The Claw of the Conciliator
by Gene Wolfe
1981, reprinted 1994
The Claw of the Conciliator is the second book in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun quartet. Our narrator is Severian, an orphan with near-perfect memory who will someday become the new autarch. For all the strangeness of Wolfe's far future Urth, the first book used a couple of familiar narrative arcs to ground us. We watched as Severian grew from a boy to a young man as a member of the Torturers' Guild, and saw him exiled from his home for a forbidden act of mercy. Then, as he traveled, we saw him get challenged to a duel, which he prepared for and then fought, and he met some traveling companions.
In Claw we leave those narrative arcs behind, so I had much less sense of where the story might take me. At the end of the previous book, Severian was separated from the others by a disturbance in the crowd as they left the city of Nessus. At the start of this one, he's hoping to reconnect with them on the road. A town hires him to execute a criminal, and he tells us this will happen many more times in his travels, but that he won't mention it again.
Severian is recruited by the rebel leader Vodalus, and sent to deliver a message to a spy in the House Absolute, home of the Autarch. Before he leaves, he takes part in a ritual in which an alien carrion animal consumes a corpse, then the participants drink some of the animal's brain fluid, and experience visions of the person who died. The corpse belongs to Thelca, the prisoner Sevarian loved, and who he mercy killed to spare from further torture. Perhaps because of his perfect memory, Severian permanently receives a small piece of Thelca's mind as a second personality inside him. Later in the book, we'll see him remember things because she knew them, and in one instance, she'll possess his body.
Severian arrives at the autarch's House and is immediately imprisoned in a communal holding cell. Originally it was meant to hold people while they wait for trial, but most of the current prisoners were born there; their ancestors were accused of crimes generations ago, and never released or even tried.
Severian escapes and meets Vodalus's contact. He receives instructions to return the Claw of the Conciliator to the holy order it was stolen from, and to kill the Autarch as he goes to war. The Claw is a glowing gemstone that appears to have the power to heal injuries. Severian realizes the Autarch knows about Vodalus's communications network. This seems less like counterintelligence, and more like the Autarch wants Vodalus to succeed at overthrowing the autarchy. It seems possible that the Autarch somehow orchestrated Vodalus becoming a rebel, and maybe that he's chosen Severian as his successor, although if so, his methods and even his reasons are unknown to us.
Severian is reunited with his companions, who are there to perform a play a a festival - the impresario Dr Talos, the giant Baldanders, and Severian's girlfriend Dorcas, who was resurrected by the Claw decades after she died. They perform and then part ways, with Talos and Baldanders returning home, and Severian and Dorcas on the way to complete his two missions.
Seemingly very little happens, aside from events being set in motion. We see examples of the government's cruelty - the execution and the hereditary prisoners. We see the power of the Claw. Severian is changed by the ceremony with Thecla's corpse. We learn that there's something strange about the relationship between the Autarch and the rebellion. And Sevarian is given goals to accomplish that will presumably lead to him becoming the new autarch. One chapter is transcript of a story Severian reads that sounds like a parable for killing the alien giant Abaia who lives in the ocean. Another chapter is the text of Dr Talos's play, about an autarch acquiring a new sun to replace the dying old one. I have to think that both of these are foreshadowing events that will happen in the next two books.
Wolfe has kind of a bleak vision of the future. We know that in the past, humans traveled by spaceship to other stars. Aliens have come to Urth to live and brought some animals with them to integrate into our ecology, and the aliens themselves intermarried with humans. The moon is green and forested, and at their peak, humans lived on Venus and Mars, and in domed cities underwater. But in Severian's time, society has become tradition-bound and quasi-medieval, and technology is perceived like magic. Severian's country is ruled by the autarchy, and it's engaged in a long war with its northern neighbors. Plus, you know, the sun is dying.
The giants intrigue me. We're told that Abaia is big like a mountain, and that he'll continue to grow until he can break the continents. Baldanders is an alien from the same species, just young and small enough that he can still live on land. Baldanders seems extremely hostile to a different species of alien who are part of the Autarch's court. If I've understood correctly, the hereditary ruling class, the exultants, are all descended from humans who had children with the alien courtiers. And Severian might be the child of an exultant.
Some things Vodalus says make me wonder if the rebels are somehow aligned with the giants against the Autarch. It's hard for me to see what advantage humans could hope to gain from allying with an alien who will eventually destroy the planet, but if there is a connection, I imagine it will become clearer later. It's almost as though a war between two alien societies is being fought on Urth, with humans on both sides of the conflict.
I see a kind of parallelism between Abaia who grows like a cancer on the earth, and the black hole growing at the heart of the old sun that's the cause of its decline. In Severian's time, the sun is large and red and no longer as warm as today, not because it's millions of years in the future (though it is thousands), but because of a cancer inside the star, eating it from within. If so, then story logic would seem to require that, to save the sun, Severian will also have to defeat the giant Abaia. How that will intersect with the rebellion and the war, I'm not sure.
