The Fifth Head of Cerberus

This was a hard book to read and a tough one to rate. The prose is masterful. No word seems randomly picked. The story and the form however, are really complex. The book is a collection of three novellas that take place on the twin worlds of St. Anne and St. Croix. There is a common character in the three stories. Dr. Marsch is an anthropologist who is a minor character in the first, the writer of the second, and the main character of the third. The stories seem unrelated until well into the third novella when things start to tie together. It should be noted that the first story was published first. Wolfe's publisher then commissioned him to write two more related novellas so it could be published as a whole book. This result is this heady mix of unreliable narrators, hallucinatory journeys, and what seems to be intentional obfuscation to create a powerful but difficult experience.

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