Refurbished High Fantasy
Mar. 10th, 2006 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel25 Feb 06
The Wizard Knight - Gene Wolfe - Gollancz, 2005
* * *
Gene Wolfe is an author I admire despite having had mixed experiences of his books. He writes a deceptively simple prose that is noticeable more for what it leaves out than what it says. For example, he will describe a scene during which the narrator becomes extremely angry. The emotions of the narrator, however, are not mentioned in the text and you have to infer them from his subsequent actions. The same is true of his plotting - the major events of, say, a battle are hardly ever described directly and the reader has to deduce what happened from reports or hearsay. This sideways approach allows Wolfe to get away with stories making use of some terrifically hackneyed tropes of SF or fantasy, such as colony ships, androids, computer-generated personalities and, in this case, the entire tired infrastructure of Arthurian knightly high fantasy, which would in the hands of any other author would be drearily predictable and tedious. At its best, the allusive nature of Wolfe’s writing can invoke a sense of wonder, complexity and scale like no other author. It can also, however, allow him to be tedious, self-indulgent and whimsical in his plotting and characterisation. Sadly these flaws are apparent in the two books of The Wizard Knight.
The setting is a typically bizarre Wolfian mashup of Norse and Celtic mythology with Catholic mysticism. Most of the action occurs in Mythgarthr, the middle-most of seven hierarchical worlds. Above it is Skai, home of the Overcyns who are fairly evidently the Norse gods, and below is Aelfrice, where dwell various varieties of Aelf, shadowy but physical figures of earth, air, fire and water. Above Skai are Kleos and Elysion, where angels and the Most High God live, and below Aelfrice are Muspel and Niflheim, the realms of shape-changing dragons and the most low god.
Into Mythgarthr wonders an anonymous American teenager who is given the name of Able of the High Heart by a mysterious weaver (a Norn, obviously). Able has an ability to move relatively easily between the worlds and soon encounters an Aelf queen called Disiri with whom he falls in love. Disiri, for her own purposes, transforms him into a grown man with a yearning to become a knight. She also gives him a quest - to seek a sword that belongs to a dragon. Only then will she return his love. The rest of the first book covers Able’s attempts to become a knight and fulfill his quest, aided by a crowd of sidekicks including a sailor and a serf who speak in almost unreadable demotic, a talking dog called Gylf, an equally loquacious cat called Mani, two sexy but untrustworthy fire Aelfs and various assorted knights, earls, dragons, princesses and others whom he meets along the way.
Mythgarthr (or at least Celidon, the country in which the story is set) is a typical north European fantasy setting, with a feudal society of serfs, knights, earls and royalty following the classic traditions of the Mallorean chivalric code, and this is where my difficulties with this novel start. For the chivalric code is patently ridiculous. There is, for example, a tradition that if a knight loses to another knight, then all the possessions of the losing knight are forfeit to the winner. This is absurd because it is not a stable situation - all knights lose sooner or later, and without their armour and arms they are ineffectual as fighters. At the start Able is not a particularly competent knight and Wolfe has to come up with some fairly unconvincing reasons why his conquerors decide not to take away the magical items that he has acquired. Then there is the whole business of fealty and oath-swearing. At one point, Able’s lord sends him as a punishment to hold a far distant valley against all comers for six months. Why? (Worse still, he actually does it, which contributes much to the tedium of the first two hundred pages of the second book). The lack of a sense of history or tradition for Celidon, while suitably mythological, contributes to the unreality of the situation and I for one found it hard to suspend my disbelief sufficiently to sympathise with Able in his desire to join such a patently daft setup, particularly as his love for Disiri was so vaguely described.
Able resolves his quest (after a fashion) by the end of book one which makes it a satisfying read despite the implausibilities. The same cannot be said, however, for book two, the first half of which is split between the afore-mentioned holding of the valley and the adventures of his squire Toug in Utgard, the capital of the kingdom of the Angrborn (giants) to the north of Celidon. Having the main character off-stage doing next to nothing for half a book was not, in my view, a wise plotting decision and Toug’s activities could certainly have been edited down. Things pick up somewhat in the second half when Able returns to Celidon and the machinations of the king, his sister and the queen, but it never really recovers from the slow start. The basic problem is that Able has reached his full maturity as a knight by the end of book one and has nowhere else to go; the title of book two, The Wizard, suggests that he learns the ways of magic, but that it isn’t what happens.
There are some good features - the descriptions of the big events have a true epic and poetic quality and I liked the unfussy transitions between the worlds when Able moves between them. Some of the sidekick characters are memorable, particularly Gylf, a gruff dog of few words but much affection, and Mani, a more talkative version of the Cheshire Cat (who is unaccountably left out of the book’s climax despite having every reason to be there). However, as with Wolfe’s other books, the female characters are still firmly stuck in the 1950s, fulfilling stereotyped roles of femme fatale, love interest or rescue object. Granted, this is true of the chivalric tales from which Wolfe is borrowing, but at least a token non-stereotypical female character would have been appreciated.
So, an interesting setting and a brave attempt to refurbish and refresh the tropes of knightly high fantasy. But not, for my money, an entirely successful one.
