Soldier of the Mist

This is one of those books that people seem to love or hate. Interestingly, I found myself somewhere in the middle. I liked the conceit, a "barbarian" soldier in ancient Greece with short term memory loss searching the countryside for healing by the Great Mother. Besides the memory loss, he can see and interact with gods and demigods. What I didn't like was that Wolfe doesn't use any of the names of the places and gods that we are familiar with. I don't know if it was part of the conceit of memory loss, or if it was a style choice, but it made it difficult to follow. Still, I enjoyed a lot of it though I was also often confused. This book was nominated for the 1987 Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. I read it because the third book in the series won the WFA and so is part of my personal challenge to read all the WFA winners.

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