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lautir 's review for:
Under Heaven
by Guy Gavriel Kay
While I did enjoy this story, I have fair bit of issues with it in comparison to Kay's other work.
There seems to be easily repeated themes between this one, Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan. There is a big battle at the end observed from a safe distance. Bad stuff happens but nothing too terrible. Beautiful female character makes a huge sacrifice in a rather forced way. Other female character gets a cheap chapter to concluded her story in a really cliche and simple way. These were just a few things that I may have been okay with if I hadn't read some of Kay's work before but it just kind of feels like the same thing in a different time and country.
Another issue I took with the book was that it made me seriously question Kay having a good editor. There are so many lines that feel really awkward and out of place. I can't imagine a quality editor letting those get by. That along with the pretty much unnecessary passages from random side characters POV really made it hard to engage fully with the story every 100 pages or so.
Every romance plot also felt extremely forced. Yet I totally ship Tai/Bytsan if only because they had the most interesting dynamic between them. It was their interactions that stood out most to me, they were respectful but reserved from each other, if only because of the countries they came from. It had so much potential to add so much to the story, these extra alliances to forces outside of the main country. I hoped for all that yet they only got to interact for about 20 pages of the 700 page novel.
I think these annoyed me more because I really enjoyed the opening to this story. I loved the set up and the world, but found the rest of the execution lacking.
I really hope to find a new story somewhere in the rest of his work.
There seems to be easily repeated themes between this one, Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan. There is a big battle at the end observed from a safe distance. Bad stuff happens but nothing too terrible. Beautiful female character makes a huge sacrifice in a rather forced way. Other female character gets a cheap chapter to concluded her story in a really cliche and simple way. These were just a few things that I may have been okay with if I hadn't read some of Kay's work before but it just kind of feels like the same thing in a different time and country.
Another issue I took with the book was that it made me seriously question Kay having a good editor. There are so many lines that feel really awkward and out of place. I can't imagine a quality editor letting those get by. That along with the pretty much unnecessary passages from random side characters POV really made it hard to engage fully with the story every 100 pages or so.
Every romance plot also felt extremely forced. Yet I totally ship Tai/Bytsan if only because they had the most interesting dynamic between them. It was their interactions that stood out most to me, they were respectful but reserved from each other, if only because of the countries they came from. It had so much potential to add so much to the story, these extra alliances to forces outside of the main country. I hoped for all that yet they only got to interact for about 20 pages of the 700 page novel.
I think these annoyed me more because I really enjoyed the opening to this story. I loved the set up and the world, but found the rest of the execution lacking.
I really hope to find a new story somewhere in the rest of his work.