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The Knight Book One of The Wizard Knight Gene Wolfe 9780765347015 Books

Download As PDF : The Knight Book One of The Wizard Knight Gene Wolfe 9780765347015 Books

The Knight Book One of The Wizard Knight Gene Wolfe 9780765347015 Books

Wolfe has crafted a story easily worthy to stand beside such masterworks as his Solar Cycle and Latro in the Mist, and when I heard an audiobook had been produced, I knew I had to experience the world of Sir Able of the High Heart, the Wizard Knight.

As always, it’s a difficult task to review a Gene Wolfe book. How to express its strengths without spoilers?

In brief, a young boy from our world cuts a walking stick from a magic tree that has somehow come to exist in our world, and the Aelf who attend the tree snatch him into their world for an unspecified length of time, while months or years might pass in the mortal realms, then and deposit him in a fantastic alternate medieval world, where a kingdom of mortal men are subject to attacks from the frost giants of the north, ghoul-like Osterlings of the east, and dragons from the hellish depths.

He meets Parka, the Norn-like woman who spins out and cuts lives, and is given a new name, Able of the High Heart. Later, the queen of the forest Aelf magically transforms him into a man of herculean statue and sends him forth with a message he cannot remember. He meets a knight who so impresses him that he becomes determined to be knight himself and to live and die by the knightly virtues, and thus become worthy of the Aelf queen’s love.

But as his fate is foretold: “Each time you gain your heart’s desire, your heart will reach for something higher.”

Wolfe draws on a wide field of sources. There are the old medieval fantasies that delight the practices, routines and equipage of a knight. Scholars of medieval stories as well as those familiar with such sources as Don Quixote and Tom O’Bedlam, as well as Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, will find many a nod or an Easter Egg.

Likewise, a boy suddenly in the body of a man and determined to live up to it is a conceit played out in many a superhero story, and it’s particularly poignant as a coming of age tale.

Then there is a second innovation on Wolfe’s part: the structure of the story. After the style of Severian’s recollections in The Book of the New Sun and Latro’s reminders to himself, the Wizard Knight is presented as a letter, a single, long letter to Abel’s older brother, Ben, explaining where he has been since his kidnapping by the Aelf.

And here, I must try to convey Wolfe’s mastery of his craft, for he breaks every storytelling rule and gets away with it. The narrative can be the very definition of telling not showing at time, while dropping the occasional choice detail that illuminates the depths of what’s going on. Wolfe successfully portrays the ‘voice’ of a boy, then a fighting man, who is decidedly not a writer, attempting to convey all that he has seen and done and become. The description can be charmingly minimalist and straight forward, but in a way that builds tension and foreshadows grim events to come.

Not that Wolfe doesn’t show off his descriptive chops – read of Able’s first sighting of the castle in the sky and encountering Parka the norn in the sample.

The letter is rambling, often referencing things out of order and leaving out details that Able will either insert later, or in the list of characters in the forward (more on that in a minute), but as for the grand sweep of the story, anyone with some familiarity with fantasy tropes will quickly understand what’s happening.

The audio production was invaluable and motivated me to do a re-read: the voice actor had impressive range, convincing as a callow boy, a boy trying to be a knight, and a knight of sure and well-earned nobility, giving tonal cues for the fast-paced dialogue. However, the audio is best taken as a supplement to the text, since it is often necessary stop reading when a new character is introduced and go back to the list of characters, where Able has sometimes placed information he had forgotten to include in the body of his letter, the whole effect to give a sense of verisimilitude.

There is easily enough material here for a five or six volume epic, but within two books. Able will skil ahead and summarize scenes that another author would devote whole chapters to.

Finally, in the age of Game of Thrones and ‘sophisticated’ fantasy of cynical politics and charges of nihilism (underserved in the first three books in my opinion, but since embraced), if Martin is the anti-Tolkien, Wolfe’s Wizard Knight is the anti-Martin, or the refutation of Martin as Martin was the refutation of Lord of the Rings. The world of the Wizard Knight is one where honor matters and where a knight can live to those ideals and inspire others to do the same. A refreshing change.


