1981: The Shadow Of The Torturer

'The Shadow of the Torturer' is the first book in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun tetralogy. Narrated by Severian, a member of the Guild of Torturers, the story follows his adventures as he is cast out for showing mercy to a deserving client. The setting for the story is Earth (or Urth) in the far future where civilization has regressed, and the sun is red and dying. Severian is an outstanding young apprentice in the Torturer's guild. He falls for a beautiful prisoner and is forced to leave his lifelong home to seek his destiny, in the first volume of Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series. Why it's on the list While the plot is in many ways pretty ordinary, there are plenty of unusual touches that take this fantasy beyond the run of the mill. Wolfe's language helps create the other-worldly locale for his story, and he often employs archaic or invented words to describe objects that are common enough on "Urth", but are unfamiliar to us. Almost every other page describes some incredible wonder.