(urth) Silk/Horn in the Matachin Tower

[Marc Aramini]

Okay.  I found Long Sun slower and less engrossing than Short Sun, and had way more fun parsing it, but the lack of consensus on even what happened in the books leads me to believe Short Sun is not universally appealing.
 
spoilers on the interpretation of events as I sincerely and honestly believe them to be in the cycle:
(the loose ends really are tied up - cannibal hybridizing trees turn Urth to hell; lianas steal their lifestuff and take over green, becoming the inefficient child race, the inhumi; our narrator of OBW reboots Silk and goes to reside in his hus while sitting under such a tree, Auk and Chenillle repair the lander and go to blue and are "just missed" by our narrator, who uses that lander later and gets Horn's ring back; the blind man in the sewers who dies is really the original blind son of Typhon who possessed Auk for so long (as Mamelta was Kypris and Silk's genetic mom - the monarch's family stored in that room to recolonize Urth) the inhumi are doomed to revert back to liana without a fresh infusion of human stock, our later Silk in denial narrator uses his liana staff to cross space and time instead of another inhumi, Fava and Mora summon Hy in their dreams, and the real puzzle is ... does Severian spend a lot of time looking at faces in Typhon's
 mausoleum in his youth and seeing himself there, or not?)

--- On Wed, 2/6/13, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk/Horn in the Matachin Tower
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 7:34 AM



The number of mysteries doesn't make it more mysterious. Also, the more dreamlike cadence and flow of Short Sun lessens the impact. The very slow, realist approach in Long Sun makes the pervasive mysteries more forceful, to me. It's as if in Short Sun all bets are off, so nothing is as impressive, on the mystery front. In Long Sun, I felt like I was in a real world for 1200 pages, and it's mysteries were my mysteries. 
On Feb 6, 2013 10:29 AM, "Marc Aramini" <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:






I always say, stop, Marc, you know how this ends ... but anyway, I can't.
 
Way more mysteries in Short Sun.  The transmogrification of liana into inhumi, the presence of the vanished Gods, the identity of that stiff legged bird like fellow at the top of the cliff, the presence of Silk and Oreb in the stories of the past, the grabbing of Hyacinth's spirit in dream travel, the actualy identity of the narrator at any given point in the story, the fate of Urth (real horrorshow like); Auk's ghost, a Chenille ringer, and the ring that changes color and shape in Dorp, etc.
 
Lots of stuff.  And of course there's time travel shennanigans.

--- On Wed, 2/6/13, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk/Horn in the Matachin Tower
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 6:38 AM



Perhaps "tacked on" was a bit too harsh.  Let's just say that I find Short Sun to be quite a bit less mysterious than its predecessors, and the insertion of Nessus, the Matachin Tower, etc., adds to that impression.  Starting off Long Sun for example, mysteries abound. What is the Whorl?  What time is it?  Who/what are the gods?  Cards?  The Writings? How big is the Whorl?  Etc., etc., etc.  It took a lot of time, allusion, and build-up to get there, so when the "Typhon is Pas" moment did come, it completely blew me away.  By the time the Short Sun rolls around, however, we know all these things, and additionally we know the connection between the Red Sun Whorl and the rest of the elements of Long Sun.  The mysteries of Blue and Green are never presented in a way that made me beyond eager to find our their solutions ... they seem less fun in comparison to the other works, partially because we seem to spend quite a bit less time on them than we
 did on board the Whorl.  I suppose the focus of Short Sun is intentionally much different, so perhaps it is my fault for expecting more Long and New?


 
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