The Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe · 1980
Wolfe's tetralogy is set in a dying-sun future so far forward it looks like fantasy. Severian the torturer narrates unreliably through a language drawn from obscure Greek and Latin. It is the most demanding and rewarding SF/Fantasy hybrid ever written.
The case against
Severian lies to you, the vocabulary sends you to dictionaries that will not help (Wolfe used real obsolete words, obscurely), and crucial events happen offstage between chapters, recoverable only on rereading. Plan on reading it twice or not really reading it at all. Also, every woman in the dying world inexplicably wants to sleep with the torturer.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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