I finished Gene Wolfe’s The Knight today. My Wolfe gene must be missing, because I don’t get it. I understand that his books are often obscure on a first reading, and that this is just the first of a two-book series, but nothing in the book really moved me. Some of the scenes were beautifully written, and I liked the main character, Able of the High Heart, but the story left me flat. It just didn’t seem worth the effort.
I thought I’d search the web for other reactions to the book to see what I was missing, and while many reviewers were positive, most of them were vague about why they liked it so much. Their comments generally bore on the same theme: “I’m not sure what the book means, but I look forward to reading the next book to find out.”
Fred Saberhagen