The Sword of the Lictor was published by Timescape Books in 1982, and it is often cited as the finest single volume of The Book of the New Sun — the point at which Wolfe’s narrative achieves its greatest intensity and clarity.
Severian has reached Thrax, the city where he is to serve as lictor (executioner), but he cannot sustain the role. He frees a prisoner — repeating the act of compassion that first exiled him — and flees into the mountains with a young boy named Little Severian. The mountain journey that follows is the emotional and philosophical center of the series: stripped of companions, social role, and purpose, Severian is forced to confront what he is.
The encounters in the mountains are among the most memorable in science fiction. The alzabo — a creature that consumes the dead and absorbs their memories, so that its prey speaks through it in their own voices — raises terrifying questions about the nature of identity and the meaning of death. Baldanders, the giant who inhabits a castle on a lake, is a human being who has chosen to grow without limit, sacrificing his humanity for power and knowledge. The undines — enormous female figures who inhabit the lakes and rivers of Urth — represent a nature older and more powerful than any human civilization.
Wolfe’s prose in this volume reaches its highest pitch: spare, precise, and haunted by implications that unfold across multiple readings. The death of Little Severian — sudden, violent, and narrated with devastating restraint — is one of the most affecting passages in modern science fiction.
Collecting The Sword of the Lictor
First edition (Timescape Books, New York, 1982): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- Without jacket: $15–$40