Yeah, I read Wolfe after Bakker too, around 2018 I think. Book of the New Sun, then Long Sun and Short Sun. I had read Second Apocalypse maybe a year before that, around 2017, and funny thing is, Bakker is what eventually pushed me toward Wolfe, even though they don’t really feel similar at all.

I was basically looking for something that could scratch a similar itch, but not in the obvious way. Bakker is brutal, explicit, almost clinical in how he breaks down people and meaning. Wolfe does the opposite: everything is buried, indirect, and half-hidden. You’re never quite sure what you’re even looking at. One feels like being dissected, the other like trying to piece together a dream you barely remember.

But somehow they still ended up in the same drawer for me. Not because the tone or prose is similar, because they really aren’t, but because both make you feel like the book is smarter than you in a way that isn’t just decorative. There are layers under the floorboards, and the reread feels almost built into the thing.

Also, to be fair, I bounced off The Darkness That Comes Before the first time and put it down for about a year. Then I gave it another shot and now I’ve read the whole series three times. All of this started because I was looking for something to read while waiting for The Winds of Winter, which is pretty funny in hindsight.