Gene WolfeFiction · Fantasy·1931–2019
The Wizard
Synopsis
The direct continuation of The Knight, following Able of the High Heart as his quest enters its final and most consequential phase.
Having established himself as a knight of Mythgarthr, Able now confronts the full complexity of the world's seven-realm cosmology — traveling between levels, facing the giants of Muspel and the beings of Skai, and grappling with whether the identity he has built through will and deeds has made him who he set out to become.
Narrated in the same retrospective letter format as the first volume, The Wizard completes the arc of a boy who was given the body of a hero and spent two long books trying to earn the soul to match.
Gene Wolfe resolves the central mysteries of the cosmology while remaining characteristically allusive about what actually happened and whether the narrator has told it straight, leaving readers to assemble the full picture from what Able chooses to share, omits, or quietly revises.
How it reads
Prose complexity 8/10
Content warnings (2)
ViolenceTrauma

