In retrospect, it wasn’t a good idea to start the whole “a book in a week” thing with this novel. For a non-native English speaker the language is rather difficult, as Gene Wolfe seems to favor complicated sentences and obscure vocabulary. I’ll just say that you’ll get more out of this book if you know a couple of European languages, preferably one in use today and at least one that is extinct.

The book starts slowly and ends abruptly, describing the first steps of what looks like a Campbellian journey. I’ll not bother retelling the story, as Wikipedia does a good job of that, I’ll just say that it looks like a series of plot hooks, one of which is resolved in a twist, which leaves the rest of them to be exploited in the following books of the cycle. That is why I can’t really tell if the story is well executed, one thing I can say for sure is that I’m not intrigued enough to read further.

What I liked about ‘The Shadow…’ is its portrayal of the world, which is surreal and weirdly beautiful, and the style of its dialogues. The latter is rather bad if you expect believable life-like characters that don’t all speak as if participating in a Socratic dialogue, but it is clever and witty if you’re willing to suspend the disbelief.

All in all, ‘The Shadow…’ is by no means a bad book, and it leaves me a bit ashamed that I cannot commit to reading the whole cycle at the moment. I will probably pick it up later when I am less lazy and hopefully wiser than I am now.