In Claw we leave those narrative arcs behind, so I had much less sense of where the story might take me. At the end of the previous book, Severian was separated from the others by a disturbance in the crowd as they left the city of Nessus. At the start of this one, he's hoping to reconnect with them on the road. A town hires him to execute a criminal, and he tells us this will happen many more times in his travels, but that he won't mention it again.
Severian is recruited by the rebel leader Vodalus, and sent to deliver a message to a spy in the House Absolute, home of the Autarch. Before he leaves, he takes part in a ritual in which an alien carrion animal consumes a corpse, then the participants drink some of the animal's brain fluid, and experience visions of the person who died. The corpse belongs to Thelca, the prisoner Sevarian loved, and who he mercy killed to spare from further torture. Perhaps because of his perfect memory, Severian permanently receives a small piece of Thelca's mind as a second personality inside him. Later in the book, we'll see him remember things because she knew them, and in one instance, she'll possess his body.
Severian arrives at the autarch's House and is immediately imprisoned in a communal holding cell. Originally it was meant to hold people while they wait for trial, but most of the current prisoners were born there; their ancestors were accused of crimes generations ago, and never released or even tried.
Severian escapes and meets Vodalus's contact. He receives instructions to return the Claw of the Conciliator to the holy order it was stolen from, and to kill the Autarch as he goes to war. The Claw is a glowing gemstone that appears to have the power to heal injuries. Severian realizes the Autarch knows about Vodalus's communications network. This seems less like counterintelligence, and more like the Autarch wants Vodalus to succeed at overthrowing the autarchy. It seems possible that the Autarch somehow orchestrated Vodalus becoming a rebel, and maybe that he's chosen Severian as his successor, although if so, his methods and even his reasons are unknown to us.
Severian is reunited with his companions, who are there to perform a play a a festival - the impresario Dr Talos, the giant Baldanders, and Severian's girlfriend Dorcas, who was resurrected by the Claw decades after she died. They perform and then part ways, with Talos and Baldanders returning home, and Severian and Dorcas on the way to complete his two missions.
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| alien carrion eater illustration by Wayne Douglas Barlowe |
Seemingly very little happens, aside from events being set in motion. We see examples of the government's cruelty - the execution and the hereditary prisoners. We see the power of the Claw. Severian is changed by the ceremony with Thecla's corpse. We learn that there's something strange about the relationship between the Autarch and the rebellion. And Sevarian is given goals to accomplish that will presumably lead to him becoming the new autarch. One chapter is transcript of a story Severian reads that sounds like a parable for killing the alien giant Abaia who lives in the ocean. Another chapter is the text of Dr Talos's play, about an autarch acquiring a new sun to replace the dying old one. I have to think that both of these are foreshadowing events that will happen in the next two books.
Wolfe has kind of a bleak vision of the future. We know that in the past, humans traveled by spaceship to other stars. Aliens have come to Urth to live and brought some animals with them to integrate into our ecology, and the aliens themselves intermarried with humans. The moon is green and forested, and at their peak, humans lived on Venus and Mars, and in domed cities underwater. But in Severian's time, society has become tradition-bound and quasi-medieval, and technology is perceived like magic. Severian's country is ruled by the autarchy, and it's engaged in a long war with its northern neighbors. Plus, you know, the sun is dying.
The giants intrigue me. We're told that Abaia is big like a mountain, and that he'll continue to grow until he can break the continents. Baldanders is an alien from the same species, just young and small enough that he can still live on land. Baldanders seems extremely hostile to a different species of alien who are part of the Autarch's court. If I've understood correctly, the hereditary ruling class, the exultants, are all descended from humans who had children with the alien courtiers. And Severian might be the child of an exultant.
Some things Vodalus says make me wonder if the rebels are somehow aligned with the giants against the Autarch. It's hard for me to see what advantage humans could hope to gain from allying with an alien who will eventually destroy the planet, but if there is a connection, I imagine it will become clearer later. It's almost as though a war between two alien societies is being fought on Urth, with humans on both sides of the conflict.
I see a kind of parallelism between Abaia who grows like a cancer on the earth, and the black hole growing at the heart of the old sun that's the cause of its decline. In Severian's time, the sun is large and red and no longer as warm as today, not because it's millions of years in the future (though it is thousands), but because of a cancer inside the star, eating it from within. If so, then story logic would seem to require that, to save the sun, Severian will also have to defeat the giant Abaia. How that will intersect with the rebellion and the war, I'm not sure.
I still need to read these >.<. I finally read (most of) the Foundation series this year and also caught back up to where I left off with Dune when I was in middle school, so maybe after those, within the next year or two...
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