[2011] What are you reading?

I with you on the heavy book, Deckard. My son knocked my 1,000 page copy of A Wise Man's Fear off the table, and it literally broke the spine. After reading most of my recent books on a Kindle, it felt strange holding such a hefty and ponderous piece of literature. It definitely took more time to get in a comfortable position to read.

Have you read any Guy Gavriel Kay? While it's not historical fiction, it's certainly rooted in it.

 

I'm still tackling his collection and am not halfway through. I'd avoid the Fionavar trilogy, which was good but way too Tolkeinish for my tastes. Under Heaven was based on 9th century Japan, and The Lions of al-Rassan was based on Moorish Spain. Both were outstanding.

rhadamanthus has recommended Lions as well as Tigana as Kay's best works. I'll have an update on Tigana (based off of medieval Italy) as soon as I finish.

Kay's work is really fascinating and unlike anything I've read before. I guess technically it's fantasy, but that seems almost wrong. He clearly draws deeply from a historical time period and weaves the people, motivations, and events of that era into his own lands and tales. His writing is excellent, and his stories are epic yet feel personal with several main characters who are exquisitely fleshed out. I'm smacking myself for not having read him earlier and kind of dreading when I finish reading his current catalogue.

 

I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana yesterday, and it is another outstanding entry in this author's body of work. The story is based on medieval Italy and tells the two decade story of a group of semi-warring nine provinces, who are taken over by two sorcerers (Alberico and Brandin) from overseas. Each sorcerer takes four provinces, with the lone remaining province acting as a buffer between these two feuding tyrants. They rule with absolute authority, brutally and spectacularly torturing and killing those who oppose them and sometimes at random to demonstrate their power.

The book begins with the typical Kay prologue that introduces you to characters and concepts that become far more important as you read the story. This time, it begins on the eve of a battle between Brandin's vast armies of soldiers and sorceries, and the hopelessly outnumbered forces of one of the provinces. They expect no quarter, for their prince slew Brandin's son in battle. You don't see the actual battle, but you discover the terrible aftermath of Tigana and its people. Brandin doesn't just slay an army. He obliterates their society, tearing down their art, history, and architecture, and even casting a spell that makes all who weren't born in Tigana unable to remember or even speak its name.

Decades later, a company of conspirators slowly draw together to drive both powerful sorcerers from the peninsula so Tigana's name can be restored and the people can be free from tyranny.

It's an epic tale that is pretty ambitious for a single novel, but Kay once again colors the story with a memorable cast of characters. He always seems to have a soft spot for the arts, and this time it manifests itself in music. A number of characters either joined the conspiracy from a troubadour group or pose as one for disguise. Despite their heavy burden, the intimate act of making music brings solace to many passages. There are also a couple of renegade wizards, who are really awesome characters.

There is a great deal of sorrow for things lost in this book. Some grieve for family, or for a time when they lived free, for their lost province of Tigana, or all of the above. You really get the sense that most of them have seriously hardened their hearts so they can grimly soldier on in their plans.

I maybe had a few minor issues with the ending, but it still closed in a pretty satisfactory manner. This was a great novel, but I'd probably put it a step below Under Heaven and The Lions of al-Rassan.

Spoiler

Duke Sandre was such a cool character. To see him fall short in his own conspiracy, lose everything, and then build himself back up was awesome. It was heartbreaking to see him aid his son in suicide but unable to rescue him because he didn't want to cut off two fingers. Yet he never hesitated to attempt to save Catriana, whom he viewed as a daughter.

I also really liked bound Erlein. He chafed at his mental shackles, but I never doubted that he would aid their conspiracy of his own free will.

I would have liked to see Dianora and Baerd reunite. I guess Kay wanted them to be star-crossed like that, but she moped the entire book. I felt she deserved to see her brother again before dying. She failed in her mission to slay Brandin and then lost again when he died after she fell in love with him.

I kind of saw The Fool being the prince of Tigana. How perfect that he was the one to kill Brandin. I wish he could have seen his own son before he died, or that Alessan was aware of his identity.

Those last two and the very final paragraph were things I was disappointed with at the very end.

I'm continuing my Guy Gavriel Kay tour with Sailing to Sarantium, the first of the two book Sarantine Mosaic series. It seems like this is at least set in the same world as The Lions of al-Rassan. Definitely a different region, but I'm not sure how it fits in time wise.

 

Drool.

From Robert McCammon's blog:

Right now, I'd put this at the top spot for my most anticipated novel of 2012, but I might have to reconsider that if Guy Gavriel Kay releases a new book next year. And Joe Abercrombie's A Red Country is also way up there. He definitely warrants a read the first day it's available status and is rapidly becoming one of my very favorite authors to read.

 

Guy Gavriel Kay is truly an outstanding author. I can't believe I never read him until this past year. Sailing to Sarantium is the first book in the Sarantine Mosaic series and is another stellar novel by Kay. It's apparently based off Byzantine Constantinople.

Like most of Kay's works, the overarcing story is epic. This story is about a massive capital in a massive empire, constantly trying to expand its borders even if its armies and treasury cannot support those endeavors. The prologue sees the death of an emperor and the crowning of a new one. Twenty years later, the empire has been rattled by some low class uprisings, and the emperor seeks to cement his legacy by building an enormous cathedral with a Sistine Chapel level mosaic ceiling.

The main character is named Crispin, a master mosaicist who lost his wife and two daughters in the Plague. He's brilliant and talented, but caustic and prone to speak his mind without always thinking through the diplomacy of his words. This eventually leads to interesting scenes when he reaches the delicate palace intrigue of Sarantine, the capital of the empire.

The first half of the story deals with his journey to Sarantine. Normally I'd be a bit irritated with a long quest story thrown in for filler, but this isn't the case here. The events of his travels clearly have impacted Crispin and help inspire his vision for the master mosaic he is to build.

