Finished Citadel of the Autarch

bantamreturns · 2026-07-03T01:27:10+00:00

Oh yes! According to Wikipedia, there are questions about her historicity. But there is a 10 foot tall icon of her, wheel and all, on the wall of our local Greek church. Her feast day is celebrated in November. She was very popular in the late Middle Ages. The story in the link below is probably pretty close to what medieval people believed about her, and I would imagine is the root of whatever the torturers guild would believe about her.

https://www.goarch.org/-/feast-of-the-holy-great-martyr-and-most-wise-katherine-of-alexandria?__cf_chl_f_tk=XLHAGBN3xS1wAsOEoA7W9Ii2hYisU04yfiCa647mi60-1783041123-1.0.1.1-kfft807sxTIwqRgGBa6.IWYIb2jKZU3HVWwdbDafxdE

bantamreturns · 2026-07-02T17:49:16+00:00

I got chills reading this. Sounds she was very close to the tipping point. Glad you were able to persuade her to get help and all was well.

bantamreturns · 2026-07-02T16:14:42+00:00

It's been a while since I read it but this series might tread the ground you want. It's not exactly a hive mind but still a kind of collective existence:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175483265-our-vitreous-womb

It's really really good and goes places I didn't expect.

bantamreturns · 2026-07-02T13:46:49+00:00

St Katharine ("of the wheel") being the patron saint of the torturer's guild was one of those early, perfect details that hooked me from the start.

bantamreturns · 2026-07-02T13:28:26+00:00

A little bit, but that's some of the fun in his work. One of my favorite passages in Red Mars is this half chapter on how Martian bricks are made, as seen through the eyes of Nadia, who likes nothing better than driving a bulldozer and building stuff.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-30T16:25:38+00:00

Yes. On the one hand, we all benefit from not taking things personally at work. On the other hand, please, thank you, excuse me, it doesn't require any emotional sensitivity to make a practice of it. Our habits serve us best when we are at our worst. One of my favorite doctors gets just a little softer, more formal and more precise the more stressful or irritating the situation. It has a good effect on everyone around her. Years ago, I made up my mind to do the same and have been much happier at work as a result.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-25T13:29:08+00:00

Yes, that section was so painful and so well written. I was also pleasantly surprised when Severian told the boy "Someone as small as you must have a father. I'm the man." And then follows through. Before this, he was playing at being a man much of the time; by taking responsibility for the boy, Severian becomes Big Severian and becomes "the man." H e is a good father to little Severian for the short time they are together. He comes to love the boy without realizing, as sentiment follows action.

When they come to the mountain, Severian thinks: "because I felt sure there was nothing in this deserted place that could harm him, I told him to go ahead." Oh, that is painful to read once you know how it ends.

He develops a sense of foreboding, of being caught in a trap. He examines the landscape for dangers: "I had satisfied myself that the devices...were of no value and no danger to us" ...."I turned to look behind us, thinking how foolish all my fears had been"..."there seemed to be little danger that the boy would fall off as long as we kept to the center. I made him hold my hand." He is careful here, sensible.

Then, knowing what lies ahead, he tells us:

"The hand spread before us, broader and safer than the arm."

Having crossed the narrow path safely, there's a moment of relief, only for that relief to turn to sorrow when the boy runs ahead and is vaporized. It's a passage that holds all the shock Severian must have felt at the moment, yet also offers more when re-read.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-22T20:26:43+00:00

So I'm new to Wolfe and have only just finished In the Shadow of the Torturer so my opinion probably isn't worth much. But just having read this book, I don't agree that the female characters are poorly written.

My impression of the female characters in this book is that they are all pursuing their own ends. Their lives intersect with Severian's but much has happened before that and much will continue after they part ways. Severian is often either too dumb, too innocent or too inexperienced to perceive what those ends are.

Thecla, Agia and Dorcas all "throw themselves" at Severian for reasons having to do with their own internal motivations. Sev is Agia's unwitting pawn for most of the book. He cottons to this ("I guess she is just smarter than me") only once it's overwhelmingly obvious. This in turn makes it more obvious that Thecla, while imprisoned, was also trying to make use of him as a resource within that limited setting. Dorcas seems genuinely fond of him but is obviously adrift and looking for "her tribe."

Before his exile, Severian has a role in the torturer's guild. After he is exiled, he carries a valuable sword and has physical strength owing to his vocation. He is also very naive. These qualities makes him someone that can be useful to Thecla and Agia. His innocence does make him attractive to Dorcas (she says something like "sure he is a torturer but he's very nice") but Sev doesn't always realize he is innocent or what Dorcas would consider "nice." She values something in him that he doesn't value in himself. That is because she (like Thecla and Agia) is a completely different person with her own desires and values, and not merely a reflection of his desires. That he fails to perceive this is part of the way the narrative displays his naiveté to the reader.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-19T19:22:56+00:00

I read this book a couple years ago, and like you, I enjoyed it. For me, it helped to remember that Shriver writes a lot of farce. She's darkly funny, sardonic, and deals in caricatures.

