The Knight (The Wizard Knight, Book 1) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "You must have stopped wondering what happened to me a long time ago; I know it has been many years..." (more)
Key Phrases: spiny orange, flying castle, phantom knights, Sir Able, Bold Berthold, Sir Garvaon (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nebula and World Fantasy awards-winner Wolfe's new novel-the first half of a massive epic-is a reminder that no one gets called a great writer without being first of all a great storyteller. This wonderful story is narrated by a teenage boy who wanders into a universe of interlocking magical realms. Transformed into a powerful man by an elf queen, he first calls himself a knight, Sir Able of the High Heart, then begins growing into that role. Wolfe doesn't just rearrange the cliches of sword and sorcery fiction; he recreates the genre. Sorcerous knowledge is important to Sir Able's survival, but muscle and steel count for a lot too, while sympathetic curiosity and self-awareness may be even more crucial. Though beautifully told, the novel is not exactly Wolfe Lite; much of the plot underlying the action remains obscure. Able realizes that there's a lot he doesn't comprehend, some of it because knowledge was stolen from him. He must gain (or regain) understanding of the worlds around him and of himself. In this respect, Wolfe's tale somewhat resembles the quest in David Lindsay's visionary masterpiece, A Voyage to Arcturus. Whatever its literary antecedents or its ultimate destination, however, this is a compelling, breathtaking achievement.
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From The Washington Post

Most writers of fantasy or science fiction know how to tell rattling good stories. But Gene Wolfe not only entertains, he invests his work with a complexity and trickiness that place him among the most important American novelists of our time. For more than 40 years he has worked steadily at his art, each new book adding yet one more facet to his ongoing and surprisingly cohesive oeuvre. Within his genre Wolfe's living compeers are few -- Ursula Le Guin, J.G. Ballard, John Crowley -- and, like them, he should enjoy the same rapt attention we afford to Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy.

Whenever two or three of Wolfe's admirers are gathered together, talk will invariably turn to the conundrums buried within his masterwork, The Book of the New Sun. This four-part novel -- comprising The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch -- depicts a far-future Earth, one in which advanced technology, medieval customs and ancient legends mingle together. Severian, trained to be a professional torturer, travels through this ruined world, going to war and eventually achieving his destiny as the redeemer and new ruler of Urth. Throughout his narrative Severian scrupulously relates just what he sees, but only that, so the reader must puzzle out for himself that the Matachin Towers are abandoned starships, that a beautiful young woman is actually Severian's grandmother, and that virtually none of his traveling companions is quite human. Thrilling adventures abound in the four volumes, but Wolfe's prose always remains serenely, gravely measured, even if its surface smoothness is that of quicksand. These books require an attentive reader to be not only suspicious but downright Sherlockian: Observe, remember everything, then deduce, if you can, the unspoken reality. Is that homunculus actually Severian's brother?

Much of Wolfe's subsequent fiction has been set, more or less, in the universe of the New Sun. This isn't true of The Knight, although I suspect that study will reveal it to be a kind of rewriting of Severian's story. But you don't need to know Wolfe's earlier work to be caught up in a novel that blends, imaginatively and briskly, Arthurian ideals, Celtic legends and Norse mythology. Its form, though, is unusual: A long letter, that after the salutation "Dear Ben," starts this way:

"You must have stopped wondering what happened to me a long time ago; I know it has been many years. I have the time to write here, and what looks like a good chance to get what I write to where you are, so I am going to try. If I just told everything on a couple of sheets, you would not believe most of it. Hardly any of it, because there are many things that I have trouble with myself. So what I am going to do instead is tell everything. When I have finished, you still may not believe me; but you will know all that I do. In some ways, that is a lot. In others, practically nothing."

This is, by the way, a typical Wolfe paragraph, seemingly straightforward but already suggestive. How many years? Where is "here"? That promise to tell everything may look like a pact, but the sentences following remind us that knowing things is not the same as understanding them.

One afternoon, as the narrator writes to Ben (his older brother), he left their cabin for a walk in the woods. To make a hiking stick he cut a branch from "a tree that was different from the others," then climbed a hill and took a sip from a spring he found there. After his drink he lay back and stared up at the scudding clouds, amazed to see a castle floating in the sky, and then fell asleep.

After awakening, our hero finds himself in a cave by the sea, the home of a witchlike crone who calls him "Able of the High Heart." She also tells him to fashion his new stick into a bow and breaks off a length of thread from her bobbin for its string. His memory, she insists, has been partly erased, and he learns that the Aelf wish him to perform some mysterious service for them.

And so Able of the High Heart, formerly a teenage American boy, begins his quest to understand what has happened to him and to fulfill his destiny. As in chivalric romances, he goes forth and encounters noble warriors, monsters, churls, elves, giants, a witch and an ogre, gods and even a fairy queen. This last Able rescues, then carries to a nearby cave, following her directions. "She kept her eyes down as if she were shy, but I knew she was not really shy." She kisses the boy, then tells him:

" 'I am Disiri the Mossmaiden, and I have kissed you.'

"I could still feel her kiss, and her hair smelled of new-turned earth and sweet smoke.

