Fifth Head Of Cerberus

Although it doesn't quite reach the heights of his later works such as The Book of the New Sun, all Wolfe's main preoccupations and literary trickery are already in place here. As with so much of his work, themes of self and other; identity and difference; real and unreal; human and non-human; the arbitrariness of such distinctions and the fluidity of their boundaries are at the heart of this. Narratively, there's the familiar Wolfe ambiguity, leaving gaps and dropping subtle clues. If you like this chances are you'll like the rest of Wolfe's work, if not, not.