If you haven’t trailed after Severian the torturer or Latro the soldier, you’ve missed something great. Gene Wolfe’s genius breathes life into richly-imagined worlds, as different from one another as from our own.
I loved the aelf-haunted alternate universe in Wolfe’s latest novel The Knight. Sadly, the book falls short in other ways.
As young Sir Able of the High Heart moves through Wolfe’s glorious landscape winning the hearts of everyone he meets (except for a few skullduggerous bad guys), it begins to feel like a videogame where knightly courage in all situations is sure to win infinite one-ups.
A second flaw is that Wolfe’s multiple-world creation requires way too much exposition-disguised-as-dialogue. It’s like being invited to a magnificent banquet, then discovering that your host plans to spoon-feed you more than you want.
On the other hand, I read the whole book in two days. Maybe that’s the real review, just that fact.