The Wizard Knight - Gene Wolfe - Gollancz, 2005
* * *
Gene Wolfe is an author I admire despite having had mixed experiences of his books. He writes a deceptively simple prose that is noticeable more for what it leaves out than what it says. For example, he will describe a scene during which the narrator becomes extremely angry. The emotions of the narrator, however, are not mentioned in the text and you have to infer them from his subsequent actions. The same is true of his plotting - the major events of, say, a battle are hardly ever described directly and the reader has to deduce what happened from reports or hearsay. This sideways approach allows Wolfe to get away with stories making use of some terrifically hackneyed tropes of SF or fantasy, such as colony ships, androids, computer-generated personalities and, in this case, the entire tired infrastructure of Arthurian knightly high fantasy, which would in the hands of any other author would be drearily predictable and tedious. At its best, the allusive nature of Wolfe’s writing can invoke a sense of wonder, complexity and scale like no other author. It can also, however, allow him to be tedious, self-indulgent and whimsical in his plotting and characterisation. Sadly these flaws are apparent in the two books of The Wizard Knight.
The setting is a typically bizarre Wolfian mashup of Norse and Celtic mythology with Catholic mysticism. Most of the action occurs in Mythgarthr, the middle-most of seven hierarchical worlds. Above it is Skai, home of the Overcyns who are fairly evidently the Norse gods, and below is Aelfrice, where dwell various varieties of Aelf, shadowy but physical figures of earth, air, fire and water. Above Skai are Kleos and Elysion, where angels and the Most High God live, and below Aelfrice are Muspel and Niflheim, the realms of shape-changing dragons and the most low god.
Into Mythgarthr wonders an anonymous American teenager who is given the name of Able of the High Heart by a mysterious weaver (a Norn, obviously). Able has an ability to move relatively easily between the worlds and soon encounters an Aelf queen called Disiri with whom he falls in love. Disiri, for her own purposes, transforms him into a grown man with a yearning to become a knight. She also gives him a quest - to seek a sword that belongs to a dragon. Only then will she return his love. The rest of the first book covers Able’s attempts to become a knight and fulfill his quest, aided by a crowd of sidekicks including a sailor and a serf who speak in almost unreadable demotic, a talking dog called Gylf, an equally loquacious cat called Mani, two sexy but untrustworthy fire Aelfs and various assorted knights, earls, dragons, princesses and others whom he meets along the way.
Mythgarthr (or at least Celidon, the country in which the story is set) is a typical north European fantasy setting, with a feudal society of serfs, knights, earls and royalty following the classic traditions of the Mallorean chivalric code, and this is where my difficulties with this novel start. For the chivalric code is patently ridiculous. There is, for example, a tradition that if a knight loses to another knight, then all the possessions of the losing knight are forfeit to the winner. This is absurd because it is not a stable situation - all knights lose sooner or later, and without their armour and arms they are ineffectual as fighters. At the start Able is not a particularly competent knight and Wolfe has to come up with some fairly unconvincing reasons why his conquerors decide not to take away the magical items that he has acquired. Then there is the whole business of fealty and oath-swearing. At one point, Able’s lord sends him as a punishment to hold a far distant valley against all comers for six months. Why? (Worse still, he actually does it, which contributes much to the tedium of the first two hundred pages of the second book). The lack of a sense of history or tradition for Celidon, while suitably mythological, contributes to the unreality of the situation and I for one found it hard to suspend my disbelief sufficiently to sympathise with Able in his desire to join such a patently daft setup, particularly as his love for Disiri was so vaguely described.
Able resolves his quest (after a fashion) by the end of book one which makes it a satisfying read despite the implausibilities. The same cannot be said, however, for book two, the first half of which is split between the afore-mentioned holding of the valley and the adventures of his squire Toug in Utgard, the capital of the kingdom of the Angrborn (giants) to the north of Celidon. Having the main character off-stage doing next to nothing for half a book was not, in my view, a wise plotting decision and Toug’s activities could certainly have been edited down. Things pick up somewhat in the second half when Able returns to Celidon and the machinations of the king, his sister and the queen, but it never really recovers from the slow start. The basic problem is that Able has reached his full maturity as a knight by the end of book one and has nowhere else to go; the title of book two, The Wizard, suggests that he learns the ways of magic, but that it isn’t what happens.
There are some good features - the descriptions of the big events have a true epic and poetic quality and I liked the unfussy transitions between the worlds when Able moves between them. Some of the sidekick characters are memorable, particularly Gylf, a gruff dog of few words but much affection, and Mani, a more talkative version of the Cheshire Cat (who is unaccountably left out of the book’s climax despite having every reason to be there). However, as with Wolfe’s other books, the female characters are still firmly stuck in the 1950s, fulfilling stereotyped roles of femme fatale, love interest or rescue object. Granted, this is true of the chivalric tales from which Wolfe is borrowing, but at least a token non-stereotypical female character would have been appreciated.
So, an interesting setting and a brave attempt to refurbish and refresh the tropes of knightly high fantasy. But not, for my money, an entirely successful one.