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Book Review of The Wizard (Wizard Knight, Bk 2)

The Wizard (Wizard Knight, Bk 2)
The Wizard (Wizard Knight, Bk 2)
Author: Gene Wolfe
Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
purplediane avatar reviewed Huh? on + 4 more book reviews


My most common thought while reading this book: "Huh? How did we suddenly get here, and who took out the end of the last scene?" In many places in the book, it felt like a weird dream, where a scene suddenly morphs into another seemingly in the middle of the story. Another thing I found very annoying was not knowing who was talking in conversations where there are more than 2 people; just a bunch of people speaking with rarely anything to indicate who says what. It definitely reduces my enjoyment of a book to have to stop reading and go back through the dialogue trying to figure out which character said what.

Although the mythology was interesting, there was too much repetition as he explains it over and over to various people. Since this was supposed to be a narrative explaining what happened, it should suffice to say something like "And I explained to him about the 7 worlds, our world Mythgarthr and it's relationship to Skai above and Aelfrice below". Or whichever part of the mythology was relevant to that situation.

Many of the characters were so inconsistent as to be baffling. Ironically, the only character I liked was Mani the talking cat, whose personality actually seemed cat-like. I also liked Gylf from the first book and was disappointed at how small a role he played in this one.

I didn't find Able a believable or likable character in this book, which makes it difficult to like the book. The plot simply meanders along and changes often.

Overall, a disappointing sequel to The Knight.