The Knight | a Review
originally published on 23/05/2025;
Hello everyone, I am the wielder of swords and shields, the rider of horses, G.E.M.Simov, a knower of knights and all things knightly, here to tell you about Vera Mutafchieva’s “The Knight”.
Simple review details - I rank books on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Content
This book - the Knight - is about knights. It is a knightly novel, but at the same time it might not be exactly a knightly novel, as it starts off surely enough, featuring the structure of a knightly society, all its oddities and quirks.
Then, however, it transitions away from that. Not a simple transition either, but an outright denunciation of it - as if it is so completely and totally wrong that everyone involved in it is wrong for being involved in the first place.
However, at the same time, it does not present a solution to the problems that are shown off in the book itself - in particular, the problems of knightly society, of the feudal order. Yes, it is a problem that people are treated differently purely because of the circumstances of their birth, it is a problem that some people are, essentially, property of others, but then no solution is presented, even though it is shown off as wrong.
Then again, the book does present a solution, of sorts, but it is not a solution that works. It's a bad solution, because, ultimately, it relies on escape. The choice that the characters in the book are presented with is to stay in the world of feudalism, in the rigid system, or to leave it and go into the world of the Orient.
There is no option for changing the world of the West, there is no solution for the plight of feudalism. It's even presented as such in the book - one either falls back in the fold, or abandons it entirely. Those who try to do anything different are dealt with quickly - by being awarded with death.
Another thing that the book attempts to do, and does, is to show off a correct way of thinking. In some regards it is correct - indeed, living completely free of doubt, living with absolute conviction in every single aspect of what is already known, is not optimal. In fact, it is one of the many reasons, and also quite a major one at that, for the issues that plague the world to this day.
However, the way this book presents things is that, by embracing doubtfulness, and managing to appropriately dish out doubt regarding certain things, one will reach a sort of complete and satisfactory enlightenment. Through this doubtfulness one will develop their humanity totally, and will wind up on the right path. That might be true in some cases, but it is not such in most of them. Undoubtedly, being doubtful allows for some more profound thought, but it also allows for incredible problems.
Doubt is a problem that plagues contemporary times as well - everyone is doubtful of things such as legitimacy, intentions and so on. Being far too doubtful is almost more problematic than being a dogmatic drone, as it becomes a dogma itself.
This, the book attempts to lay down some groundwork for a pseudo guide to personal development, or to show off how a person develops, but it, ultimately, comes up somewhat short and insufficient. Not because that is wrong - it is perfectly reasonable - but because it is presented as proper, as if it is the only way to deal with personal growth. The presentation does not posit the potential of doubt to fail, and that is the book's failure.
On a lighter note, distancing itself from the ideas swirling within the book, is the book’s setting. While things are very well explored and explained in many pieces of media, and knights and feudal societies are ever-present in literature, there is a lot of good here. The system is well described and explained, the rigidity is given foundation - emerging from the Faith of Western Europe, and there is even some room for understanding and appreciating it.
The system, when it works, works, and it seems to present some idyllic, splendid little hypothetical. On top of that, the way that the Orient is shown off in the book, by being the juxtaposition for the West - is also decently entertaining, though not totally engaging.
What is more interesting is how the system fails, which is, ultimately, everything that this book is about - it is all about feudalism clashing with itself and those things outside of it, it is about knighthood, which can only really exist in feudal societies, struggling to stay afloat.
The book features a plethora of other things - such as commentary on the third social class, merchants; a knight who is heavily inspired by the actual René Descartes; a story heavily intertwined with that one Crusade that reached and took Constantinople, resulting in the creation of the Latin Empire. In general, the presence of these actual historical events and characters as backdrops and movers of the events in the book is very interesting and might be what makes this bit of literature worth sampling.
However, there are other issues - that plethora of things is also responsible for that. It feels as though the book is very rushed, and far too short, for what it attempts to do. It tried to delve into a number of topics, following the big bout of development’s conclusion, but it does so incredibly poorly. Everything is delved into at a staggeringly surface-adjacent level, if not on the surface level itself. There's, as an example, some consideration of loneliness, but it comes out of nowhere and attempts to hijack the entirety of the book’s theme, shifting the focus from doubt and personal growth, from overcoming stereotypes and prejudices to being together, to whether one is alone or not.
