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A review by katieg
The Wizard by Gene Wolfe
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The second volume of the Wizard Knight continues to follow Able and Co as they negotiate confrontation with the Frost Giants and the complex nature of honor and vows. For anyone who reads the first installment and wants to pick up the second I would say that it would be to your benefit to read it immediately, this book feels less like a sequel and much more like a volume 2 to one work, and I imagine based on how it was published that Wolfe likely wrote the entire thing to be read as a single volume. Mostly I suggest this because of the density of the writing style which took me a while to acclimatize myself to despite reading both books in one month.
I didn't end up enjoying this second one as much as the first because character moments never really hit as hard for me as they did in the first. Reunions that I was anticipating in particular were either entirely omitted or incredibly brief, and there wasn't a narrative payoff that I wanted. That being said I don't think that character interactions were a particular goal of this book. I think this series is much more concerned with its world-building and how it reconstructs and combines its inspirations, this second volume plays much more with Arthurian inspiration and I did enjoy the approach to Morgan le Fey and Arthur here. That being said I don't think that the world-building would be a draw for a lot of readers, it does not reimagine social, political, or economic differences from our own world to a dramatic degree through which the reader can slowly be drawn in with inventiveness and imagination. Rather, the book seems concerned with its place within the literary canon of epics about knighthood and honor. The inclusion of The Riders by Lord Dunsany in the first volume, and the dedication to him in the second work points to that. I don't fault this purpose, but it certainly isn't entertaining fantasy in my mind.
Having read the whole series I also think I can point to the aspects of the prose that I find so unusual in this type of work. The first is the way Wolfe transitions between scenes and settings. The transitions being that there aren't any. In the first volume the chapter tends to end whenever the scene changes (the chapters are also noticeably shorter) this is not as often the case in the second volume, yet rarely are scene breaks ever used. This disoriented me at times, especially when an unspecified amount of time passed or great distances were travelled with no explanation, or the explanation was offered retroactively paragraphs or pages later. I think this represents the way that the characters can sometimes 'slip' into Aelfrice or the other worlds, but it could definitely be confusing. The second thing about Wolfe's style is that there is not direct characterization for any of the characters. If you want 'show don't tell' I have never read a book that took it to as far as an extreme as I saw here. Able never offers any real statement or judgement of the characters around him, or of himself, this offers room for a lot of reader interpretation of the characters and their actions, and while Able in particular I found to be remarkably consistent, it also meant a lot of distance between the reader and the characters.
Overall I found this book among the most challenging and demanding fantasy I've ever read. If you're a person who enjoys epics whether they be Icelandic sagas, Mallory, or even Beowulf I think this may offer a similar, modern experience. For the average fantasy fan I would recommend it much more stringently.
I didn't end up enjoying this second one as much as the first because character moments never really hit as hard for me as they did in the first. Reunions that I was anticipating in particular were either entirely omitted or incredibly brief, and there wasn't a narrative payoff that I wanted. That being said I don't think that character interactions were a particular goal of this book. I think this series is much more concerned with its world-building and how it reconstructs and combines its inspirations, this second volume plays much more with Arthurian inspiration and I did enjoy the approach to Morgan le Fey and Arthur here. That being said I don't think that the world-building would be a draw for a lot of readers, it does not reimagine social, political, or economic differences from our own world to a dramatic degree through which the reader can slowly be drawn in with inventiveness and imagination. Rather, the book seems concerned with its place within the literary canon of epics about knighthood and honor. The inclusion of The Riders by Lord Dunsany in the first volume, and the dedication to him in the second work points to that. I don't fault this purpose, but it certainly isn't entertaining fantasy in my mind.
Having read the whole series I also think I can point to the aspects of the prose that I find so unusual in this type of work. The first is the way Wolfe transitions between scenes and settings. The transitions being that there aren't any. In the first volume the chapter tends to end whenever the scene changes (the chapters are also noticeably shorter) this is not as often the case in the second volume, yet rarely are scene breaks ever used. This disoriented me at times, especially when an unspecified amount of time passed or great distances were travelled with no explanation, or the explanation was offered retroactively paragraphs or pages later. I think this represents the way that the characters can sometimes 'slip' into Aelfrice or the other worlds, but it could definitely be confusing. The second thing about Wolfe's style is that there is not direct characterization for any of the characters. If you want 'show don't tell' I have never read a book that took it to as far as an extreme as I saw here. Able never offers any real statement or judgement of the characters around him, or of himself, this offers room for a lot of reader interpretation of the characters and their actions, and while Able in particular I found to be remarkably consistent, it also meant a lot of distance between the reader and the characters.
Overall I found this book among the most challenging and demanding fantasy I've ever read. If you're a person who enjoys epics whether they be Icelandic sagas, Mallory, or even Beowulf I think this may offer a similar, modern experience. For the average fantasy fan I would recommend it much more stringently.