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Hello and welcome! My name is Emma (I write fantasy under the name E. M. Epps). This blog features my Two-Paragraph Book Reviews. One paragraph from me. One from the book. Here's why I keep it short.

You are here: Home > Review: “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” by Gene Wolfe
TheFifthHeadOfCerberus

Review: “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” by Gene Wolfe

Image Emma 9 February 2017

Thumbs up for The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe. Science fiction.

One of those books during the reading of which I promise myself I will go in search of analysis to see if I have missed something. In this case, an afterword (by Pamela Sargent) is handily provided, reassuring me that no, I did not miss anything: the ambiguity of The Fifth Head is intentional and not due to my stupidity. If you are the kind of reader who will be disturbed by the fact that you’ll never know what “really” happened, you should skip this. If, however, you are able to accept the ambiguity and wallow happily in the fascinating worldbuilding and dense, beautiful, almost-Victorian prose, you will be rewarded.

And all this time the dead man at the wheel was talking to me. His head hung limply, as though his neck were broken, and the jerkings of the wheel he held, as big waves struck the rudder, sent it from one shoulder to the other, or back to stare at the sky, or down. But he continued to speak, and the few words I caught suggested that he was lecturing upon an ethical theory whose postulates seemed even to him doubtful. I felt a dread of hearing this talk and tried to keep myself as much as possible toward the bow, but the wind at times carried the words to me with great clarity, and whenever I looked up from my work I found myself much nearer the stern sometimes in fact almost touching the dead steersman, than I had supposed.

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Cold Sandwiches and All: A Romantic Comedy

Mrs. Fromish's Guests

The Interpreter's Tale: A Word with Too Many Meanings

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You Made My Heart a Hunter

To Hell and Back Again

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E. M. Epps is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. (That's what they tell me I have to say. This is not a lucrative venture, but if you do decide you want to read one of the books I link to, and your neighborhood bookstore hasn't got it, then it would be simply lovely if you were to go to Amazon via one of my links. That may get me 10c or so and then if a bunch of you do that maybe I would get myself a cup of tea or something like that. If you're feeling nice.)

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