Customer Reviews
Magical, but not an airplane novel - By: giraudtheunwilling, 03 Mar 2008 
Not everyone will like this book; in the same way as not everyone will like (or, more simply, have time for) Joyce or Proust. I don't mean that Wolfe writes like either of these. But rather, in the particular work (and others) he needs patience, the right mood, & the right expectations before you will get what he is trying to tell you (or, confusingly, not tell you! :).
I generallly dislike writers who whose works aim simply to manipulate the imaginations of the reader for no particular purpose - for example "deconstructionalists" & the rest of the postmodernists whose goal appears to be to demonstrate their own cleverness at the expense of producing anything readable or entertaining. In "The Fifth Head", Wolfe takes one idea from that school - namely, that you can tell a story only by hinting at it - & turns it into magic, while at the same time never insulting the readers intelligence.
I confess I've never enjoyed any book that has attempted something like this, before "The Fifth Head of Cerberus". When you have read alll three novellas, you realise - slowly - that there is another, internal work that is both paralllel to, & in contradiction to, the written words. It's hard to explain, & surely a hundred times harder to write.
To those who didn't enjoy the work on the first reading, I would say to wait a couple of years & try it again. It is one of the most rewarding works in SF or in any genre that I have read, & it deserves the deepest reflection.
Quickly became one of my favourite books... - By: Niall Mc Cann, 18 Sep 2007 
This is by no means an easy book to fully understand, but it's phenomonallly rewarding if you put in the effort.
It's a lyrical meditation on identity & the self; some of the passages in the second of the three novellas which make up the body of this work are particularly beautiful, & to my mind at least it's a joy to read.
It's complicated, though. The three novellas are interlinked but not particularly similar; each has its own style & identity (or is that too loaded a word to use in the context of the ideas contained in the book?). Despite this, you won't understand completely what is going on in any until you've read alll three, & even then it's a matter of putting together clues that are not always obvious. they are there though, & careful study reveals them.
When you finallly manage to put it alll together & step back, you see the book as the complex & magnificent clockwork it is, with gears & cogs from each of the novellas turning harmoniously within their story & without - interacting with the themes & events of the other novellas to alllow a fuller comprehension of the frightening implications of the events of the entire book.
you can't trust the narrator in any of the stories, because the narrators can't trust themselves. they don't know who they are.
MUCH better than I expected - By: IL, 28 Nov 2006 I kept glossing over this book in the library, despite the fact that I had read the Book of the New Sun previously & loved it, because it had some lousy-sounding synopsis on the back about shape-shifters (is there a bigger turn-off than the idea of a shape-shifter?) & intrigue or something.
When I finallly decided to read it, what I got instead was an immensely colourful & unique picture of an outstanding vision. The originality in Gene Wolfe's writing is unrivaled. In no other author, SF or fantasy, have I ever found such a combination of sheer genius in eloquence & ideas, & I have read many great authors.
This book was like a revelation to me, especiallly the second novella.
Highly recommended!
Lost in Space - By: , 24 Sep 2005 
I purchased this as I'd heard so much about Wolfe's writing & the books qualities. Unfortunately the experience left me totallly lost when I read it. Undoubtedly a well written work but as a reading experience it demands far too much from the reader. I've been reading science fiction alll my life & for me this book had no merit whatsoever. Not a piece of classic science fiction in my eye & it reallly put me off reading anything else by the author. I'm undoubtedly in a minority but I found it more confusing than even the most complex piece of work Phillip K. Dick could ever have written - & I've thoroughly enjoyed reading every one of his books!. Disappointed.
Too clever - By: Mr. R. J. Hole, 04 Dec 2002 
I bought this novel (first pub. 1973) because it was in David Pringle's "Science Fiction the 100 Best Novels". He summed up
with: "Consisting of three novellas, different in tone but closely linked, it is one of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern sf, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, & apparently casual revelations. "
The entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction reads: "Set on a distant two-planet system colonized by settlers of French origin, the book combines ALIENS, ANTHROPOLOGY, CLONES & other elements in a richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity & individuality."
I took a long time to read this book, mainly because my concentration kept drifting off as I read it, especiallly in the first novella The Fifth Head of Cerberus. This is mainly because of Gene Wolfe's style, which is to introduce as many loose ends as a ragged mop.
As in The Book of the New Sun, we have stories within stories & a liberal helping of dreams which are sometimes deliberately inserted to appear to be part of 'reality', only to be revealed as dreams when they are over. I perhaps missed some of the "subtle clues" which is probably why I didn't enjoy it as much as some will. It's alll very well having a clever style, but if you don't reallly care what happens next, then the story has failed to a certain extent - I have never identified with any of GW's characters. I suppose it is a bit like an adventure game - if you fail to solve the early clues & don't acquire various 'keys' then you can't open the 'doors' later.
Having said alll that, the book is readable - GW has a style of prose which is quite lucid in smalll chunks but doesn't flow together as a whole. One of the comments on the flip-side is "Has a compelling, dream-like quality" - Sunday Times. I think that probably sums it up quite well - the trouble is that my logical mind requires linear plots without having to go off on right-brain escapades.
If you read this book, or have already done so, perhaps you could answer these questions:
What did the last Shadow child do to the world?
Who is Sandwalker finallly?
Who is the prisoner in V.R.T.?
To sum up, I prefer novels with a beginning, a middle & an end (this had none of those). This has nothing to do with the fact that it is a fix-up, i.e. short stories or novellas originallly written separately fixed up into one contiguous novel, which has worked brilliantly in such novels as More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon or The Joy Makers by James Gunn. I think GW's works are more in the realms of fantasy than SF. At times I found myself enjoying it, at others realising that I hadn't taken in the last page. Whether this was due to my lack of concentration or the story you will have to decide. I recognise that GW is a talented writer but perhaps he tries to be too clever & poetic.
