I might doubt your doubt somewhat. As often with Gene Wolfe, it's not clear to me that it is his powers which have waned, or that it is my own folly in not risi

I might doubt your doubt somewhat. As often with Gene Wolfe, it's not clear to me that it is his powers which have waned, or that it is my own folly in not rising to the challenge of the puzzle. There's so very often something lurking in the shadows after all, and (in my incomplete experience) his works always benefit from a re-read. For one more recent work with more workaday prose, The Sorcerer's House, it helps to follow a 'superfan' and consider it a rewriting of the lamia of Corinth. There certainly is so much more there than meets the eye; as dense as BoTNS. I find it more fruitful to take the ostensible lack of clues to figure out the 'real' deal as challenge for us (or the braver readers of the future) to rise up to. There's plenty good in late Wolfe, just deeper hidden, perhaps.