2004.
920 pages, Gollancz trade paperback.

An American kid is out walking in the forest surrounding his and his brother’s cabin when he spots a castle in the sky, and follows it. During his pursuit he looses track of where he is, and when night falls he decides to sleep out in the forest. When he wakes up he finds himself in a cave by the sea, in the company of an old lady who tells him strange things he does not understand at first. Soon, however, what he does understand is that he is in a different world, governed by different rules, and that he’s slowly losing his memories of America.

Before he has these revelations, though, he decides to go and find his hometown. But he can’t really remember its name, only the name “Griffinsford”. So he decides to go there, and along the way he meets several people, some kind and some not. The most important of these are the knight Sir Ravd and Disiri, the Queen of the Moss Aelf. The former makes Able — as the kid has been told that his name is — want to be a knight, and the second he falls madly in love with. She also gives him a “new” body, one to match his real age, she says, and one to fit his desired profession.

The rest of the novel proceeds to tell the tale of Able’s transformation into the legendary Sir Able of the High Heart. How he purports himself as a knight even when no one expects him too, or when almost everyone hates him; how he spends several years on journeying to Sir Ravd’s liege in order to be taken into his service; and how he befriends the alleged Aelf King Garsecg and promises Garsecg that he will free his people from the according to Garsegc’s descriptions dreadful God Kullili, just to mention a few examples.

As the story unfolds it develops into quite a complex one, with a broad spectre of characters both interesting fun (most of them are even sympathetic), a fully developed cosmonology (I especially enjoyed the use of Norse mythology, as well as the clever little twists Wolfe added to the standard fantasy tropes), and more realism than you can handle, at times (even though surprisingly few characters actually dies, considering the plot). It is told in a retrospective first person narrative, by Sir Able himself, phrased as a letter to his older brother back in America. Unlike most other novels of this genre The Wizard Knight is very conscious of this, of how its tale is supposed to be told. Able skips things here and there, often comments on things he writes about (including his choices in this respect; why he includes some things in his letter but excludes others), and greatly varies the level of detail he applies to his descriptions.

Of course, one annoying result of this is that about half the book is spent on Able et al.’s visit to Jotunland, while what I felt should have been the climax and given about a hundred pages more, was told in less than one hundred pages. (Of course, I won’t exclude the possibility of me feeling this way is a result of Steven Erikson’s Malazan climaxes knocking me silly in the last couple of years.) Not that I thought the ending detracted much from the novel; I just think I’d preferred a bit more flesh on the bones.

I was also a bit bothered by the large parts of the novel that took place in Aelfrice and the lower levels (although these lower levels of the world didn’t really take up all that much space), as I much preferred the Mythgarthr characters and plots. To the extent that these could be separated, of course, which I guess isn’t much, as just about everything Able did was done with Aelfrice in mind, and many of the main plotters of the book lived in Aelfrice. Still, worth mentioning.

Furtermore, I thought Able’s dream about the ambulance was a bit unnecessary — I didn’t quite get what Wolfe wanted to do with that one, although I suspect I wouldn’t have liked what I fear he wanted. I mean, sowing doubts about whether or not the world in which all of this takes place only exists in “Able”’s imagination, is a bit cheap.

But all in all, I thought The Wizard Knight was one of the best fantasy stand-alone novels I’ve read; it’ll be right up there with American Gods and its ilk the next time I make a list. I also’d like to mention that The Wizard Knight gave me the most intense reading experience I’ve had in a while. You see, just as Able was about to fight the Princess’ champions, Satyricon’s “To the Mountains” — an over eight minutes long, dark and sinister monster of a song — started playing on whatever the Hell the kind of device I used to play music on was. The novel and the music twined together into a magnificent synthesis, and I was whisked so much farther away into Mythgarthr.

10/10.