The Knight by Gene Wolfe

It has been some time since I read this book, nearly a month, but of the novels I have finished this year this one has been, by far, both the most enjoyable as a reader and the most interesting as a writer. The author is Gene Wolfe, a sort of wild card in fantasy whom I have been meaning to sample at some point yet have never had the time. He is old and well-regarded, one of the most prolific writers in the field, who could decorate his coat with as many awards as a five-star general. He was born in New York, began his higher education in Texas before being drafted into the Korean War. Upon returning to the states, he finished his education at the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. His first novel was Operation Ares, a dismal failure both critically and commercially. His second major published work, The Fifth Head of Cerburus, was a widely succesful novella (practically an oxymoron in and of itself) called by Gardner Dozois the best novella of the 1970's. His most famous work is the Book of the New Sun, a vast and subsersive series of fantasy novels. He has no creative writing degree, two Nebula awards, five Locus's, and three World Fantasy Awards. He is famous for his ambiguous, mysterious, and difficult prose, and his gift for first-person narratives of unreliable characters.

So, The Knight.

This is a very odd book, in multitudinous ways. The back-cover blurb names it a YA book, and indeed the protaganist is a young boy, but I can barely imagine the plight of a twelve year-old trying to barrel through the obscure prose. The plot is both simple and dastardly complex. A young boy from our world, while living in a woodsy cabin with his older brother (their parents mysteriously and unremarkedly absent,) one day wanders out to the lake and, playing in the sand, is magically transported to a world of fantasy, a world comprised of seven stacked planes. He arrives in the middle plane of Mythgarthr, and finds himself under the tutelage of a onetime warrior named Bold Berthold, a man who thinks that our protaganist, himself never named, is his little brother. Over an undisclosed period of time, the protaganist finds that he too cannot remember which brother was the real one, Berthold or the one from our world. It is not all metaphyiscal misrememberence, though, as the protaganist accepts the blessing of a fairy queen and takes upon himself the name Sir Able of the High Heart, and sets out on an adventure to recover his blade Eterne from a dragon. Through the book, Able discovers that not everything is how it seems (or perhaps it is? Crypticism is part and parcel for The Knight) and finds himself dragged along by a near-infinite number of powers from Mythgarthr and the other six planes of this strange fantasy world. If this makes little to no sense, then I have explained it correctly.

I was unprepared for this novel. To an extent, I knew what to expect from Wolfe's subsersive writing style. I knew I was not going to experience the average fantasy novel, but I did not realize just how different Wolfe's voice is from the traditional fantasy writer. In fact, it is written as if unaware of all other traditions, as if the novel believes it is the first written about knights and dragons and a boy coming-of-age. This novel was excrutiatingly clever. The voice was that of a child's, using simple vocabulary and uncomplicated sentences. It shocked me how boldy Wolfe, frequently described as a prose master, used such an "idiot's voice" at the primary style of the novel. It intrigued me how he would describe a glorious vista in a way a child might, simple and even a bit ugly, yet expressing the beauty of the sight without using beautiful words. Wolfe has made me question, a little, my traditional baroque style. If he can achieve so much classical beauty with so little description, and so much modern commentary with so little conceptualizing, how then do I justify my heavy-handed description porn and blatant philosophizing? Wolfe has put these questions in my head, and now I am given to ponder them.

In all, a strong book, a surprising and tricky book, by a writer who certainly deserves his place in fantasy literature.

--CLAY GREENE