There's a decent chunk of good in this book, but there is also a large amount of baffling, nearly bad stuff in it. As a result, i found it difficult to get its overall grade higher than what would, ultimately, be a more negative score. 2/3
Richness of Expression
As a book written half a century ago, if not more than that, this one has a number of gems in it. Not only that, but it also features quite a few words that would be otherwise unknown to a person - mainly stuff related to knights, but then also older, timelier things.
In fact, there's such a plethora of words that I had not encountered before, as well as some very succinct descriptions of concepts, that I am willing to give this book the highest grade. It could be argued that I would be far less impressed if this was YET ANOTHER knightly novel that I was reading, rather than it being one of the first, but as things stand, I am beyond pleased by the richness of expression on display. 3/3
Story
This book follows, unsurprisingly, the journey of a knight by the name Rojé de Fré. He starts off his journey by being a second son of a now dead count, as a result of which he gets no inheritance. Thus, wanting to maintain his pride as a knight, he leaves his home and tries to make a name for himself… As a knight.
Alas, as it turns out, things are not as easy as they appear to be in the stories and ballads of knighthood that he has heard. Rojé winds up having a few very rough days, meets some interesting characters and, ultimately, signs on to be a Crusader.
That takes him all the way to the Orient, to Bulgaria, during which journey he starts becoming disillusioned with the world he hails from and the rules that hold it together. There, his faith is tested, and he grows as a person, before, ultimately, his fate is sealed as he makes an important choice in the fields of Adrianople.
On the outside, this looks like a reasonably solid little story. The part of it that takes place in the West, during which Rojé struggles with a reality check, is incredibly entertaining and interesting, as it winds up revealing things about the world to the character, and perhaps to the reader, which are entirely unknown. The way Rojé deals with these troubles is fascinating, and the fact that he is a very believable, very straightforward character makes it easier to enjoy.
However, as he starts encountering new characters, such as the rogue knight Descartes, things start taking a turn. The weight of the turn grows increasingly, as not only Rojé, but all other characters swirl about the concept of what is and what is not clear. The rules of the West, of feudal society, seem broken, but at the same time they are fiercely defended, they are the way the world works, they are derived from God's rule over the world.
It is staggeringly weird how Rojé takes that long to accept the way things are, to change - which is, in a sense, very plausible, because people change very slowly, especially if they are fanatical zealots, but at the same time it seems as if the circumstances surrounding Rojé, the adventures he has gone through, are such that he would get a particularly potent kickstart.
After all, losing everything one has ever had, only to then find a friend and become increasingly attached and dependent on him, only to then lose him as well, and all the while to continuously lose everything but a slight hope that there is something in the future, whilst being bombarded from left and right that things just do not work as one thinks they work - is very implausible to yours truly.
Regardless, Rojé gets there. It takes him a bit longer, because he is so entrenched in the dogma, but he manages to overcome it with the help of others, who question it and outright defy it. The main element here is that he recognizes the humanity in the heathens, the Orthodox Christians, and also is predisposed to being a good person.
That predisposition in him is most troublesome, because it implies that only through being born good will one be able to tear him/herself away from an unjust, broken system of beliefs, and it also implies that there is an overwhelming quantity of not-good people.
At least, that is the reading I procured from the book. While this may be more geared towards being part of the Content component of this review, I am compelled to place it here, because Rojé’s driving power is that he is good. He is not just good, he is quite innocent. In fact, he is still a child, not a totally grown man - he becomes twenty-one years old in the Orient.
So this young lad who is barely a man, struggling through these events, manages to get to where he is only because he is young and predisposed. Unfortunate as it is, there are many others who are older, and far more cruel than him, far more entrenched than he is - and their main role is of the antagonists. Those who are not born lucky like Rojé are destined to forever cling to dogma and perpetuate it at the expense of themselves and others, it would seem.
Ultimately, the conclusion of the book is just that - one old fellow’s entrenchment into his beliefs leads him to throw his life away, whilst also cutting short that of another.
