I fucking hate Severian. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. These books are a masterpiece.

Imagine being told a story by an old bastard (read: king). He is primarily motivated to tell you this story to build his own mythos, insisting upon his righteousness and extreme (almost superhuman) clarity of memory. He does not particularly care if you understand what’s going on, often telling you the identity of a character several pages into a conversation with them. Or not. He’s also lying to you. Or himself? It’s frequently impossible to tell, and the setting of a future so far the Earth is now a red giant and we’ve circled back around to make the whole “technology indistinguishable from magic” thing entirely literal, just makes this unlike any other reading experience.

Look, I think it would be very easy to criticize this book for it’s slightly out-of-date “men are like this” and “women are like this” plot devices, but I simply don’t have the heart. Terry Pratchett is beloved for a reason: he is deeply funny, incisive, and his writing has a lively, joyful quality that’s fucking infectious. Made me laugh out loud at a rate of once per five pages. Granny Weatherwax, I love you.