There Are Doors is Gene Wolfe’s ver­sion of the ancient Indo-​European leg­end of the Goddess/​Queen of the Wood and the Horned King. Of all the var­i­ous ver­sions I’ve read of this story, Wolfe’s def­i­nitely has the most inter­est­ing and nuanced por­trayal of the these fig­ures. In this iter­a­tion the rela­tion­ship between The Wood and The World is described in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways, as reflec­tion, fre­quency, and per­haps most strongly as Sea and Land. Mr. Green [Horned King] is in search of Lara/​Lora/​Marcella/​Tina [The God­dess] through both worlds. Once a per­son from The Wood has met a per­son from The World, doors take on a spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance and act as por­tals between the two areas. I’m used to read­ing about the God­dess as a cold-​hearted and puis­sant woman who is mourn­ing the loss of her lover, usu­ally with­out explain­ing why is this way. Wolfe adds sub­stance to her dis­tant nature by mak­ing her the only immor­tal in either world, and by adding a twist that every man from The Wood who has sex dies imme­di­ately after, like drones in a bee colony. When the Queen seeks love she has to go to The World, but also has to leave her lover after­ward. So her cold­ness is a way for her to pro­tect her­self from the pain, As she takes other lovers, each of the pre­vi­ous ones becomes a bit sar­don­ically a cuck­olded ver­sion of the Horned King. We find that she does indeed love all of her Kings, and ones that are per­sis­tent enough to pur­sue her and catch her are allowed to serve her. The ser­vice isn’t sub­servience, but an expres­sion of love.

Gene Wolfe is rapidly becom­ing one of my favorite authors. His books move slowly and appear to jump around until sud­denly the pieces fall into place and run smoothly and rapidly to a con­clu­sion. His great­est strength seems to be his abil­ity to lace a story with enough ambi­gu­ity that uncer­tainty never really leaves you until the last page, if then. Mr. Green is in and out of men­tal hos­pi­tals through­out the novel, so we’re not sure if the world through his eyes is true or not. The type of sto­ry­telling isn’t like Peace, but the doubt is ever present. I’m start­ing to round up any­thing I can find by him.