Kay compiles a list of interesting characters around Crispin to add colorful events and conversations to the epic scope of the story. We meet soldiers, charioteers, nobles, whores, and artists. With the mosaic playing such a large role, the language is often painted with colors and hues. Crispin sees the world as he would tile them in a mosaic in vivid colors and themes. There is also much theory about religion, clashes in culture, and opposing viewpoints within a religion. None of this is dry and forced though. It flows through Kay's writing eloquently.

I'm moving right on to the sequel, Lord of Emperors. So far this 2 book series is holding up to Kay's best works. Can't wait to see how it ends.

 

I finished Lord of Emperors last night, which completed the two book Sarantine Mosaic series. It was ****ing amazing. Guy Gavriel Kay's masterpiece is a single epic book broken into two pieces. All the characters from the first book return, minor characters in the first book get some major roles in pivotal scenes, and a new main character is introduced in the opening chapter.

Kay has a solid track record of foreshadowing or hinting at epic confrontations then delivering in grand style. He does not disappoint in this novel. While the second half of the series covers a few years from beginning to end, the majority of the story takes place on two days separated by a few months. The first day brings characters together, shifts alliances, and illuminates where others stand. The second is when everything goes down for just about every characters still in play. That includes a chariot race that is one of the best athletic scenes I've ever read.

This book is loaded with memorable scenes that make your blood race, your heart break, or your spirits soar. Characters are lifted up to where they rightfully belong, receive their just desserts, or find satisfaction in ways they might not have anticipated. There were so many scenes that I take away from this series, and so many wonderfully drawn characters. I appreciate that Kay always has at least one strong female character in his novels. This one featured three. Each of them sought to direct the cataclysmic events directly or indirectly. I also thoroughly enjoyed the rival chariot teams(Greens and Blues). They had their fiercely loyal factions, which hated their opponents beyond reason.

I think this series as a whole is better than The Lions of al-Rassan, but I would definitely read that book first before tackling the Sarantine Mosaic. It takes place a few centuries before Lions, but it references and prefaces several things from that novel. You'd get a richer understanding of a few scenes, but reading Lions is certainly not a prerequisite to reading The Sarantine Mosaic.

I highly recommend these two books.

I'm getting close to the end of Kay's catalog. Up next is A Song for Arbonne, which is based off a modification of the Albigensian Crusade in a medieval Provence analogue.

 

I finished up A Song for Arbonne over the weekend. It was a really good novel, but in some ways fell short of his usual brilliance. I'd probably rank this book last of Kay's non-Fionavar novels that I've read so far.

A Song for Arbonne chronicled the kingdom of Arbonne, and it's two deities, one male and one female. It was a very female-dominated society, and they were renowned for their arts, particulary roaming musicians who wrote love songs to the beauties of the kingdom, whether married or not. To the North of Arbonne was a warlike kingdom who only worshipped the lone male god and viewed their southern neighbor's pagan rites as blasphemy.

You see the story unfold as the Northern kingdom girds for war and eventually marches through the usual cast of brilliant characters provides. You meet several musicians and clerics and nobles from both sides. There is plenty of intrigue, and a number of riveting scenes. It deals with some high themes such as religious bigotry and the role of women in a medieval society without coming across as lecturing.

Maybe it's reading A Song for Arbonne right after Lord of Emperors. The latter book was filled with epic scenes and character confrontations. I don't know if it's fair to hold up Arbonne to the same light, but that's the order I read them. While fleshed out, I thought many of the characters in Arbonne were a bit flat compared to other Kay works, and a number of the confrontations hinted at didn't come to full fruition or weren't as dramatic as they were in other Kay books.

Still all in all, this was a very good book. I've only got two Guy Gavriel Kay books left, and I'll be doing a full write up on my impressions of the author as well as his 11 novels when I'm done.

I'm about halfway through Last Light of the Sun, which seems to draw inspiration from the Viking invasions of Saxon England as well as from faerie magic. It is also set in the same world as Lions of al-Rassan and the Sarantine Mosaic. Several small mentions of events, kingdoms, and religions have been mentioned. It's excellent so far.

 

I liked Last Light of the Sun, but I felt it was Kay's weakest novel. He blended a story based on the Vikings and Celtic faerie magic, and the two didn't seem to mix well. Normally his characters are vibrantly rich, and his stories are loaded with epic confrontations and riveting plotline resolutions. This one just kind of fell flat. The two main characters were an exiled father and his son who just joined a viking mercenary group. Despite building up a reunion for these two, they barely spoke the entire novel. Other characters included an assortment of royals and a faerie creature, but none of these felt fully developed. I also felt they were under utilized in the overall plot. The clashing of opposing characters underwhelmed in how they played out, and the overall story lacked some of the epic nature of Kay's other works.

I feel like I'm nitpicking. It was still a good story, and the writing was brilliant. But Guy Gavriel Kay has set a very high bar for me with his other novels, which were over the top awesome.

I started Ysabel last night, which is the first Kay novel set in modern times. It's his second most recent book, released in 2007, so his writing his pretty mature. It's always been mature, but it has a polished and honed edge to it with his latest works. The novel is set in Aix-en-Provence, which is a gorgeous city. I spent a few days there, picnicking, reading, and hanging out in cafes drinking wine and eating steak tartare. So far reading this book is transporting me back there, and I am absolutely craving some steak tartate. I'm having my wife bring some Blackmoore (Australian kobe) steak tonight so I can satisfy this sudden urge.

It's kind of bittersweet to read the last of Kay's works. I'm on a monster run of good books, and Kay's catalog has been the driving force. It'll feel kind of weird to move on to another author soon.