Tor Books, $15.95

Review by L.D. Meagher

August 3, 1999
Web posted at: 3:43 p.m. EDT (1943 GMT)

(CNN) -- A small band of adventurers, thrown together by happenstance, sets out on a quest for an object of great value and mystical powers. They have only the vaguest of clues about where they will find it. Their journey is fraught with peril, but their travails draw them closer together, each learning to trust the strengths and abilities of the others as they fight their way to their ultimate goal. It's the classic formula of the fantasy/adventure novel. Gene Wolfe has turned it on its head.

To begin with, his novel "Free Live Free" is not set in some far-off, tree-festooned kingdom threatened by an evil sorcerer or dragon. It's set in the middle of a contemporary city. (A blurb on the cover suggests it's Chicago, but it doesn't really matter. Any urban landscape will do.) His small band of adventurers gives new meaning to the term "motley." There's a seedy private investigator, a down-at-the-heels salesman, a dim-witted and obese prostitute, and a Gypsy witch.

They all answer an ad promising rent-free accommodations in a drafty old house if they help the owner fend off the local government's attempts to tear it down. There's something odd about the owner, Ben Free. He mentions to each of his tenants that something valuable is hidden in a wall, presumably somewhere in the house. That's what he's really trying to protect.

When the police and the wrecking ball arrive, the four tenants do what they can, but their efforts are futile -- if highly entertaining. In the end, the wrecking ball has its way, and they are back on the street. In the confusion, Ben Free disappears. The tenants regroup at a nearby hotel and plot ways to unearth Free's treasure. What ensues is a comic adventure -- improbably played out within the walls of a mental hospital -- which rivals the Marx Brothers for sheer manic intensity.

The story becomes more outrageous with each turn of the page. Yet Wolfe maintains a deadpan style that belies the silliness being described. Wolfe has long been considered one of the most literate purveyors of science fiction. "Free Live Free" offers ample ammunition to support that argument.

"Slowly, she vanished," he writes of the witch, Madame Serpentina. "There was no shimmer, and her disappearance was not sudden like the burst of a soap bubble, nor did she disperse like smoke or melt like the ferns of frost on a windowpane. She was and was not, with between the two a moment, a knife edge of time, when she was and was not."

Wolfe's mastery of the written word keeps "Free Live Free" from careening into the realm of burlesque. The characters may be out of control, but the author is not. Each turn in the tangled plot is crisply realized, and fleshed out with descriptions that can dazzle the mind's eye. "A little new snow had fallen; the most recent automobiles had left twining, opalescent tracks in it like the trails of arctic pythons."

So onward they plunge, these four inept adventurers. Each must face his or her central weakness -- greed or gluttony or lust or desire for the eternal. Each faces a trial -- and each fails. The failures reveal that what has appeared to be a darkly funny urban fantasy is, in fact, a twisted science fiction story. It may be one twist too many. The ending seems a trifle contrived, especially for such an inventive author. It is more than a trifle confusing. In this reissue of the novel (first published in the mid-1980s) there's an appendix intended to untangle some of the more serpentine elements of the plot. While it may help the reader understand what happens at the end of the book, it is also a tacit admission that the ending is hard to understand.

And that is a shame. For more than 350 pages, Wolfe draws the reader along with the promise that once the quest is complete, all will be made clear. When it isn't, the reader has a right to feel a bit cheated. The author nearly redeems himself with a one-page epilogue that almost -- but not quite -- fulfills the promise.

Despite its flaws, "Free Live Free" is filled with ingenious invention and masterful writing. It helps enhance the reputation of Gene Wolfe as one of science fiction's pre-eminent novelists.

L.D. Meagher is a senior writer at CNN Headline News. He has worked in broadcasting for 30 years.