[Gene Wolfe] has shown a consistent growth in the understanding of his art. The three interconnecting novellas of The Fifth Head of Cerberus are his most multiplex work yet.

One writer who has not neglected cultural variables in his flights of fancy is Gene Wolfe, whose The Fifth Head of Cerberus … draws great power from a deceptively simple device: the original settlers on his twin planets of Sainte Croix and Sainte Anne were French, not American. The societies that they founded are deliciously decadent, in a manner reminiscent of the French Algeria depicted by Camus…. Wolfe's prose is appropriately resonant, hinting at layers of meaning behind each appare...