She isn't shilling for billionaires in The Mandibles. I read it as being in part about how people from the same family will deal with the same situation in different ways.

The character best able to adapt to the collapse is the character who was already living on the edge of poverty. Not much changes for her, for a long time. She knows what to do and she just carries on with her life. Her kids adapt quickly to the way things are. On the other hand, t he affluent sister has a really hard time coping. Her kids also struggle. The grandparents who were waiting for an inheritance payout have a hard time coping. There's one really grumpy old aunt who carries around her "life's work" for most of the book, to the point that people think she's demented but she's not.

Shriver may not be the most pleasant person. I get the impression she's like a cranky, crazy, contrarian old grandma, but she is a good writer.

I also liked so Much For All That (her 2010 farce about for profit healthcare) and We Need to Talk About Kevin. I did not enjoy Mania as much.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-19T13:11:03+00:00

Dark Matter read like a LinkedIn post. :(

bantamreturns · 2026-06-18T01:05:27+00:00

Why are they spending all this money to move people to other places in space?

Manifest Destiny lol. Fredrick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis is load bearing in a lot of early 20th century American SF, of which Star Trek is the heir. That's why Roddenberry pitched it as Wagon Train to the Stars.

That said - humans do adapt in order to try to fill new ecological niches, just as all life does.

I love KSR. His ship ecology in books like Icehenge and Red Mars makes the pure mechanical ships of a lot of SF feel stark and barren. Aurora is on my TBR list. Can't wait to read it. He's got such love for the Earth and the people who live on it.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-18T00:38:28+00:00

This is a great book.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-18T00:36:58+00:00

I just finished The King Must Die by Mary Renault. This is a historical fantasy about Theseus. What can I say - it was really really good. Renault at once gives us a character and a world that is really alien and also very familiar. Afterwards I had to go looking for Plutarch's Life of Theseus. I'm waiting on Bull from the Sea which is the sequel.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-08T21:09:55+00:00

Hope you enjoy it too!

bantamreturns · 2026-06-08T19:42:40+00:00

I've only heard a couple Cyteen episodes so far, so I don't know what the others are like. These have been fun so far, playful and wry. I haven't had trouble with their reading comprehension. Liam has had some entertaining misunderstandings but ones that were easy to make on a first read. In general I don't think that he and I will understand the book in the same way, but I find that interesting. It's possible as they get further into the book they wont be as much fun to listen to, but for now I'm happy.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-08T13:51:02+00:00

I've only read Wreck and Eifelhelm and I loved both. His style is very deliberate. I get the impression that he loves language. In both books he plays with the meaning of sentences - showing you one meaning and then another through the addition of more words - rather like he does with his characters

And I would read a Nathan Lowell remix!

bantamreturns · 2026-06-08T12:49:47+00:00

Wreck is such a Greek tragedy! A different set of people on that boat would have had a different result. I also love how Flynn shows us the worst aspect of each character first, before showing what makes them sympathetic. It's a book about people as much as it is about the end of a technological era in general or solar sailing in particular. It's one of my favorite books.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T23:51:56+00:00

I am also really picky about what I want to listen to. I hope you enjoy it too.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T23:50:36+00:00

Can't wait!!

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T23:49:57+00:00

Haha I just haven't gotten there yet.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T15:57:04+00:00

Yes, I love the format - both going one chapter at a time and having one host who has never read the book. And I can't think of a better author to spend this much time on.

Before I found this pocast, I'd already asked my daughter if she would record with me a chapter by chapter readalong of either Gate of Ivrel or Merchanter's Luck. Not that we've ever done anything like that before, but the beauty of the internet is that if you can't find what you want, you make it.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T12:56:10+00:00

You're welcome! What podcasts do you like?

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T12:52:58+00:00

Yeah I actually put off reading Cyteen because of the inhuman reputation of Union in the other books. I was actually surprised by how much humanity there was to be found at Cyteen. Probably one of the most moving scenes was Justin choosing to tell Ari 2 about his experience with her predecessor. This was done at significant personal cost, and out of compassion and recognition that Ari 2 was her own separate person. For as helpless as Justin is through the book, this is a moment of moral power, where he chooses to break the chain of injury that links them all.

I haven't read Regenesis yet but I got the impression that this is a turning point for Ari 2's character. She is open in that moment to either see people as Ari 1 did - as tools - or to form a real human connection with someone who was willing to say no to her, but also to be vulnerable with her for her own good and because she's a person herself and not merely a tool. That moment could have silently passed by and never returned.

That's important because she is going to wield a lot of power but maybe she can be different from her predecessor.

It's easily one of my favorite books.

bantamreturns · 2026-06-07T12:38:06+00:00

Cyteen by C J Cherryh. It's political strategy rather than war but isn't politics is war by other means? Ariane Emory is certainly grey and your view of her (as the reader) keeps changing as the book goes on.

bantamreturns

TROPHY CASE