The Knight, 432 pp, Tor Books, January 2004
The Wizard, 489 pp, Tor, November 2004

It's a refreshing change of format to see a story in two volumes, not three, and to see them come out close enough to each other that you can actually remember the plot of the first by the time you start the second.

A vague backstory leads a young man into a very Norse seeming world of fantasy, magic, and heroism. He is transformed into Sir Able of the High Heart, and we're off on a quest.

Wolf builds a fascinating world in layers, suggestive but not identical to the ideas of the levels of hell or the Norse underworld and overworld. Our hero's journey takes him above and below, but never fully explores all of the levels. In fact, that incompletion is characteristic of the story all the way through.

Because some of his memory has been stolen from Able, we are never entirely sure of all of the plot. The telling is in the form of a letter to his brother, who may or may not be in this strange world with him. As able struggles on his journey, he encounters many tests of his nobility, his strength, and his knighthood. Surprisingly, he occasionally fails, and must either cope with the consequences or rely on some supernatural being to bail him out for their own ends.

The hints at a deep understanding of Celtic and Norse mythology are delicious, and inspire the reader to pursue the roots of the re-told fables. Characters are freely borrowed from more than one mythology; some are outright invented but clearly derived from the same fabric as the old tales.

The use and knowledge of magic is stronger in the second volume, as the title suggests, but it's discovery lies primarily in the first, the understanding of the connections between things natural and supernatural being it's main ingredient.

All in all a good story, well told. It comes to a satisfactory conclusion, although new tales may be told in this universe it's primary conflict is resolved and our hero is evolved and exposed. well worth the read.