However, that could be argued to be reasonable, to even be decently alright. I argue that is not the case - for while the role of villain winds up filled out by the baron Steinkopf, I believe his role was that of a mentor, and that making him, ultimately, the main antagonist was a mistake, for he represents a system that he was, simultaneously, implied to be somewhat outside of.
That was, thematically, very problematic, due to the fact that the clash is between the Orient and the West, between a flexible freedom-esque life and a rigid, rule-driven social order. However, by making the representative of the latter an exception to the rule, well, we miss the point. As there was barely anything in the book to point at rule exceptions and law skirters, whereas there was an intense focus on the rules themselves, and whether one ought to operate within the system held up by said rules or outside of it.
My view here is that Descartes and Steinkopf are two mentors for Rojé, who both influence him in whatever ways possible. The tension is not between one who is good and one who is bad, even though the reader can clearly make that distinction, it is between one and the other - Descartes' disdain for the system and his understanding that it is a failure, and Steinkopf’s adamant investment in the system.
It was, and should have been, up to Rojé to decide, and while the baron could maintain his role in the story, he should not have been used as the author's tool to bring about an end for the story - and an unfitting one at that.
For, while the story has issues, particularly regarding its use of characters as inconsequential pawns that continue popping up in the latter stages of the book, only to somehow reinforce their inconsequentiality… It could have ended up being very good.
Instead, it is not just mediocre, but leaning towards bad, because there is almost nothing, up to the penultimate chapter, that could be interpreted as indicative or hinting towards the end. Perhaps there is a message here, that fate and life are cruel, and that regardless of the choices one makes, no matter how good a person one is, they will always get the short end of the stick.
However, I do not think that that is the case. In a sense, it could be reasoned that Rojé needed to end - for the man that Rojé was, the way Rojé reached his new destination, was such that it negated who he was before. He ends up being a stranger in a strange land, but he is not ultimately just that - he is a friend and he is loved, and he has a strong bond and connection that holds him in place. He develops another bond just before his story ends, and it seems odd that the author would choose to end the tale…
For, after all, not only does Rojé change, he also rescinds. He no longer wants what he wanted, he has so thoroughly lessened what he desires, that it seems almost proper for him to be allowed it. He has gone through such a profound change that it seems almost adequate for him to have earned mercy, yet the story does not end that way.
Instead, not only does it end in an unsatisfying manner, but everything is so thoroughly rushed that by the time the reader is informed of this prophetic dream, which only becomes apparent two (or so) chapters before the end of the book, which is just bad foreshadowing, all things considered, the reader gets one incredibly dense chapter, some fleeting lines and WHAM, Rojé is dying.
Yes, that much was clear, but Rojé dies at the end of the story… When everything seems to imply that things will be different. He is built up as a very capable knight, regarding the jousting aspect of things, at least, and yet he gets out-jousted by an old, malnourished, totally maddened by stress man. Not only that, but that occurs while Rojé is without armor, and his horse is similarly bare, thus he has incredible speed and maneuverability. It makes little sense…
Ultimately, the book fails to establish and set up that its main Character is going to die. Rojé’s story constantly seems to be one of self discovery, of growth and, ultimately, of satisfaction. However, there's a little flimble that is forced into the end, and then Rojé dies.
It does not seem to give anything to the reader. It does not seem to contribute to the story itself, nor to the overall theme of it. If one tries to… Go to the other side, they are bound to die? Was it not raging against the machine that would kill the one doing it, rather than complying, choosing a side?
The story is middling, with some high points, but, ultimately, it falls flat. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this book get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No, it does not. The fact that it is written by a certain person and it takes place in a certain country is neat and, as mentioned, the historical backdrop is very entertaining.
However, the book simply falls flat. Even if the ending had been different, even if my gripes with the story were not such, I am uncertain that it would have had what it takes. “The Knight” is an interesting book that fails to be anything spectacular, and, ultimately, seems to be more of an adventure story than a profound work. 0/1
Conclusion
6/10. As stated, this is not a bad book, though at the same time it is more middling than not. It is interesting, in particular for folks who live in the lands where the action takes place, but outside of that group, I would not say it is all that interesting or provocative. Fans of knight novels can grab it, but it can simply be skipped by everyone else.
In the bag of mediocrity I chuck it, to gather dust and simply be… When it could have been so much better!