Customer Reviews

The Knight: Book One of the Wizard Knight

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I am a fantasy fan, but one of my complaints about the genre is that what you find usually borders on two extremes. Either a novel is utterly derivative and full of cliche, shoddy writing, and the exact same plot filled with different names, or it is so high minded and literary that it is barely understandable. You either get "cheap thrills" (Robert Jordan) or art house fantasy (China Mieville). You rarely get the novel that is well written and truly enjoyable. But when you do get it (a la George RR Martin,) You get something special.

The Knight is that something special. With The Knight Gene Wolfe has finally taken all his talent, skill, and potential, and he has given us an accesible novel that is brilliantly done. The whole key to this hinges on the protagonist. Able is a young teenage boy who finds himself with the body of a true warrior. Able is a likeable hero with all the flaws of a teenage boy, yet at the same time he is basically a good kid. The story of Able's quest to be a Knight is well written, endearing, and filled with timeless value. It trancends being a story about Able and becomes a story about honor.

You have a strong main character. There are strong side characters. The pacing of the plot is brisk and moves at a nice clip. There are moments of humor and moments of horror. But throught it all Able's determintation to be a noble knight stands as the center of a great story.

There are some quibbles. You end the book still not really knowing why any of this has happened. There are far too many questions left unanswered. But this is classic Wolfe and this is what second volumes are for.

All in all a tremendous novel. If you are a fan of fantasy you need to read this book. Wolfe proves that talent makes the tale and sometimes the old stories are the ones worth reading (and writing.) Outstanding.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS:

Ask yourself, when was the last time you wanted to go back and re-read a book while still in the middle of your initial reading? Most fantasy books can be so good that you don't want to put them down. You keep turning the pages into the wee hours of the night hoping to find out if Frodo makes it to Mount Doom or if Harry defeats Lord Voldemort. These books are so good you want to revisit them again and again, each time discovering something new and delightful within the familiar journey. But with this book, it isn't so much the destination, but the journey itself. Yeah, Able will probably get to his sword eventually, but what the heck just happened in that last chapter? You have some idea of what just happened if you were paying attention, but Wolfe has a way of destroying your assumptions. "Did I just read what I thought I read?" you continually will ask yourself. It will not be uncommon for you to begin chapters over again immediately upon finishing them. You will be compelled to do this. Only the most well-crafted, densely-layered and tantalizing book could accomplish such a feat. Wolfe has already established himself as a master of this type of writing. With The Knight he takes his skills to the next level by creating an intriguing page-turner without sacrificing one whit of his noted literary engineering.

If you are a fan of the fantasy genre, then this book also will provide you with some delightful new takes on some old ideas. Wolfe dips his imagination into the deep pool of Norse mythology complete with its gratuitously violent legends and characters. His giants are more menacing than the slow-witted, ham-fisted oafs we have come to expect from Disney films and Cartoon Network. Not a one utters "fee, fi, fo, fum!" They are too busy engaging in tactical sneak attack maneuvers to thwart an advancing army or sacking and pillaging a small town. We also catch lush glimpses of Valhalla, Odin and the Valkyrie. These characters have not been Xena-tized for your protection. They are presented in pure Nordic tradition, glorious, grand violent warts and all.

This is a rich, sumptuous book that just begs to be devoured. We absolutely loved it.

WHY YOU SHOULD PASS:

While arguably one of his most straightforward and accessible works, The Knight is still brimming with Wolfe's unique brand of literary gamesmanship. He again employs the "unreliable narrator" device in order to tell his tale. While not a liar like Severian nor an apologist like Horn, Able is just too young and naive to perceive the events happening in the world around him. His attempts to explain complex, metaphysical events are obtuse at best leaving the reader to wonder what exactly is going on. He does not possess the skills necessary to translate his experience into something we can identify with. He more or less reports exactly what he sees without providing any sort of cultural context. Things happen because Able says they do and not because of any logical construct. Imagine a character seeing a UFO and describing it as "this thing flying around" and you get some idea of Able's limited narrative abilities. This might be a realistic approach to writing a book in the voice of a young boy, but after a few chapters of this, a reader may find themselves longing for just a hint of dramatic irony. They may also wonder why they can't just pick up a book by Gene Wolfe actually written by Gene Wolfe and not a simulacrum of a faulty translator. If this type of mind teaser does not appeal to you, then it is best to stay out of Wolfe's sandbox. He owns all the pails and shovels and he is not big on sharing.

