l_valentine 's review for:

Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe

3.0

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Have not felt so thoroughly thwarted by a book in some time. A piece of fiction that feels like it grew out of all the critical theory I read in grad school but didn’t fully comprehend. There’s so much fun to chew on with this one but nothing substantial enough to leave you with a full stomach. Great prose, fascinating end-of-time world, but for an emotional reader like myself I found my mind sated but my heart hungry.

And quite honestly, hate to say it, the sexual elements are bizarre! I have never felt more baffled by eroticism in a novel. It isn’t constant and the stretches between almost make you forget the sexual element, but when it does rear its head it took me right out. The whole of the text is so interesting and even if it is not always engaging it at least stimulates the critical part of the brain. In a book series that feels so meticulously crafted I can’t believe that these elements are not without their own significance but they are perhaps the most hidden. I have to give the benefit of the doubt in this case and trust I simply am missing the point of them.

I will undoubtably have to read the second two books but with some distance between now and then.