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    Cover of On Blue's waters

    On Blue's waters

    Gene Wolfe · 1999

    Space hero Horn battles shapeshifting vampires who want to use humans as cattle. It happens on planet Blue where Horn is searching for the planet's missing leader. First volume in a trilogy.

    Science FictionFiction & Literature
    Open LibraryAmazon
    Stats for nerds
    3recommend
    4mentions
    3people
    2019–2021years
    100% recommend

    Mentions per year

    201920202021

    What Hacker News says

    1. jonnycomputerJan 2021
      I read his "On Blue's Waters", without having read anything else of his before. A lot of the references in the book were completely mysterious to me (but would not have been had I read Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun.

      But I loved it.

      And I didn't mind that the references were mysterious to me. It added to the feeling of the book, actually, which is very melancholic, and sort of follows the Odysseus template.

      Couldn't recommend the book more.

      thread
    2. jonnycomputerJan 2021
      I do not think that the prose in On Blue's Waters was drab; I loved it. The sequels though were quite forgettable.
      thread
    3. your-nannyApr 2019
      On Blue's Waters is a masterpiece. The narrative structure is temporally very complex, but coherent, and alternates between wistful contemplation of the past by the protagonist (often times about things that have not yet happened yet), and and an account of that protagonist's search for Silk. On the whole it is a dream like experience.
      thread
    4. Mediterraneo10Apr 2019
      I found the first-person narration of On Blue’s Waters emotionally devastating. Wolfe endowed that narrator with so much pain, bitterness, regret, and loss. I got On Blue’s Waters as soon as it came out and was eager for the following volumes, but I must admit that the rest of that trilogy really disappointed me, namely: 1) Wolfe’s putting characters’ dialogue in annoying thick dialect of various sorts, 2) mapping the distant planet’s various cultures to silly ethnic stereotypes of our planet’s Italians, Indians, and Dutch, and 3) gratuitously bringing the action back to The Book of the New Sun which didn’t add much to the plot and felt like a cheap commercial tie-in.
      thread

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