bookishmarie 's review for:

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

5.0

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I love love loved this. Much more than "Ysabel", which I was kind of lukewarm about, more even than "Sailing to Sarantium", which I really liked and possiby even more than "Tigana" , which I thought was brilliant. Here, the fantastic elements are very subtle and the real joy is in Kay's evocation of 8th century Tang China. The voice of the novel harkens to a bygone era. The characters feel as though they've stepped out of the past. As with the best novels, whenever I opened the book, I felt as though I had fallen down the rabbit hole into another world, this one filled with political intrigues, maneuvering monarchs, imperiled maidens and men of honor. I swooned.