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

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.

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.

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.

great book

The reader nails the male chars, but when the sultry elf maiden seduces the main character you will wish for finger nails on a chalkboard.

confusing and random

made it 29 chapters and the disjointed story and random timelines were too much. great performance by Narrator.

meh

MC is an all around Dick. and not the kind that comes off as a loveable Dick. he answers everything with violence. EVERYTHING. and for some reason everyone loves him. He breaks a no fighting rule by punching a guy and bashing a chair over his head because he interrupted him and the Duke smiles and thinks it the greatest thing ever. And the rambling dialouge is extremely difficult to get past even in the audible version. world building was good. but the characters and plot make little to no sense. but maybe its just me.

So bad

Boring disjointed and derivative.
I’m so very disappointed. Loved the book of the new earth but this is dreck, can’t bring myself to finish it

Worst ever

The story jumped around without reason or explanation. Words wasted on the obvious and not used to tell a story. I listened to the entire book with the hope it would be a great epiphany at the end. However, it simply ended as it had been written, and to top it off, the main character was not even a good character. Total waste of time.

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.

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.