Book 1

Knight

by Gene Wolfe

Published 3 January 2004
A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Able and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero.
Inside, however, Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with giants, elves, wizards, and dragons. His adventure will conclude next year in the second volume of The Wizard Knight, "The Wizard."
Gene Wolfe is one of the most widely praised masters of SF and fantasy. He is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Nebula Award, twice, the World Fantasy Award, twice, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Fantasy Award, and France's Prix Apollo. His popular successes include the four-volume classic "The Book of the New Sun."
With this new series, Wolfe not only surpasses all the most popular genre writers of the last three decades, he takes on the legends of the past century, in a work that will be favorably compared with the best of J. R. R. Tolkien, E. R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, and
T. H. White. This is a book---and a series---for the ages, from perhaps the greatest living writer in (or outside) the fantasy genre.

The Wizard

by Gene Wolfe

Published 1 November 2004
The wizard knight is in the rare company of those works that spring from the myth and literature of past ages. A teenager passed from Earth to a magical realm of seven worlds, where he was soon given a hero's adult body and the name Able. Forced to act as a man, inside he remained a boy, even as he set off to find his destined sword and become a knight. In "The Wizard", Sir Able returns to the world of Myth-garthr following his fight with the dragon Grengarm. Twenty years older, with a unicorn steed named Cloud, Able has special magical powers he was sworn not to use, in return for the hope of meeting his beloved elf queen again. He battles giants; meets gods, heroes, and a sorceress who tries repeatedly to seduce him; and serves the mercurial dragon king Arnthor in a final war with the Osterlings.