The Knight

© 2004 Dru Pagliassotti
All rights reserved.

The Knight
Gene Wolf
2004, Tor
ISBN 0-765-30989-0

Gene Wolfe is one of the world’s great speculative fiction writers, most widely praised for his Books of the Sun (New Sun, Long Sun, and Short Sun), although he has written numerous other novels, novellas, and short stories. With his new series, The Wizard Knight, Wolfe plunges into classical fantasy, although it bears the unmistakable stamp of his writing. It’s a pity that more casual readers aren’t familiar with Wolfe’s work, but his style is, usually, intimidatingly erudite. The Knight may be the book that will bring Wolfe’s name into more common usage.

I picked up this book with some trepidation. For many years now I’ve avoided fantasy novels that feature characters who move from this world into another. The fact that this one includes giants, elves, wizards, and dragons also made me flinch — how could Gene Wolfe do this, I wondered: write a book stuffed with fantasy cliches? But because I’ve trusted Wolfe to dazzle and mystify me since The Shadow of the Torturer, years ago, I braced myself and picked this one up.

The Knight is told by Able of the High Heart, who had another name when he was living in America. He is writing the story for his brother, Ben, describing how he got lost in the woods and woke up in a sea-cavern next to a prophesying old woman who laid a curse and an ambition upon him before sending him out into the world of Mythgarthr. When an encounter with a regal Mossmaiden changes his body from that of a boy to a man, Able chooses the path of knighthood for himself and sets out without armor, sword, charger, or land to prove himself a hero. Like the heroes of classical fantasy, Able finds himself traveling from world to world, meeting creatures of legend, and gathering to himself a collection of misfit followers, both monstrous and common.

The world of Mythgarthr is only one of seven: in order from lowest to highest, they are Niflheim, Muspel, Aelfrice, Mythgarthr, Skai, Kleos, and Elysion. As Able travels, he learns more about these worlds and the nature of the creatures who pass back and forth among them, reminding Wolfe fans of some of the dimensional traveling in books like New Sun and There are Doors. He often looks up at the Valfather’s castle, yearning for it, which is reminiscent of the illusory castle in Castleview, and other characters, such as the giant underwater woman Kulili, the lad Toug, or the distant woman Able loves, Disiri, or the woman who loves Able, Ulfa, will also bring to mind beings and characters from Wolfe’s other works. The narrative style, although it begins in a fairly simple, childish style, matures as the character matures, and contains such Wolfean touches such as offhand comments about events to come (even events that do not occur in this, the first novel of the series), and strange or overlooked moments that will be revealed later, when they become relevant.

Able is a metaphor for man. When he is sexually awakened by the Mossmaiden Disiri, his body is magically transformed from that of a slender boy to that of a broad-shouldered man. His mind, however, remains the same, except for his new slavish devotion to the Aelfen woman. At several points in the novel he admits to other men that he is only a boy in a man’s body, and to a man, they all tell him that they are just the same. Like him, they are grappling with uncertainties, angers, concerns over honor, and ambitions to prove himself worthy in the estimation of the world.

Able takes pains to act honorably, but he is far from perfect. His youthful impatience and temper will remind the reader of d’Artagnan of The Three Musketeers — the novel, that is, in which servants need thrashing and the table is often bare — or of the questing knights of the Round Table, encountering one strange event after another in their quest for the unattainable. Although he’s become a man physically, Able is still in his rite of passage, his Hero’s Journey, which, as described by Joseph Campbell, includes facing danger, learning from wise mentors, and making passages to worlds above and below. The book’s flyleaf claims that this book will be compared to Tolkein, Eddison, Peake & White, but such comparisons would be superficial. Wolfe is not drawing on another author for inspiration; he’s drawing on the same places they drew — on Nordic myth and Arthurian legend, with a touch of Greek philosophy to lighten the mix.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the source material, female characters in this novel are few and usually seen in their sexual roles (mothers, wives, lovers, would-be lovers, victims of rape), although — like many of Wolfe’s protagonists — Able is devoted to only one. Some passages in The Knight, which is likely to be read by teenage boys, troubled me, such as the ones in which human women allude to the pain of rape by male giants, or in which the Fire Aelfs who call themselves Able’s slaves try to seduce him. True, Wolfe usually writes about men, but he can write stronger and more self-reliant women. Unfortunately, except for a quick glimpse of shield-maidens at the end of this novel, we don’t meet any in The Knight. I hope we see more in the next novel, to provide role models for the female half of Wolfe’s readership and to indicate to the young men who may read this that women can be more than their bodies.

The Knight may be Wolfe’s most commercially accessible novel, but this shouldn’t be taken as a pejorative. What The Knight and its successor, The Wizard, is most likely to do is to introduce new readers to Wolfe’s work and inspire them to try some of his more challenging works. And though I suspect that more than one fantasy aficionado, like myself, balked at the thought of picking up a book that seems so full of fantasy cliches, The Knight is simply a return to fantasy’s roots, and well worth a look.

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