The Knight

The Wizard Knight Series, Book One

By: Gene Wolfe

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2004 Gene Wolfe (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

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.

Glorious, deep, and wonderfully narrated

The Wizard Knight is a fantasy tale that draws on Arthurian tradition and the works of authors such as Chesteron, Tolkien, and Lewis. Gene Wolfe is a deep and meticulous writer, and he adopts a very concrete and subjective perspective in telling his tale. It will take multiple readings to grasp in its fullness, though one reading will suffice for the bulk of its main narrative. That said, it is one of the most beautiful and challenging stories one can read, to be ranked with Chesteron's The Man Who Was Thursday, Lewis' Till We Have Faces, and even The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The narration is superb. Many voices are presented with gusto, character, and clarity by Dan Bittner. I did note a couple of awkwardly phrased lines and perhaps some mispronunciations, but these were minor, and did not detract from the powerful telling of a beautiful tale. Highlights include the dialogue between Able and Lothur, and the emotional conclusion in Able's voice. Highly, highly recommended, but be prepared to put in some work to fully enjoy the experience.

Not just enjoyable but significant.

Nominally this book is high fantasy, but unlike most fantasy it has significant things to say about humanity, morality, and, of all things... the innocence of childhood.

That aside, this is a vastly enjoyable story. Very well voiced, exceptionally so. Though I have listened to many audio books, I cannot say I have heard one better performed, though I have heard some rare ones about as well done.

If you want to enjoy a compelling yarn, you'll be well satisfied. You'll also have a thought provoking experience and a very pleasant one.

A listen to treasure... and repeat.

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.

scattered

the story would be so much better if it wasn't so scattered. The ending was also so sudden.

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.

A worthy narration of a great story

The audio production was invaluable and motivated me to do a re-read: the voice actor had impressive range, convincing as a callow boy, a boy trying to be a knight, and a knight of sure and well-earned nobility, giving tonal cues for the fast-paced dialogue. However, the audio is best taken as a supplement to the text, since it is often necessary stop reading when a new character is introduced and go back to the list of characters, where Able has sometimes placed information he had forgotten to include in the body of his letter, the whole effect to give a sense of verisimilitude.

By far my favorite series

This is by far my favorite book series. The total package. It's a must read

Confusing as hell.

The writing style is fun, good to listen to, but I was so confused as to why, who, what for, reasons, so if that was what the book was going for then I'm doing it a injustice, but I could not follow what was going on most of the time, and the main character was something else. Usually the main character is somebody you root for, but his actions, hes supposed to be a young teenager in a grown man's body, but it should be a 5 year old in a mans body. He's a bully all the time, not some confused teenager. Was hoping he would get his ass kicked just so he'd stop being such a dick, but I guess that's the story. Couldn't get behind it, couldn't understand what the author was going for.