" 'Men I have kissed cannot leave until I send them away.' "

Following a night of love-making -- the Queen of the Moss Aelf, we learn, "was a shapechanger, and all her shapes were beautiful" -- Able finds that several years have passed and his own body is now that of a muscular, Conan-like warrior. He also begins to understand that our universe is layered into a half dozen different planes of reality. We live in Mythgarthr, below it lies the Aelf-realm of Aelfrice and above it Skai, the home of the Valfather and the Overcyn. But there are levels below and above these too. Able will visit some of them on the task given him by Disiri: to locate and be worthy of the sword Eterne.

Set down so baldly, this précis could fit any number of epic fantasies (and may even recall, loosely, parts of Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or Leigh Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon; there's even a buried allusion to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions). But what distinguishes The Knight is its technique. Chapters are short and generally move the reader briskly along. Everything extraneous is left out, including detailed description of most battles. On the other hand, Able repeatedly refers ahead to future events. Such forecasting inverts the usual medieval method of alluding to the past history of people, weapons and practices, but enriches Wolfe's narrative with a comparable epic resonance. Thus "I can be all sunny and smiles for a long, long time. But I can rise up like when we fought the Angrborn at the pass. Giants ran from me then and the ones that did not died," or "I never saw it again until I went into Thiazi's Room of Lost Loves."

All through the weird adventures -- under the sea and earth, high up on a mysterious tower, down in pools or deep in caves, with time shifts and shape shifts -- the reader keeps wondering: How does all this fit together? Is Bold Berthold really Able's brother? But then what does it mean when the god-like Garsecg appears to become Bold Berthold? Able's servant seems like Cockney comic relief, but why should he be blind in one eye, usually a sign of the Valfather (i.e., Odin, who gave up an eye for knowledge). Why, too, is the cat called Mani, the usual name for the Moon in Norse mythology? And does Lady Idnn bear any relation to Iduna, the goddess of youth? When Able paints his shield green in a chapter called "A Green Knight," are we to remember the story of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"? And is there a reason why the noble Sir Able acts so brutally at times?

All good questions, and none of them is wholly answered here. The Knight is, alas, only the long first half of a longer novel that will be completed next year with The Wizard, and the present volume ends with some of Able's quest fulfilled, but very little explained. The good news is that Wolfe claims that the second half of "The Wizard-Knight," as he calls it, is even better than this one. Such announcements usually suggest chutzpah, but in this case it's probably a simple statement of fact.

Still, for all its wonders and pleasures, The Knight does possess one egregious irritation -- the pervasive use of "like" as a conjunction. The word has been so employed for centuries in casual talk, but I, for one, wince every time Able says, "like I said." Most of the book's diction is simple, direct and beautiful; the characters all speak colorfully according to their caste or education; and the novel's general tone is slightly somber. So those "likes" really annoy, even if they can be partly excused as attempts to emulate American teen-speak.

Oh well. This is still a small cost for so much enjoyment. Aside from its philosophical and cosmological speculations (occasionally reminiscent of David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus), one might read The Knight just for its unusual characters. My own favorites are Uri and Baki, a pair of female fire elves, who go around naked and frequently try to tease Able into making love to them. Baki sometimes transforms herself into a shy blonde with big breasts. "Your guilty slave grovels," she tells Able once, with her usual impishness. "She would do anything to please you, Lord, and if you have no notions of your own, she can offer any number of exciting suggestions." Similarly, the dog Gylf can talk just a little (Mani the cat is quite voluble), and so, after seeing his pet grow into a huge engine of destruction during pitched battles, Able eventually says to him, "I want you to tell me what you are." Gylf answers, "Dog." Able protests: "No ordinary dog can do what you do. No ordinary dog can talk, for that matter," and Gylf quickly counters with the firmly asserted "Good dog." You can almost see the canine -- and the Wolfean -- smile.

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (January 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765309890
• ISBN-13: 978-0765309891
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #684,274 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 1 in The Wizard Knight Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Fantasy at its best., December 31, 2004

By	Anthony "mrwhy" (San Gabriel Valley, CA) - See all my reviews

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.

34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed? Yes. Better than any other fantasy out there? Yes, September 23, 2004

By	Jacob Solomon (Baltimore, Maryland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I won't elaborate on the praise heaped on Gene Wolfe's abilities as a writer. Most of it is true. He is, in my opinion, the most important writer in fantasy today. Why? Because there is nothing formulaic about his characters, his plot, etc. I have often wondered what it would be like if a good writer actually took a crack at fantasy. With "The Knight," that is what you get. Writing that does not depend on cliches for characters, for turns of phrase, for plot points, for anything. Yes, there are swords. Yes, there are knights and dragons. That's what makes it fantasy. But they do not carry the gaudy and formulaic baggage that has been heaped on them by fantasy hacks throughout the years. This book is important, if for no other reason than it may be something we can all point to and say, "See? Not all fantasy is crap! Not every book ends the way you expect it to!"

Now, for the bad, of which there is just a little. Wolfe is obtuse. He has always been obtuse. You will not just sit down, start reading, and fall into this world. It will take you a good one hundred pages before you start to feel the addictive quality of his writing. And frankly, this is Wolfe-lite. I have never understood why he masks his incredible gift for imagination and word-smithing behind such opaque plotting and scene construction.

Falling into this book is worth it, however. This book is what fantasy is really about. Imagination, and wondrous things, and a salve to the painful question of "Is this really all there is?"

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making a familiar theme fresh and new for once., March 22, 2004

By	tyler hunter (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews

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!!!