I'll start off this review by saying I'm biased, Wolfe is my favorite writer and his Book of the New Sun is my all time favorite novel. This is typically good Gene Wolfe. If you like Wolfe, don't even bother reading the reviews, just go get it. If your one of those people who isn't sure they will like his work or felt his work was overly complicated in the past, this is a good place to start. Wolfe's language is cleaner and easier to read then the Sun Novels, and I tend to feel it reads and plots more like the Soldier Novels. Wolfe makes use of an unreliable narrator as he does often; I personally find unreliable narrators can really make a story. However, I find that sometimes readers struggle with this concept, that not everything the narrator is saying is entirely the truth or the whole story. The amount of fantasy that piles into the bookstores that resemble something of a soup opera than a harrowing tale staggers my mind. The theme of a knight in a fantasy world is surely not a new concept, but execution is the key. I think execution is where this book really shines; Wolfe takes the typical and makes it Fresh. The only flaw is that now I have to wait for the follow up. Write Faster Gene Wolfe!!!

This is the third book by Gene Wolfe that I have read. The first two were Soldier of the Mists and Soldier of Arete. I am a fan of medieval literature so I picked up the Knight to abate my curiosity of whether Gene Wolfe would do for it what he did for Greek histories in the aforementioned books.

If you are already a fan of Gene Wolfe, you do not need me to sing its praises. If on the other hand, you are new to him, then you are probably doing the same thing I do, skim through the reviews to see whether this book will be interesting to you.

I did enjoy this book but I feel that a second reading will be beneficial. This is not a quick and easy read. The narrator of The Knight does not always write things in an easy to understand fashion. He skips around. He often neglects to mention key points until after they have occured. Characters appear and disappear without warning. For example, near the end of the book, we discover that Sir Able's servant, Pouk, is travelling with a woman. It is only much later that we discover that the woman is a girl mentioned in the first third of the book. Furthermore, Able mentions it casually in passing as if he has known it for some time but has simply neglected to tell us.

Also, Able does not always behave heroically. Yes, he is honest and honorable, however, when he first is transformed into a man, I found it difficult to see him as more than a bully. Able's treatment of the young Touk is less than stellar.

All of that being said though, I find myself wondering whether these were conscious choices on the part of Gene Wolfe. The world of Mythgarthr is fascinating and its roots in Norse Mythology are obvious despite the scattered accounts from Able. The journey to transform from boy to man is used throughout literature and yet rarely is it done in such a way that you can truly see the change in thought processes like you do in this book.

I look forward to my second reading and I shall await the sequel with interest.

I am a huge fan of Gene Wolfe. His Book of the New Sun is one of the most brilliant reads I have ever experienced: beautiful writing, a fully-realized fantasy world, epic proportions, amazing characters, etc. etc.

The Wizard-Knight is Wolfe lite. Though Able's quest parallels that of Severian (the Dickensian boy-becomes-man theme), the result this time falls flat. The book takes the form of a letter written from the first-person perspective of an adolescent, slightly slow boy from modern America who is transported to a fantasy world.

The problem is that not many of us can write well at that age, and the beautiful prose that Wolfe's character Severian wrote in Book of the New Sun is replaced by the rather drab writing of Able.

The plot too is a little lighter than that of The New Sun. Whereas Severian transversed an imaginative universe in a tale of epic, mythic proportions, Able's journey does not seem to stray too often from the fantasy worlds we have all read about time and time again.

However, the plot is fun, and there are plenty of interesting characters whom Able meets along the way. There are moments of Wolfeish brilliance, though they are fewer and farther between than The New Sun. Because of the main charater's limited linguistic abilities, the book is also an easy, fast read.

I would recommend this book to young adults or die-hard Wolfe fans. Were it not for the sexual imagery, I wouldn't hesitate to call it suitable for children, even. But for someone coming to Wolfe for the first time, don't try this one (yet). The Book of the New Sun is a much more compelling, difficult and rewarding read.

I read my first Gene Wolfe novel almost a year and a half ago. The collected (book club) edition of "Book of the New Sun" had sat collecting dust on my shelves for at least a year before I ever picked it up. I had been looking for new novel or series of novels to read after being disappointed with the newest release of one of the pulp-fiction fantasy epics that seem to be all too common these days. After reading the first page of New Sun, I knew I was hooked. I subsequently read all of Wolfe's Briah Cycle, and started going through his other novels and stories. I was therefore extremely excited when I first heard about Wolfe's new Wizard Knight series.

