The Knight

Book One of The Wizard Knight

By: Gene Wolfe

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

From legendary fantasy author Gene Wolfe comes The Knight, the first half of the Wizard Knight duology, now for the first time in audio.

A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Able and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero.

Inside, however, Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, wizards, and dragons. His adventure will conclude in the second installment of The Wizard Knight, The Wizard.

Critic reviews

“The Knight is astonishing: deep, involving, humane, and absolutely original. This is the start of something big.” —Michael Swanwick

“Great fiction flows from Gene Wolfe as from a fountain under high pressure. The Knight is his latest superb novel, non-stop action of a surreal majesty. By the time he's done, knights and wizards will never seem the same.” —Kim Stanley Robinson

“A grand adventure that combines classic elements with a fresh, highly imaginative approach. I can't wait to read the next book.” —Brian Herbert

“Sir Able of the High Heart is unlike any other hero, part Candide and part Conan the Barbarian, and the worlds in which he travels are also appropriately unique. Most writers of the fantastic do their best to create magical lands. Gene Wolfe actually knows how to cross over and -- luckily for us -- invites us to come along with him. Wolfe's version of Faerie is both allusive and elusive, beautiful and fatally glamorous.” —Tad Williams

“An absorbing meditation on honor and manhood that's not only Wolfe at his literate best, but romantic, charming, and exciting to boot.” —Delia Sherman

“It took me about a page and a quarter to completely enter the world Wolfe creates in The Knight. Having arrived, I believe I'll spend the rest of my life here.” —Steven Brust

“[Gene Wolfe] was producing fiction of immense, Nabokovian rigor and complexity thirty years ago. The Knight proves he still is.” —Peter Straub

“Gene Wolfe is the smartest, subtlest, most dangerous writer alive today, in genre or out of it. If you don't read this book you'll have missed out on something important and wonderful and all the cool people will laugh at you.” —Neil Gaiman

“Gene Wolfe's The Knight. . . breaks like a thunderclap over the safe suburban sprawl of franchise fantasy. This is the real thing, boys and girls. Are you ready? It will scare the daylights out of you, take your breath away, make you laugh aloud and give you honest-to-goodness tears. You will devour it and discover just how hungry you have been.” —Patrick O'Leary, author of The Impossible Bird

kept me interested

it seemed to jump around and I couldn't follow it at certain points, especially at the beginning. at some points seemed like a teenager wrote it. by the end I liked it alot and will listen to #2

Great book but robotic, distracting narration

I love this book. I've read it at least four times in print and now I'm on my second listen. I'm braving the Audible version again only because the audiobook format is so convenient, and I have more time to listen (while driving to work or doing dishes or laundry) than to read. The narration is so bad it's puzzling. At first I thought it was a text-to-speech program, but the narrator occasionally tries out different accents for different characters. The pronunciation of the names is consistently bad. The one that I have the hardest time ignoring is Kulili, the goddess of Aelfrice, which the narrator consistently pronounces "Koo Loo Lee." The word "stripling," which Berthold uses to refer to Able, he pronounces "strapling." But the worst part is that the narrator apparently doesn't understand what he's reading. Able's style is colloquial, simple American English, not literary. The narrator will often stress the wrong word in a sentence, changing it to nonsense. If I had not already read the book several times, I would be completely thrown off by this. Wolfe's writing, although extremely rewarding, is difficult enough without this added layer of misdirection in the reading. Sorry, Mr. Bittner, but I wish you had more feeling for the text.

Good book and narrator

Really enjoyed the book, and the narrator does a top notch job. Strongly recommend giving it a listen.

Confused and loving it!

All I can say is that this was one of the most confusing books I've ever had the pleasure of "reading". Brilliantly written, and wonderful performed, I'll definitely be picking up the sequel.

Maybe the use drugs played a hand in this

There is a good story world here, but it's described through the telling of a character who may or may not have been using drugs. I understand that he is telling his story through his memoirs but events jump between linear and non-linear times. Places and people come and go seemingly at random. It's like having a dream where the individual parts make sense but put in all together and things start to get a bit weird.
All in all this is the first half of a good story but be prepared to be thoroughly confused at random times.