Subject: (urth) Fee Fi Ho Hum: Wolfe's Wizard

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:24:09 +0000

As long as others are doing so, will now weigh in with my own early and 
spoiler-free review.

After rather enjoying _The Knight_, I found myself pretty much slogging my 
way through its followup, with my biggest problem being the endless 
stretches of uninteresting dialogue. What, pray tell, ever happened to the 
Wolfe who could craft dialogue in service of his characters? Isn't he, after 
all, the writer who created (to pick the first three examples that come to 
mind) the beautiful iambic lilt of the Hierodules or the crazy quantum 
poetry of Hethor or the rough-and-ready cant of Hildegrin the Badger? Now 
instead he ascribes either ordinary, dull, plainspeak to his characters or 
worse yet, attempts to render dialect or phonetic variations of impaired 
speech. I almost stopped reading _Wizard_ when I came to the chapter with 
the broken-nosed knight and every time Uns opened his mouth (mercifully, 
such occasions were few and far between) I skipped ahead. Ditto for the 
too-frequent turgid stretches of the book, which I also skimmed, waiting for 
something--*anything*--to happen, and by the time I finished page 477 I was 
more exhausted than exhilarated. Maybe I'm just too girly a reader to enjoy 
a book written about young men (and a plethora of interchangeable squires) 
seeking knighthood and their quest for honor. Dunno. Else it's just one of 
those mileage-may-vary-things, depending on who's driving.

But also, like Mr. Arimani, I found myself hoping to spend more time with 
the Overcyns (it seems to me they exert a larger presence in the 
introductory list of characters than they do in the actual narrative) and I 
was especially disappointed that the Lady, who seems to loom large in the 
background, does not grace us with anything substantial. As for Wolfe's use 
of the you-are-what-eat Osterlings, thank heavens the inhumi's similar 
attributes weren't that underexploited.

My husband, seeing the book's small print and long page count, opinied that 
it seemed like Tor was trying to cram two books into one, and while I'm 
grateful to the publisher for the savings to my pocketbook, I think my 
readerly interests would have been better served if WK had been released in 
three or four books, the same way the various sun series were. In fact, if I 
ever get around to picking up Sir Able's narrative again (I'm hoping the 
list's imminent discussion of the book will repique my interest), this is 
how I'll tackle it--in four discrete chunks, with a few days in between each 
segment.

Lastly, among the encomiums on the back cover, I believe there's one, though 
it's uncredited, by our own Mr. Blattid. If so, sir, congratulations; it's 
too bad Tor couldn't have worked your name in somehow, given how personal 
your testimony is. (Reading the NYRSF entry, who, we're left to wonder, is 
this oft-repeated "I"?)

(And while we're on the subject of encomiums, is or is not Neil Gaiman's 
blurb about as lame as possible. I mean, I know he's a superstar and 
everything, but it's almost as if he were too dispirited after reading to 
book to come up with anything pithy or clever. On the bright side, however, 
at least he didn't spell it *kewl* <gr>)

msg

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