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The Knight Book One of The Wizard Knight Gene Wolfe 9780765347015 Books Reviews

As you will see from the majority of the reviews, Gene Wolfe lovers will love this book. The real question is what about those who are not big Wolfe fans or have not read any Wolfe?
It is interesting, because the protagonist, Sir Able of the High Heart, is a child in man's form. This may be one of the reasons that this boy is able to follow high and honorable ideals where lesser grownups might falter. For this reason, Able is possibly more likeable than other Wolfe protagonists such as Severian from the Book of the New Sun (think Dorcas/Jolenta--with this said, I myself think the Book of the New Sun is among the best Fantasy/SF ever written, but I digress). Able can inspire the ideal within us and maintain his honor and be the man many of us would hope to be.
While exploring this Knight in shining armor theme, Wolfe maintains an otherworldliness and gives a unique twist to this form. Non-Wolfe lovers have complained that in the Book of the New Sun (his most highly acclaimed novels), Severian is simply an unremarkable person wandering around. While I can comprehend this point of view, the beauty of Wolfe's novels lie in his ability to draw the reader into the world with his flowing and descriptive writing style. The Knight does not disappoint in its writing, and because of the accessible theme of this work, the novice Wolfe reader will enjoy this story and the world that Wolfe creates. This reviewer certainly looks forward to the continuation of the series!
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).
Wolfe has crafted a story easily worthy to stand beside such masterworks as his Solar Cycle and Latro in the Mist, and when I heard an audiobook had been produced, I knew I had to experience the world of Sir Able of the High Heart, the Wizard Knight.

As always, it’s a difficult task to review a Gene Wolfe book. How to express its strengths without spoilers?

In brief, a young boy from our world cuts a walking stick from a magic tree that has somehow come to exist in our world, and the Aelf who attend the tree snatch him into their world for an unspecified length of time, while months or years might pass in the mortal realms, then and deposit him in a fantastic alternate medieval world, where a kingdom of mortal men are subject to attacks from the frost giants of the north, ghoul-like Osterlings of the east, and dragons from the hellish depths.

He meets Parka, the Norn-like woman who spins out and cuts lives, and is given a new name, Able of the High Heart. Later, the queen of the forest Aelf magically transforms him into a man of herculean statue and sends him forth with a message he cannot remember. He meets a knight who so impresses him that he becomes determined to be knight himself and to live and die by the knightly virtues, and thus become worthy of the Aelf queen’s love.

But as his fate is foretold “Each time you gain your heart’s desire, your heart will reach for something higher.”

Wolfe draws on a wide field of sources. There are the old medieval fantasies that delight the practices, routines and equipage of a knight. Scholars of medieval stories as well as those familiar with such sources as Don Quixote and Tom O’Bedlam, as well as Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, will find many a nod or an Easter Egg.

Likewise, a boy suddenly in the body of a man and determined to live up to it is a conceit played out in many a superhero story, and it’s particularly poignant as a coming of age tale.

Then there is a second innovation on Wolfe’s part the structure of the story. After the style of Severian’s recollections in The Book of the New Sun and Latro’s reminders to himself, the Wizard Knight is presented as a letter, a single, long letter to Abel’s older brother, Ben, explaining where he has been since his kidnapping by the Aelf.

And here, I must try to convey Wolfe’s mastery of his craft, for he breaks every storytelling rule and gets away with it. The narrative can be the very definition of telling not showing at time, while dropping the occasional choice detail that illuminates the depths of what’s going on. Wolfe successfully portrays the ‘voice’ of a boy, then a fighting man, who is decidedly not a writer, attempting to convey all that he has seen and done and become. The description can be charmingly minimalist and straight forward, but in a way that builds tension and foreshadows grim events to come.

Not that Wolfe doesn’t show off his descriptive chops – read of Able’s first sighting of the castle in the sky and encountering Parka the norn in the sample.

The letter is rambling, often referencing things out of order and leaving out details that Able will either insert later, or in the list of characters in the forward (more on that in a minute), but as for the grand sweep of the story, anyone with some familiarity with fantasy tropes will quickly understand what’s happening.

The audio production was invaluable and motivated me to do a re-read the voice actor had impressive range, convincing as a callow boy, a boy trying to be a knight, and a knight of sure and well-earned nobility, giving tonal cues for the fast-paced dialogue. However, the audio is best taken as a supplement to the text, since it is often necessary stop reading when a new character is introduced and go back to the list of characters, where Able has sometimes placed information he had forgotten to include in the body of his letter, the whole effect to give a sense of verisimilitude.

There is easily enough material here for a five or six volume epic, but within two books. Able will skil ahead and summarize scenes that another author would devote whole chapters to.

Finally, in the age of Game of Thrones and ‘sophisticated’ fantasy of cynical politics and charges of nihilism (underserved in the first three books in my opinion, but since embraced), if Martin is the anti-Tolkien, Wolfe’s Wizard Knight is the anti-Martin, or the refutation of Martin as Martin was the refutation of Lord of the Rings. The world of the Wizard Knight is one where honor matters and where a knight can live to those ideals and inspire others to do the same. A refreshing change.