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| View Larger Image | An Evil Guest
by Gene Wolfe
| | List Price: | $25.95 | | Price: | $17.13 | | You Save: | $8.82 (34%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 29076 | | Studio: | Tor Books | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 304 | | Publication Date: | September 16, 2008 | | Publisher: | Tor Books |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Lovecraft mets Blade Runner. This is a stand-alone supernatural horror novel with a 30s noir atmosphere. Gene Wolfe can write in whatever genre he wants--and always with superb style and profound depth. Now following his World Fantasy Award winner, Soldier of Sidon, and his stunning Pirate Freedom, Wolfe turns to the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft and the weird science tale of supernatural horror.
Set a hundred years in the future, An Evil Guest is a story of an actress who becomes the lover of both a mysterious sorcerer and private detective, and an even more mysterious and powerful rich man, who has been to the human colony on an alien planet and learned strange things there. Her loyalties are divided--perhaps she loves them both. The detective helps her to release her inner beauty and become a star overnight. And the rich man is the benefactor of a play she stars in. But something is very wrong. Money can be an evil guest, but there are other evils. As Lovecraft said, "That is not dead which can eternal lie." |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 12 reviews)
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Pulp Postmodernism 
I want to start with a Spoiler Alert given the nature of this review. An Evil Guest is a post modern experiment which uses the conventions of a pulp novel to explore how narrative differs from life. In the first 3 chapters, Wolfe introduces a modernized 1930's environment complete with a Doc Savage like character (Gideon Chase) and a beautiful heroine (Cassie Casey). The stage is set for the introduction of the suitably mysterious villian.
Jarring reader expectations, Wolfe uses the next 16 chapters to illustrate real life. The chapters are driven by dialogue which is often confusing and unrelated to plot elements. There is little action except 2 murders which, tellingly, occur off stage. The hero and villian are largely absent and very few fantasy or SF conventions are employed. As in everyday life, much more is expected and inferred than actually occurs.
Wolfe immediately shifts in the last 6 chapters to a story resembling real life in crisis. Fantastic events occur quickly. While there is much action, it is uneffected by any of the protagonists. As in real life crises, Wolfe's characters are all passive recipients of the actions of larger, uncaring forces. Events happen too quickly to have coherence. After the fact, the individual is left to assign meaning and a retroactive narrative sense based on memory alone.
The reader's feeling during all of this is often one of dislocation but I think the reward is worth the effort. Wolfe is exploring how much the reader's expectations shape narrative in a way that differs from the way we experience life. As a result, this is a unique reading experience and provides much food for thought after the book is finished.
In the end, I enjoyed this postmodern deconstructive exercise. I am enough of a traditional reader, however, to miss the fulfillment of standard pulp fare Wolfe seemed to promise in his first 50 pages. Now that he has instructed us with the "real" version, maybe we can hope for an alternate "fictional" narrative using the same beginning. I, for one, would be interested in that story as well.
November 26, 2008 | |
brilliant fun... 
An Evil Guest follows other recent Wolfe novels (Pirate Freedom, Wizard/Knight) that pastiche various fantasy or SF forms of the past. Unlike the others I just mentioned, Evil Guest is broader in ambition and more more true to its (multiplicity of) sources.
At its core, Evil Guest is basically a Hammett or Chandler "mystery" thriller circa 1930. The style, use of dialog, basic milieu, and plotting would feel right at home next to the Big Sleep or Maltese Falcon. Yet we have a completely modern world also (with cell phones, the Internet, etc.), plus 1950's Buck Rodgers space opera elements and some Cthulhu mythologizing thrown in for good measure.
If this sounds dubious, crackpot, haphazard, or just plain impossible... well... it's Gene Wolfe, here. It's not just eminently possible, it all works to build tension and gravity---not knowing who precisely our heroine should trust or whether/how it will work out until the end. The disparate elements and homages (with one exception) play seamlessly together, blending into the whole nicely. (The one exception, for me at least, is the mention of Miskatonic University in the Epilogue: begone, blatant mention!)
If you love Wolfe's "Book of the {whatever} Sun", the Latro stories, and are here for the unreliable narrator, Byzantine plotting, and 57-layers of indecipherable meaning (and you didn't like, say, Pirate Freedom), you might not enjoy this book. The tautness of the genre and the nature of the book will *seem* to deny you those myriad pleasures. I say "seem" because I think he's doing something pretty remarkable without the sundry tricks. I don't love it quite as much as some of Wolfe's earlier works. But I was steadfastly entertained and I liked where this went, indeed indeed.
November 25, 2008 | |
Not to my tastes 
Felt too much like work, rather than leisure. Felt like I had to struggle every paragraph to figure out if the context of the conversation had changed, why it might have changed, how it had changed, etc.
I think there is a line that can be crossed between being cute and trying to make the reader think, and creating a story that is not understandable.
I bought this because it was compared to two books I enjoyed greatly. Castleview and Free Live Free. I would compare this book to another one I tried to read three times and never could get through, Pandora by Holly Hollander (by Wolfe).
November 23, 2008 | |
A completely confusing mess
This review saddens me very much to write. Gene Wolfe is my favorite author and I have read every one of his novels. With Wolfe you expect that his books will often not be straightforward but this book is just completely confusing. I mean seriosly does anyone really have a clue as to what actually happened in this book? This book very much reminds me of Castleview since it brings fantasy elements into everyday life. Castleview is not rated highly for a reason as it is confusing if not entertaining. If you thought Castleview was not good, and I would rate it as one of his least satisfying novels, then you will hate this book. I would not recommend this book to even the most hardcore Gene Wolfe fans of which I am one.
November 14, 2008 | |
An odd one among his many odd books 
So sure I am that I will love them, that I buy all of Gene Wolfe's books in Hardcover as soon as they are released, and have done so for quite some time. Many of his earlier works and short story compilations are among my favorite for this genre. And everything about this book screamed I would love it - a masterful author writes Lovecraftian hard-boiled sci-fi... not something you find everywhere.
I have to admit though, that this story was even more obtuse than expected, and seemed more like an outline of a good story needing completion than the engrossing and ultimately understandable mind-rides I've come to expect from this author. Admittedly, my opinion may change upon a few re-reads, but I usually follow the slippery time sense and wild plotting the first read through, more or less.
I found the main characters here pretty unlikable. I found it hard to care if any of them achieved their goals. And I was a little disappointed at the very minor role the "Cthonic" aspects of this story played... the jacket led me to think there might have been more of that, but it was late and light.... just a subtle touch of the tentacle.
I don't regret picking it up, but new readers to Mr. Wolfe might be advised to start with some of his earlier works. Any of the various "Books of the xxx Sun" are brilliant and highly recommended of course.
I'm probably also ranking it a bit low just because I expect so much from this terrific author. : )
November 02, 2008 | |
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