So, after having been meaning to get around to this series for years, I finally started it (and to think, I wanted a "light read" after Dune...what in God's name was I thinking?"). As of now I've just got into the first little bit of Sword & Citadel, right after Severian meets Cyracia (sp?), and I'm really craving some good discussion on it. I did a search and didn't see any previous threads.
I've never read any Wolfe before, but goddamn is this series fucking amazing. From what I've read, the prose is easily some of the best in the genre, hands down, and possibly the best I personally have ever read. The style of storytelling, the first person narration (which seems relatively uncommon for this sort of story), the utterly unique setting, Severian's amazing characterization, just everything.
And, of course, the vocabulary. Reading this on Kindle, I think, was a pretty good move on my part, since I can instantly look up any word I don't know -- and there's a shitload -- although in many cases the words don't even show up in the dictionary, in which case I can just quickly google it. But then there are cases where a word doesn't even show up anywhere on google, or if it does, I can't find its actual meaning (zoanthrope was the last one, but all I've seen it associated with is Warhammer 40K). So yeah, while it's sometimes a bit of effort trying to figure out some of the terms, I also fucking love it. It's such a cool thing to do in a SFF series like this, as in not making up any words for fantastical stuff. The names for different officials, the use of mythology, the way he uses scientific names and extinct species for the various creatures, it's just straight up brilliant. I also love stuff that's a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, so in many ways this was right up my alley. I'll have to reserve any final judgment until I complete the book, but I feel like this will become one of my all time favorites (which is ironic, considering I just finished all six Dune books, and the same exact thing happened).
So yeah, I'd really like to hear some people's thoughts on the series as whole (please feel free to discuss spoilers amongst yourselves, just hide them for my sake, I should be finishing it up by Friday or Saturday). But I'm just really craving some discussion, and I definitely have a lot questions about stuff, but I'll wait until I finish to do that.
I would like to ask if anyone knows some good resources for information on the world, terminology, backstory, characters, etc. (I'd even be interested in hearing about Wolfe's process of writing the series, and what his thoughts were when creating it, especially in regards to Severian)? I found one sort of pseudo-wiki, but it was pretty crappy. Much appreciated!