"I didn't detect any Judeo-Christian element except for the (pretty amazing) appearance of Michael the Archangel."<br><br>This is what I had in mind as well, but it is impressive enough of an event that I can't help but feel it is important. The terminology "Most High" is along Judeo-Christian lines as well, now that I think about it. The "most high" and "most low" dichotomy is very dualistic as well; it is almost as though each of the treated pantheons has its own world, but there is no true overarching cosmology in place. When reading Wolfe, of course, what he <i>doesn't</i> show the reader is often just as important as what he does show, which makes me very curious about Kleos and Elysion!<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Daniel Petersen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com">danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
It's been some years, but for what it's worth, the world struck me as more Gnostic - which, as I understand it, is about the opposite of a 'most high and most low are really the same' sort of reality structure (i.e. in Gnosticism, the farther away, the farther 'down' the chain of existence, a being is from the originating 'Creator' the less real they are - thus matter is basically 'evil' and 'salvation' is an escape/return into pure spirit - as opposite from matter as is possible). I didn't detect any Judeo-Christian element except for the (pretty amazing) appearance of Michael the Archangel. Indeed, Wolfe professed in an interview to be explicitly trying to write a world that had no Christianity. If it was Gnostic-based at all, I would suspect Wolfe of being fairly devious and subversive about this - showing how it 'doesn't work' to some degree (as with the closed-system religion of The Whorl in Long Sun). Then again, he's always kept me guessing about his relation to Gnosticism - there's a fairly blatant exposition of it at one point in Peace. I never can tell what he's doing with that. <div>
<br></div><div>-DOJP<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Antonin Scriabin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kierkegaurdian@gmail.com" target="_blank">kierkegaurdian@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">
After taking a several month break after <i>The Knight</i>, I finally got around to reading <i>The Wizard</i>. I liked it better than the first installment overall, but the shift to third-person narration for some of the Jotunland scenes didn't work very well, in my opinion. This duology was definitely one of the more confusing and tricky Wolfe series that I have read, since so little is known about the world Able finds himself in (at least, the worlds other than Aelfrice, Mythgarthyr and Skai). It was also confusing because it is such a hodge-podge of mythologies (Arthurian legend, Norse gods and goddess, Judeo-Christian, etc.). Anyways, I was wondering if anyone thought the universe in these books really is "cyclical"; i.e., The Most High God and the most low god are indeed the same being, and that the highest and lowest worlds are the same. Reading that portion was one of those Wolfe moments where I have to put the book down for an hour or so, and come back later. My first thought is that the most low god was simply trying to deceive Able, and that the worlds are not the same. I was also wondering what happened to Mani ... he seemed to disappear about half-way through the narrative and none of the characters seem to notice (unless I missed it completely). Finally, has anyone picked out connections between <i>The Wizard Knight</i> and <i>Castleview</i>? They both involve people from modern day America getting entangled with a world that is a blend of Arthurian legend and Norse mythology, and I would be very surprised if there wasn't some subtle link between the two works.<br>
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