Books › Soldier of Sidon
Soldier of Sidon
First published 2006 · 320 pages
A sun-drenched, disorienting journey down the Nile where gods walk among mortals and every sunrise erases the past.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like waking up in a sun-baked, mythic antiquity with only a fragmented journal to guide you. Because the narrator loses his memory every time he sleeps, the narrative takes on a uniquely meandering, dreamlike quality. You are locked entirely in his immediate present, forced to piece together the political intrigues and divine encounters of ancient Egypt alongside him. The prose is deceptively simple, written with the earnest, straightforward voice of a soldier, yet it hides a labyrinth of historical and mythological complexity. It is a deeply disorienting but rewarding experience, steeped in a melancholic atmosphere. This is a book for patient readers who love puzzle-box narratives, unreliable narrators, and the poignant tragedy of a mind constantly trying to rebuild itself.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- disorienting
- sun-baked
- mythic
- Tone
- earnest
- melancholic
- observant
- detached
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- fragility of memory · the divine in the mundane · constructing identity · cultural displacement
- The writing
- Deceptively straightforward and unadorned, the journal-entry prose masks a labyrinth of historical detail and mythological depth.
- The arc
- The narrative drifts through a haze of forgotten yesterdays, anchoring the reader in the poignant, immediate struggle to forge an identity out of fragmented daily records.
- Who it's for
- Patient readers who delight in unreliable narrators, historical puzzles, and fantasy that treats ancient gods as tangible, terrifying realities.
Content notes
- memory loss
- ancient warfare
- slavery
- violence
About the book
"Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story's hold on readers is powerful indeed. The two previous novels, combined in Latro in the Mist (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete), are generally considered classics of contemporary fantasy. At last we have a new book." "Latro now finds himself in Egypt, a land of singing girls, of spiteful and conniving deities, of mysterious dangers. Without his memory, he is unsure of everything, except for his desire to be free of the curse that causes him to forget." "The visions Gene Wolfe conjures of the wonders of Egypt and of the adventures of Latro as he and his companions journey south up the great Nile into unknown and legendary territory are truly unique and compelling."--BOOK JACKET.
Description from Open Library.
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