Name: The Wizard Knight
ISBN: 9781250791610

The Wizard Knight

“Gene Wolfe is the smartest, subtlest, most dangerous writer alive today, in genre or out of it. This book [is] important and wonderful.” —Neil Gaiman on The Knight A novel in two volumes, The Wizard Knight is in the rare company of works of fantasy like The Once and Future King, or The Wizard of Earthsea, that drink directly from the wellspring of myth. Now it appears in a single-volume edition for the first time. A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm consisting of seven levels of reality. Transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Sir Able of the High Heart and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, the blade that will help him fulfill his ambition to become a true hero—a true knight. Inside, however, Sir Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive what lies ahead... “[Wolfe] should enjoy the same rapt attention we afford to Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, and Cormac McCarthy.” —The Washington Post on The Knight “Wolfe’s version of Faerie is both allusive and elusive, beautiful and fatally glamorous.” —Tad Williams on The Knight With a new introduction by Yves Meynard, acclaimed author of The Book of Knights. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

What Hacker News says

mwigdahlFeb 2026

I don't know what you like, but in addition to the Book of the New Sun I really enjoyed his three-volume "Soldier" series, about a mercenary in ancient Greece who suffers from Memento-style amnesia (although this series far predates Memento).

The "Wizard Knight" series (two books) I also really enjoyed if you like something with a bit more fantasy bent.

Can't recommend Wolfe enough!

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atombenderJun 2020

Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun would be a great counter-example.

The novel owes absolutely nothing to Tolkien; it's entirely its own thing, subverting generic fantasy tropes left and right, while providing a clever variation on the classic hero's journey. And the same time it has this magnificent aura of otherwordliness, like a mythological narrative written thousands of years into the future (which it purports to be). It's an absolute masterpiece.

Wolfe really made a career out of subverting fantasy tropes. His Latro series [2] (Soldier of the Mist, etc.) is set in Ancient Greece, and features an amnesiac mercenary whose memory resets every day. The Wizard Knight is another good one; essentially a riff on Tolkienesque Norse mythology and Medieval romances, it features a prepubescent boy who is accidentally transported to a fantasy dimension, and then into the body of an adult knight. It's absurd, but also deliciously weird, just like some of Wolfe's other books (the Long Sun and Short Sun books, etc.).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075JL493G

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Mist-Latro-Book-1-ebook/dp/B0...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Knight-Gene-Wolfe-ebook/dp/B08...

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javajoshApr 2019

This is a great loss. When I was quite young I made the mistake of joining the Science Fiction Bookclub, unaware that it's intent and purpose was to mislead kids into over-buying books they didn't want. At the time, one of the books they sent me was Gene Wolfe's "Urth of the New Sun", and it bewildered me and fascinated me so much that I reread it in college, and realized it was part of a much longer tale. I went on to read virtually everything he ever wrote. Unlike so much science fiction (and fantasy, on occasion), Wolfe's uses tremendous texture and nuance; reading his work feels incredibly dream-like to me, even though there's nothing overtly trippy. As I get older, and recognize so much of what I once enjoyed as the same juvenile power fantasy told over with slightly different mechanics, Wolfe is (was) one of those rare genre authors who was doing something very different.

For anyone who wants to try a Wolfe book, the most accessible one is "The Wizard Knight", IMHO. It's still quite good, and has that gauzy, dreamy style and unreliable narrator Wolfe is known for, but is rather more straight-forward than, say, the Torturer series (which is actually part of the series in which Urth of the New Sun played a role). Ironically (to me) this is also the closest he got to "juvenile power fantasy" but ends up deconstructing the bildungsroman in a really beautiful, even loving way. Highly, highly recommended.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; I presume he was writing full-time later. I think that's cool, too.

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akvadrakoJun 2017

I consider the Solar Cycle (including this book) possibly the best work of fiction ever, but it's quite heavy. I'm not sure I'll ever reread them, because I remember feeling a bit like I'm drowning in the story.

For someone new to Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus gives a good taste about what's in store without so much commitment.

Besides those I also strongly remember these works:

- The Wizard Knight: straight-up fantasy but quite philosophical like sci-fi should be

- Pirate Freedom: an interesting "historic" view of pirate life

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colomonJun 2012

I think what you're describing here is more a problem with Gene Wolfe message boards than with Gene Wolfe's writing. They (or at least the ones I've run into) seem to delight in exploring the super-obscure details that show how clever they are, while ignoring the broad strokes which are the meat of the stories. Wolfe's books are these great symphonies working on multiple levels, and these boards focus on finding the Easter eggs.

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong not to like Wolfe. His is a very particular style, and I know people whose literary judgement is at least as good as mine who do not like it.

For my taste, though, taking an intriguing setting, telling a vivid story in it, and not spelling out all the answers is about as thought-provoking as literature comes. I won't pretend I can tell you exactly what happens at the end of the Wizard Knight or the Soldier series, but I can tell you that I've deeply enjoyed rereading them, and plan to continue doing so every few years for the rest of my life, and the mysteries make it more appealing to me, not less.

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jfarmerOct 2009

I've read it twice. The first time was because the book was a gift from a friend.

The second time was for a philosophy class at the University of Chicago. I wrote an essay about Severian's memory and Nietzsche's cow.

Gene Wolfe is my favorite sci-fi author by far. I also liked the Wizard-Knight series.

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