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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
Many years ago, I read "Sailing to Sarantium" by this author and remember being very angry - 2 moons in the sky does not make a book Science Fiction, I said. To be honest, I don't remember much about the book now. I decided to give the author another chance with a different book, this one. I am blown away. The atmosphere created in this book has far exceeded any expectations I might have had. To say it took my breath away, literally, is not an exaggeration. I will begin the second book in the series today and look forward to reading many more books by this author. I have since read that the author himself likes to shy away from genre classification and I believe this is a wise choice. His writing is amazing, but can be misinterpreted by those looking for a specific genre and feeling cheated when they don't get what they are looking for.
I get why people often consider this generic Tolkienesque fantasy, but I have to wonder how many of them have actually finished the series. The similarities to Tolkien seem to be more due to Kay mining the same veins of myth than to his copying Tolkein's work. Further, his work has much greater emotional depth than Tolkein.
I do keep thinking I should downgrade this to four stars out of fairness to his later works which are better written. But every time I do, I think of how I respond to this book every time I read it and it just won't happen.
I do keep thinking I should downgrade this to four stars out of fairness to his later works which are better written. But every time I do, I think of how I respond to this book every time I read it and it just won't happen.
I enjoyed [b:Tigana|104089|Tigana|Guy Gavriel Kay|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1241516828s/104089.jpg|1907200] so much, it made sense for me to dip into Kay's back catalog. I may have gone too far back. This book was really, really busy what with the 12 intersecting plot lines, the 27 classes of people, the 14 gods (numbers approximate, but overwhelming) and the odd shape-changer. The language is high-flown and portentous all out of proportion with the fairly stale plots. I understand that in the second book, Arthur and Lance are brought into the world, and one of the existing characters morphs into Gwen, as if things weren't tangled up enough already.
I stuck it through till the end because the seeds of the writer Kay grew into are interesting to watch germinate, but I won't be reading the other two books of this trilogy. I was interested enough to look up the plot summary on Wikipedia, but I was not interested in giving any more of my life to this group of gods, mages and men.
The best part, for me, was the Ivor/Tabor/Levon/Dave storyline. It was strong and clean and fresh but hearkened back to several ancient civilizations. I wish the whole book had been like that.
I stuck it through till the end because the seeds of the writer Kay grew into are interesting to watch germinate, but I won't be reading the other two books of this trilogy. I was interested enough to look up the plot summary on Wikipedia, but I was not interested in giving any more of my life to this group of gods, mages and men.
The best part, for me, was the Ivor/Tabor/Levon/Dave storyline. It was strong and clean and fresh but hearkened back to several ancient civilizations. I wish the whole book had been like that.
What I like in an author is a really distinctive "voice" - such that you'd know from just a sentence or two who the author was. And GGK has certainly got that, with a range of tones from "high faerie" to "campus chat", often brutally juxtaposed.
But the flip side of a distinctive voice is that one can love it or loathe it - a "Marmite" voice. And while I can quite understand why GGK has so many devoted followers, unfortunately I found his style jarring. "High Faerie" works as long as no one wonders how these great characters get dressed, whether they scratch when they itch etc. But the sliding into modern day speech has the same effect (for me) of looking behind the curtain and finding the real Wizard of Oz.
But the flip side of a distinctive voice is that one can love it or loathe it - a "Marmite" voice. And while I can quite understand why GGK has so many devoted followers, unfortunately I found his style jarring. "High Faerie" works as long as no one wonders how these great characters get dressed, whether they scratch when they itch etc. But the sliding into modern day speech has the same effect (for me) of looking behind the curtain and finding the real Wizard of Oz.
DNF - I've been trying to read this book for the better part of 4 months - and I had started it about a year ago...I think I'm finally going to give up. I just couldn't get into this portal fantasy. I had no idea what was going on in the world, who was who, and why they kept repeating first and last names (Paul Shaffer, (also Paul Shaffer is a personality from my hometown, and I could not get over that)).
I guess I've already read a semi-sequel to this work in Ysabel.
***
I'm having a heck of a time giving this book a rating. It has some seriously annoying stuff in it, and some seriously beautiful stuff as well. The faux archaisms ("beautiful she was...") make me want to poke someone with a fork. The language veers between poetic ("oh the rain...") and really astonishingly flat ("no dice").
When I read the Sarantium Mosaic by Kay I was simply enamored of it. This has some seeds of that greatness, but...
Hmph. 3.5 stars. I guess. I dunno. I'll probably change this later. I don't know that I even feel like reading more of the trilogy.
HMPH!
***
I'm having a heck of a time giving this book a rating. It has some seriously annoying stuff in it, and some seriously beautiful stuff as well. The faux archaisms ("beautiful she was...") make me want to poke someone with a fork. The language veers between poetic ("oh the rain...") and really astonishingly flat ("no dice").
When I read the Sarantium Mosaic by Kay I was simply enamored of it. This has some seeds of that greatness, but...
Hmph. 3.5 stars. I guess. I dunno. I'll probably change this later. I don't know that I even feel like reading more of the trilogy.
HMPH!
Nice
Nice, Awesome narration and awesome story I cant wait for the next book in the series and the narration again.
Nice, Awesome narration and awesome story I cant wait for the next book in the series and the narration again.
