Two Line Summary: It's Gene Wolfe doing something that lokos very much like a straight fantasy adventure story. And not surprisingly, it's very good. It's also one of his more accessible works.
Quick Rating: Recommended. Be warned, though, it's the first of a
two volume series.
But before the extended review, a note: This is a Hartwell-editted book. It's the first of a two volume series. And, wonder of wonders, it's actually *labelled as such*... on the back of the dustjacket, anyway. Still, this is an improvement, so I bought it.
Now then, this is going to be difficult review. I'll get the easy part over with: This is more or less straight fantasy in a mostly invented world. The protagonist is a youth from the United States who, though some mechanism not really explained, finds himself magically transported to Mythgarthr, the middle of a tier of eight worlds. Those worlds, as is evident from the name Mythgarthr, have a distinctly northern European, nordic flavor to them.
The book is framed as a letter from our protagonist, given the name Able, to his brother Ben. Able's memory has been fuzzed by the transition from our Earth to Mythgarthr, however, which makes the first few chapters seem even more dreamlike than they ordinarily might, as Able makes his way and finds shelter and protection in a world that's not much more familiar to him than it is to us. It's at once very reminiscent of some of Wolfe's other works, in that we're thrown into a world that is revealed only slowly, but I found it much more accessible than, say, the New Sun books, because the trappings of a quasi-Nordic background are so much more familiar to me.
I don't really want to say too much more about the plot, directly. I can list out some of what _The Knight_ is about, in terms of character development and growth, but it almost sounds cliched. It's about a youth, or a young man, discovering a fantasy world, and naturally getting mixed up with beings and in events that are extraordinary. It's about a sequence of adventures. It's about a youth growing into a man. It's about a youth discovering what honor and leadership and heroism are.
It really sounds cliche'd doesn't it? Well, it might be. But it's also Gene Wolfe who's doing the writing about it, and so cliche's or not, it's a hell of a good read on all those levels and more.
And since it's Gene Wolfe doing the writing, I'm dead certain that there's details I've missed the first time through. Although it's strongest in the first few chapters, perhaps the first quarter of the book, there's a certain dream-like logic to the events and characters of the book. It is, after all, the epistle of a man who has become used to the odd connections between Mythgarthr and the fey-like other worlds of this setting, and he rarely makes an effort to explain what to him has become obvious; likewise, the sense of time is a little blurred, as well. More than a little, in some cases.
I flipped through the first few pages to refresh my memory of a few details of the opening sequence, though, and I found myself saying, "Oh, I see," more than once. I got used to the dream-like logic of the plot and the internal logic of the setting, myself, and reading the first part of it over again was almost like reading it with new eyes. Wolfe isn't the only author who's pulled this off, but he is one of the very best at it so far.
_The Knight_ was truly excellent, and I can't wait for the closing volume, _The Wizard_ to be published. Highly recommended. Highly, highly recommended.
Posted by John Novak at January 24, 2004 10:32 PM