. The mystery of the Outsider - What ever came of this? I was expecting it to be Severian or Father Inire or even Yahweh or some other big reveal but it felt like we just forgot about the Outsider by the end.
4. Why is Typhon in this book as Pas? It felt like there was no point to that. “We have to find all the pieces of Pas” - What happened with this? Did they ever put him together?
5. Silk is suddenly saying he’s suicidal but I don’t think there’s any sign that he is? He’s was previously having boring conversations and thinking how the military must hang flags off the airship and then Horn thinks there’s something wrong. So if Horn is writing the book and thinks Silk is suicidal, why is he writing Silk’s inner monologue just thinking about flags? It kind of feels more like Wolfe is forgetting that Horn is the in-book narrator, or he added that as an afterthought. This goes back to my point 2, like Wolfe maybe wrote multiple versions of the story and got mixed up while combining them together.
6. Wedding and Second Enlightenment. At some point Silk says “the Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can and do take place.”
When did any of this happen? I don’t even think his wedding night was included. They talk about getting married and then they’re asleep and already married. I don’t think there’s any mention of enlightenment.
7. Exodus- I kept reading this chapter over and over but I’m not getting it. They’re in the airship and then there is a glass with a ‘sensual face’- Who is this? It doesn't seem like the same computer face that's usually in the glass. “You can BE Pas” What? Who says this and why would Silk become Pas? Then they are all suddenly floating and there is a voice that seems like it belongs to Tartaros? And then they are seeing the Whorl from outside like they are in space? But are they still in the airship and this is just a hallucination or something in the glass?
8. How did Auk get in a lander? Wasn’t he in the airship with everyone else?
9. They also keep referencing that they were talking to dead people but when did this happen? Was it left out?