Synopses & Reviews
A novel in two volumes,
The Wizard Knight is in the rare company of those works which move past the surface of fantasy and drink from the wellspring of myth. Magic swords, dragons, giants, quests, love, honor, nobility all the familiar features of fantasy come to fresh life in this masterful work.
The first half of the journey, The Knight which you are advised to read first, to let the whole story engulf you from the beginning took a teenage boy from America into Mythgarthr, the middle realm of seven fantastic worlds. Above are the gods of Skai; below are the capricious Aelf, and more dangerous things still. Journeying throughout Mythgarthr, Able gains a new brother, an Aelf queen lover, a supernatural hound, and the desire to prove his honor and become the noble knight he always knew he would be.
Coming into Jotunland, home of the Frost Giants, Able now Sir Able of the High Heart claims the great sword Eterne from the dragon who has it. In reward, he is ushered into the castle of the Valfather, king of all the Gods of Skai.
Thus begins the second part of his quest. The Wizard begins with Able's return to Mythgathr on his steed Cloud, a great mare the color of her name. Able is filled with new knowledge of the ways of the seven-fold world and possessed of great magical secrets. His knighthood now beyond question, Able works to fulfill his vows to his king, his lover, his friends, his gods, and even his enemies. Able must set his world right, restoring the proper order among the denizens of all the seven worlds.
The Wizard is a charming, riveting, emotionally charged tale of wonders, written with all the beauty one would expect from a writer whom Damon Knight called "a national treasure." If you've never sampled the works of the man Michael Swanwick described as "the greatest writer in the English language alive today," the two volumes of The Wizard Knight are the perfect place to start.
Review
"[T]here is hardly a piece of northern European heroic literature from which Wolfe doesn't borrow with his usual scholarly flare and in his exquisitely turned prose....Arising from the same sources as Lord of the Rings, The Wizard Knight is one of the few fantasies that can justly be compared with it." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"[A] larger, more expansive volume than its predecessor....The result is a satisfying, wide-ranging novel that contains enough marvels and mysteries (not all of which are resolved or explained) to populate an entire series." The Washington Post
Review
"Wolfe likes to spin spiderwebs of plot and counterplot inside his impressively constructed universes....[H]e both undercuts expectations and fulfills them in each and every page. Mordant, thrilling, all tangled up in heavy knots of double-crossing and magic." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"I...emerged from the reading of this book ready to acknowledge Wolfe's immense skills, passion and ambition. Taken together, these two books are a magnificent achievement in the annals of fantasy literature." SciFi Weekly
Synopsis
Here is a work to rival the greatest fantasy of the last century; one truly in Tolkien's tradition. A novel in two volumes which began earlier this year with
The Knight and now ends with
The Wizard,
The Wizard Knight is in the rare company of those works that spring from the myth and literature of past ages, not last year's genre fantasy.
A teenager passed from Earth to a magical realm of seven worlds, where he was soon given a hero's adult body and the name Able. Forced to act as a man, inside he remained a boy, even as he set off to find his destined sword and become a knight. In The Wizard, Sir Able returns to the world of Mythgarthr from Skye following his fight with the dragon Grengarm, twenty years older, with a unicorn steed named Cloud, and special magical powers he has sworn not to use, in return for the hope of meeting his beloved Aelf queen again. He battles the giants, meets gods, heroes, and a sorceress who tries repeatedly to seduce him, and serves the mercurial dragon king Arthur in a final war with the Osterlings.
Synopsis
A novel in two volumes,
The Wizard Knight is in the rare company of those works which move past the surface of fantasy and drink from the wellspring of myth. Magic swords, dragons, giants, quests, love, honor, nobility-all the familiar features of fantasy come to fresh life in this masterful work.
The first half of the journey, The Knight -- which you are advised to read first, to let the whole story engulf you from the beginning -- took a teenage boy from America into Mythgarthr, the middle realm of seven fantastic worlds. Above are the gods of Skai; below are the capricious Aelf, and more dangerous things still. Journeying throughout Mythgarthr, Able gains a new brother, an Aelf queen lover, a supernatural hound, and the desire to prove his honor and become the noble knight he always knew he would be.
Coming into Jotunland, home of the Frost Giants, Able -- now Sir Able of the High Heart --claims the great sword Eterne from the dragon who has it. In reward, he is ushered into the castle of the Valfather, king of all the Gods of Skai.
Thus begins the second part of his quest. The Wizard begins with Able's return to Mythgathr on his steed Cloud, a great mare the color of her name. Able is filled with new knowledge of the ways of the seven-fold world and possessed of great magical secrets. His knighthood now beyond question, Able works to fulfill his vows to his king, his lover, his friends, his gods, and even his enemies. Able must set his world right, restoring the proper order among the denizens of all the seven worlds.
The Wizard is a charming, riveting, emotionally charged tale of wonders, written with all the beauty one would expect from a writer whom Damon Knight called "a national treasure." If you've never sampled the works of the man Michael Swanwick described as "the greatest writer in the English language alive today," the two volumes of The Wizard Knight are the perfect place to start.
About the Author
Gene Wolfe is the author of two dozen novels and hundreds of short stories. Possibly the most critically acclaimed SF/Fantasy author of our time, he is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, as well as the Nebula Award (2), the World Fantasy Award (2), the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Prix Apollo. He lives with his wife, Rosemary, in Barrington, IL.