"The Knight" is suffused with the depth, intelligence, and originality that has come to characterize all of Wolfe's work. The device of plucking someone from modern times and setting them in a strange medieval world has been used since before fantasy and science-fiction were even recognized sub-genres of fiction. In many authors' hands, this device can be ineffectual and tedious. But the style and grace with which Wolfe handles his story make it rise above what would be expected from any other author. While "The Knight" is certainly more straightfoward and accessible than Wolfe's Sun or Latro books, it is still full of his signature enigmas, misdirection, and revelations.

Looking across the breadth of modern fantasy today (especially epic fantasy), it becomes clear that most fantasy novels are suffering from the inbreeding that has resulted from too few new ideas being introduced and far too many old ideas being recycled and respun. Most fantasy authors are either unconciously retreading the path that Tolkien forged or conciously afraid to deviate too far from it. Even worse, many novels are beginning to recycle ideas from second and third generation Tolkien knock-offs -- the "classics" <read sarcasm here> of the late eighties and early nineties. Gene Wolfe does not fall prey to these vices. While his novels do have identifiable influences (Tolkien certainly being among them for this novel), he does not rely on so fallow a field from which to draw his ideas and themes.

The tone of "The Knight" is very different from the tone of all of Wolfe's Sun books. This is partly due to the diffence between its narrator and the narrators from Wolfe's Briah Cycle. The maturity of the narrators in the Sun novels increases with each series. Severian (New Sun) is one of my favorite protagonists of all time, but looking back at the four New Sun books (five including Urth), his behavior is often pretty juvenile. Patera Silk (Long Sun) is one of the most wholly moral characters ever created, but he is also fairly naive. It is only with Horn/Silk in the Short Sun series that Wolfe's narrator has finally grown into a mature adult.

In the Knight, Wolfe's narrator is a child, and maintains a child's perspective and attitude throughout the novel, despite being miraculously transformed physically into an adult of Herculean proportions near its beginning. Wolfe uses this device to maximum effect as our young hero progresses through a series of picaresque adventures common to Wolfe's novels. His actions and observations as he progresses through, above, and below the world of Mythgathr are sometimes comical and often unexpectedly insightful. This may be the first novel that Wolfe has written that could be enjoyed equally by adults and young adults with equal satisfaction (but for very different reasons).

While I cannot personally compare Wizard Knight series to Wolfe's seminal Sun books until I have read it's conclusion, "The Knight" is good Gene Wolfe, and as another reviewer said earlier, much more really doesn't need to be said.

I loved THE KNIGHT.

This may seem hardly surprising, given my well-documented worship of Wolfe's oeuvre, but the truth is that my expectations had been lower than usual this time around because I honestly wasn't sure about the choice of subject matter. Consider: the book follows a young teenage boy from present-day America who wanders into the woods and emerges in a strange mystical otherworld, and after being enchanted by a fairy queen is transformed into a adult man of Schwarzenegger-like proportions. Upon reading the synopsis, I wondered if THE KNIGHT would be the book that heralded the decline of Wolfe's powers. But that was silly of me, and I should have had more faith, because I can now say with almost perfect certainty that THE KNIGHT is not going to be at all what you'd expect.

The book reuses a lot of Wolfe's favorite tropes, especially the trick of the unreliable narrator and the picaresque narrative structure. In THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, Severian had perfect memory but lied to the reader to make himself sound better. In SOLDIER OF THE MIST, Latro tried to be honest with the reader but was cursed by Hera to forget everything that happened more than twelve hours previous. Here in THE KNIGHT, the narrator, who assumes the knightly name Sir Able of the High Heart long before he's earned a claim to the title, is unreliable because he has the mind of a pubescent boy and doesn't always know what's going on around him. His adventures seem unfocused, guided only by auctorial caprice, with characters and plot threads appearing and disappearing seemingly at random - but put the emphasis in both those clauses on *seem*, because it's a Wolfe novel, which means that everything is connected to everything else with Swiss-watch precision; it's just that the onus is on the intelligent reader to parse the plot and figure out what's really going on, because the truth is hinted at only obliquely. Though much will not be apparent until the second book, the careful reader will find his effort amply rewarded with fresh insights into the characters, the plot, and the world.

