![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Refurbished High Fantasy
Mar. 10th, 2006 11:42 pm25 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.
( Read more... )
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.
( Read more... )