[Sword of the Lictor is the third volume of the Book of the New Sun tetralogy] and it is a shattering tour de force. Those readers who have somehow avoided the previous two episodes in this elegant, comic, searing Bildungsroman of a deeply sympathetic young torturer, have done themselves an unconscionable disservice. (p. 16)

The tetralogy folds out like one of those endless Chinese wallets, always different, always seamless, always one…. To summarize [Sword of the Lictor] is absurd, but images of wonder and weirdness linger long in the memory: the monstrous alzabo, half vampire, half soul eater; the mad two-headed king; vast statues like the Memnons of myth whose arms follow the sunlight and out of whose eyeballs one can gaze upon vistas of curious terrain. And throughout the work there is the language: acerbic, sensuous, intricate. [Wolfe] has created a language of startling alienness for the tetralogy...