• [essay on the place names in Latro in the Mist] (https://ultan.org.uk/place-names-in-gene-wolfes-soldier-of-the-mist/)

Finished Soldier in the Mist on 2025-06-18, maybe I’ll get to Soldier of Arete eventually.

There are some great moments in Soldier in the Mist but the main POV character’s Wolfian peculiarities, memory loss and being able to see gods, aren’t that interesting on the page.

Compared to Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and Wizard Knight duologies, Latro in the Mist falls flat because of Latro’s inability to remember anything. This changes slightly by the end of the first book and I would hope that the second book would be better than the first as Latro begins to remember everything he’s forgotten.

It’s interesting that in the first few pages of Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, Severian claims to have “perfect memory” and then many years later Wolfe goes in the complete opposite direction and creates a POV character with no long-term memory, who gradually regains some semblance of it throughout their journey.

Theoretically, interesting. In practice, not as interesting as I hoped it would be.

I wish I liked it more than I do. Considering how in love I am with Greek mythology and Gene Wolfe’s work broadly, it’s surprising how difficult it was for me to read through Soldier in the Mist.