Second January book (which means I am on track for 24 books this year despite the fact that my work life has become a whirlwind) is The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. Let's get to it:
Expectations - It must be at least a decade since I first heard about this book. I don't remember where, or what was said, other than that it was all positive and I put the book on my 'to read' list because it intrigued me. It proved difficult to find in shops, and this was before I had a debit card with which I could order things online. Then there were other things to read and... I just didn't get around to it. Until now. So, sadly, I can't really remember my expectations for this book.
I was expecting it to be good, and I was expecting it to be fantasy. As it turns out, it wasn't the type of fantasy I thought it was. It was the kind where humans from the real world are dragged into the fantasy world. As much as I love C S Lewis, that isn't really my preferred form.
Positives - Despite that, I did enjoy this book. It didn't take long at all for me to get past the 'why is this book set in Toronto?' factor and start really getting into the emotional meat of the characters. And the characters certainly do have a lot of emotional depth which is slowly uncovered. Not only the humans from our world but the Dwarf King and the Magician as well. I struggled to keep the five humans straight for a while, but eventually got the hang of it. The relationships between them are interesting, as are the varying relationships between each character and their families. There's not a lot of that, because they move to the fantasy world fairly fast, but what there was was enough to keep me interested in their stories.
The structure of this book did some interesting things. At the beginning, it seemed normal as we followed the group of five humans plus two Fionavar residents. Then, as the character went their separate ways the narrative started switching between them. There was no warning that this was happening, the book would just launch into a new viewpoint. (This may have been a fault in my ebook, but I doubt it.) I swear, towards the climax of the novel the sections got much shorter and it started to feel almost like they were weaving in and out of one another.Which is appropriate, as there's a lot of reference to The Weaver (a god figure) and The Tapestry (fate). Then the narrative went back in time to almost the beginning of the story, which was incredibly frustrating because I want to know what happened. But then, as with the best authors, I got into the new story - which wasn't presented in the tapestry form. Even though this structure didn't really carry through, it was still interesting.
Negatives - I don't have a lot of criticism for this book, and most of what there is revolves around the end. I was not entirely pleased to find that there's surprise rape and torture about thirty pages from the end. It was well written, and not explicit, but I still could have done with it. Though, that said, it made the actual final-page ending a lot more powerful. The other problem with the ending was that it was a cliffhanger. Now, this is part of a serious so I wasn't expecting everything to be neatly wrapped up, but I do prefer not to be left wondering if everyone is still alive.
Final Thoughts - I'm not sure this book is AS good as the praise I heard made it out to be, nor am I convinced it was worth waiting ten years for. I did enjoy it, though, which is more of an achievement given I don't like this specific subgenre that much. The characters were enough to carry off any faults with it, and I find the structure interesting. 7 stars.
Expectations - It must be at least a decade since I first heard about this book. I don't remember where, or what was said, other than that it was all positive and I put the book on my 'to read' list because it intrigued me. It proved difficult to find in shops, and this was before I had a debit card with which I could order things online. Then there were other things to read and... I just didn't get around to it. Until now. So, sadly, I can't really remember my expectations for this book.
I was expecting it to be good, and I was expecting it to be fantasy. As it turns out, it wasn't the type of fantasy I thought it was. It was the kind where humans from the real world are dragged into the fantasy world. As much as I love C S Lewis, that isn't really my preferred form.
Positives - Despite that, I did enjoy this book. It didn't take long at all for me to get past the 'why is this book set in Toronto?' factor and start really getting into the emotional meat of the characters. And the characters certainly do have a lot of emotional depth which is slowly uncovered. Not only the humans from our world but the Dwarf King and the Magician as well. I struggled to keep the five humans straight for a while, but eventually got the hang of it. The relationships between them are interesting, as are the varying relationships between each character and their families. There's not a lot of that, because they move to the fantasy world fairly fast, but what there was was enough to keep me interested in their stories.
The structure of this book did some interesting things. At the beginning, it seemed normal as we followed the group of five humans plus two Fionavar residents. Then, as the character went their separate ways the narrative started switching between them. There was no warning that this was happening, the book would just launch into a new viewpoint. (This may have been a fault in my ebook, but I doubt it.) I swear, towards the climax of the novel the sections got much shorter and it started to feel almost like they were weaving in and out of one another.Which is appropriate, as there's a lot of reference to The Weaver (a god figure) and The Tapestry (fate). Then the narrative went back in time to almost the beginning of the story, which was incredibly frustrating because I want to know what happened. But then, as with the best authors, I got into the new story - which wasn't presented in the tapestry form. Even though this structure didn't really carry through, it was still interesting.
Negatives - I don't have a lot of criticism for this book, and most of what there is revolves around the end. I was not entirely pleased to find that there's surprise rape and torture about thirty pages from the end. It was well written, and not explicit, but I still could have done with it. Though, that said, it made the actual final-page ending a lot more powerful. The other problem with the ending was that it was a cliffhanger. Now, this is part of a serious so I wasn't expecting everything to be neatly wrapped up, but I do prefer not to be left wondering if everyone is still alive.
Final Thoughts - I'm not sure this book is AS good as the praise I heard made it out to be, nor am I convinced it was worth waiting ten years for. I did enjoy it, though, which is more of an achievement given I don't like this specific subgenre that much. The characters were enough to carry off any faults with it, and I find the structure interesting. 7 stars.