It's obvious that with the book Wolfe is consciously returning to fantasy as it was before Tolkien and his legions of imitators; Wolfe's taking it back to Malory and Lord Dunsany and the other old masters of fantastic fiction, both in terms of form (the dreamlike, hallucinatory progression of events) and content (the magical creatures have more to do with Norse and Celtic myths than standard-issue generic elves, dwarves, and dragons). The setting Wolfe creates, a place called Mythgarthr, is fascinating: heavily influenced by the Norse view of the world, Wolfe posits a seven-layered reality where vertical travel (up a mountain, for instance, or down to the bottom of the ocean) can transport a person from one world to the next. In an oblique way, Wolfe is working along the same lines as authors like George R.R. Martin or China Mieville; it's just that he's trying to reform the fantasy genre by looking to its mythological roots rather than turning to real-life history (Martin) or importing ideas from horror and SF (Mieville).

It's been three days since I finished "The Knight," and I miss it. I miss hearing the music of its language. I miss seeing the world it creates.

"The Knight" is Wolfe's fastest paced and most accessible book. There are sixty nine chapters, in each of which at least four or five things happen: that adds up to hundreds of events--battles, revelations, miracles, surprises (compare to heroic fantasies at twice the length in which not a single thing happens.) Elves and angels, giants and princesses, dragons and knights appear in a transfigured form, as if before you saw them through a glass darkly, and now, in this book, as they really are. All this is described in sentences like diamonds: so clear and hard-edged, they sparkle; but beware--any one can open up into a hall of mirrors or a chasm.

Gene Wolfe writes fantasy with the logic and rigor of science fiction and the mystery and color of magical realism. The vertically stacked universe of "The Knight" has an antecedent in Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep;" the proliferation of characters, disguises and intrigues recalls the myth-based thrillers of Tim Powers. But the vastness, the speed, the sheer beauty of Wolfe's book can only be compared to epic poetry: the medieval dream visions of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "The Pearl," or the post-modern action-adventure of Les Murray's "Freddy Neptune."

Or "Harry Potter." Actually, it's not at all like "Harry Potter," but like "Harry Potter" should have been. In both, a young protagonist from the modern world enters a fantasy universe where places and creatures have evocative names. But there, the similarity ends.

The Valfather is a man from Skai. When a dragon opens its mouth, you see a person's face.

If that means anything to you, you have to read this book.

I've been a Wolfe fan for years, and in my various dialogues with other Sci-Fi readers, I've come across people who either slaver over Wolfe's genius or people who think his stuff is schizoid and overcomplicated. I don't mean to sound like an elitist or anything, but people who've read Wolfe and don't like it obviously aren't too into think-ology. If Wolfe books, especially *The Knight* seem like a random stream of incomprehensible events, please run away and read Robert Jordan or something.

*The Knight* is written on a deceptively simple level. Unlike some other Wolfe series, particularly New Sun and Long Sun, the style and vocabulary is extremely accessible. This is good because the sheer complexity and uniqueness of the story's world require you to constantly shuffle the pieces to see how everything fits together, and that requires a lot of concentration (so you can't sit there wondering what an archon or palestra or oubliette is).

Unlike the grim seriousness of some other Wolfe titles, *The Knight* has quite a bit of humor and fun, from the carefree mischief of the aelves to the often-ridiculous situations that able finds himself in through foolishness, conspiracy, or pure dumb luck. For instance, when the captain of the ship that Able wants to travel on won't give Able his personal bunk, Able grabs him by the ankle and dangles him out the window, making a mortal enemy on the spot.

So, yeah, I give this book ***** stars. It manages to take a hackneyed concept and make it breathtakingly original. It takes a normally insipid genre and makes it chromatic. If you can struggle through Tolkein but you can't read this, then there's something seriously wrong. Read it! Buy it now!

I had my fill of elves and dwarves and magic swords thirty years ago, and have found most high fantasy published in the recent glut of same to have little to say, take too many pages not to say it, and be all too inclined to be interchangeable with 99% of the others. But when Gene Wolfe takes on a genre he doesn't do the expected thing. Under the spell of his artistry Aelf queens, dragons, and enchanted swords shed their tired, cliché images and become fresh and new and meaningful again, and the overworked quarters of high fantasy receive visitors from some very unusual places, to say the least.

What most of the negative reviewers in these pages seem to have missed is that The Knight is an epistolary novel: it's one long letter to the protagonist's brother back in our world -- a world to which he will almost certainly never return. Our hero is probably all of 16 years old as he writes this letter. He writes simply and honestly. He skips parts, goes back and fills in, disposes of what might have been long scenes in a sentence or two. In other words he does what most of us do when writing a letter: he doesn't recount every iota of information. By choosing this form, Wolfe makes us work for our literary supper quite a bit harder, but once you get into the rhythm of the prose and the undeniable lure of the story, that shouldn't slow you down a bit.

I can't recommend this highly enough for readers mature enough to comprehend it.