Utopias and Europe

don't need to tell you that the new Gene Wolfe novel, Soldier of Sidon, is wonderful, do I? Of course not. But I'm going to anyway.

Latro, or Lucius the Roman as Wolfe has finally admitted he should really be known, is in Egypt. This is a fine place for him to be. After all, if one is blessed with the ability to see the gods, what better place to go. Egypt, it sometimes seems, has more gods than people. And dying pharaohs add to their number all the time. There will be plenty of new people for Latro to meet.

Every blessing, of course, has its downside. Latro, as we should all know by now, is cursed with an inability to remember any of his life before he last slept. At some time in the past he took a head wound that damaged part of his brain. Or at least that is the physical manifestation of the curse laid upon him. Now he must write every day in a scroll he carries with him, so that he can remember the next morning who he is traveling with, who his friends are, and who he has to be wary of.

We are, it appears, in the days of the Great King Xerxes, Lord of All Persia and many lands besides. Even Egypt has fallen beneath his sway. Latro is traveling in the company of his friend Muslak, a Phoenician sailor. The Persian satrap has hired Muslak and his boat to explore south along the Nile to find out what they can about Nubia and the other lands there of which the Egyptians know much but the Persians little. There is a rumor of gold mines. The expedition has other members too, including a priest of Set whose introduction Robert E. Howard would have been proud of.