published 1986, Tor

"There is nothing new under the sun," wrote Herodotos in an age far less cynical than ours. The gods were real and spoke to man; science and civilization, though well-established, were still in infancy. How can we understand the way the people of ancient times thought? Enter Gene Wolfe's character Latro, a mercenary soldier from the army of Cyrus the Great.

Every day is new for Latro, and his surroundings are as alien to him as they are to us, thanks to a head injury. Every day his past vanishes into the mist, and we follow his attempts to reason out this world that keeps disappearing. Wolfe does an excellent job recapturing the details of the early Greek world. (Pay attention to the glossary, or you'll miss a lot.) I can't imagine the amount of research that went into the book; the only works that I can think of comparable to this are Mary Renault's books on classical Greece.

Wolfe's characters never lose that bright edge of inquiry that we associate with the classical era. Even his rough soldiers are willing to explore the limits of their world, help a stranger seek his god, and give alms and listen to strange tales with full attention. They and Latro seem alive in a way that we aren't.

Wolfe's analysis of classical attitudes is worth scrutinizing as well. Slaves are treated as fully human beings, for example, and women are regarded as strong and competent, even though by law they aren't allowed to own property or go out in public alone. It took millenia for these attitudes to change, and it took time for them to change back again, too.

The only complaint that I have about this book and the series is that Latro's disability renders the plot extremely difficult to follow. That's a petty complaint, however, since Wolfe handles the subject of amnesia more competently than any other author I've read.

Review by Becky Parkhurst
Reviewed July 2, 1996

ISBN 0-812-55815-4

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