(urth) Fee Fi Ho Hum: Wolfe's Wizard
mournings glory
mourningsglory at hotmail.com
Fri Nov 5 16:23:19 PST 2004
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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