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hank_moody 's review for:
Under Heaven
by Guy Gavriel Kay
Two years of living in solitude is a long period, especially if you live in a place where the wind carries through the night the cries of restless souls whose bones are scattered along the field where a great battle took place a few decades before. It is precisely this life led by Shen Tai, the son of a celebrated Kitai general, once a promising warlord and diplomat, now just a hermit who wants to pay tribute to his father in two years of self-exile by burying the bones of Taguran and Kitan soldiers mixed in the field by lake Kuala Nor, in no man's land between Taguran Empire and Kitai. It’s an act that earns him respect from both sides.
His period of mourning is coming to an end, but then his serene life is interrupted by two sudden visits. The first is from the Taguran delegation. They came to tell him that the Empress personally, as a tribute to him for his work, gifted him 250 Sardian horses known as Heavenly Horses. One such horse is an invaluable treasure that even the Emperor of Kitai himself cannot so easily afford, but 250? This is already something that is worth empires and puts Tai at the very top of the most influential people of Kitai overnight. The only condition is that he has to come personally to take them.
The second visit is that of his friend and his female bodyguard, a Kanlin warrior. A friend brings the news of Shen’s sister. Their brother gave her to the leader of the nomadic Bogü tribes beyond the Wall. Court intrigues are underway, Shen is aware of this especially after an assassin kills his friend and tries to kill him. Who wants him dead? Why?
Reluctantly, Shen decides to return home and to the imperial court, a place of intrigue, where every word is carefully weighed, every deed is carefully measured, unaware that there are bigger things in motion of which he is only one small but essential part. He and his Sardian horses because in the events to come, those horses can give the upper hand to whichever side Shen hands them over.
Kay may not write a long series that takes ages to be written and published. He does not have a hero who is predestined by a prophecy to save the world of evil that looms over him nor does he have dragons. What he has is a wonderful style and beauty of a sentence that is rarely possessed by any author; emotions woven into the word and such weaving of a story that some can only learn because the first chapter of "Under Heaven" is worth as much as some novels.
Kay skillfully leads Tai on his path, at the same time telling the story of his sister on the other side of the Wall, there in the steppes, among wolves and nomads where the yarn of a story long begun, never finished, unravels.
All that characteristic of Kay, you will find here: beautiful and strong women, men equally skilled in art and warfare, and a story within the story, all colored by romanticism and sprinkled with a pinch of fantasy. Once again, the motifs of honor, love, friendship, and revenge are intertwined in the richness of his written word and give us an unforgettable experience at times giving us the impression that we are watching the films "House of Flying Daggers" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in which, just like here, romance and martial arts are skillfully intertwined.
Just as good wine gains quality by standing in barrels, Kay gains quality with each subsequent novel and grows as an author, offering something that may not please everyone and is not everyone's "cup of tea", but it is indisputably good.
His period of mourning is coming to an end, but then his serene life is interrupted by two sudden visits. The first is from the Taguran delegation. They came to tell him that the Empress personally, as a tribute to him for his work, gifted him 250 Sardian horses known as Heavenly Horses. One such horse is an invaluable treasure that even the Emperor of Kitai himself cannot so easily afford, but 250? This is already something that is worth empires and puts Tai at the very top of the most influential people of Kitai overnight. The only condition is that he has to come personally to take them.
The second visit is that of his friend and his female bodyguard, a Kanlin warrior. A friend brings the news of Shen’s sister. Their brother gave her to the leader of the nomadic Bogü tribes beyond the Wall. Court intrigues are underway, Shen is aware of this especially after an assassin kills his friend and tries to kill him. Who wants him dead? Why?
Reluctantly, Shen decides to return home and to the imperial court, a place of intrigue, where every word is carefully weighed, every deed is carefully measured, unaware that there are bigger things in motion of which he is only one small but essential part. He and his Sardian horses because in the events to come, those horses can give the upper hand to whichever side Shen hands them over.
Kay may not write a long series that takes ages to be written and published. He does not have a hero who is predestined by a prophecy to save the world of evil that looms over him nor does he have dragons. What he has is a wonderful style and beauty of a sentence that is rarely possessed by any author; emotions woven into the word and such weaving of a story that some can only learn because the first chapter of "Under Heaven" is worth as much as some novels.
Kay skillfully leads Tai on his path, at the same time telling the story of his sister on the other side of the Wall, there in the steppes, among wolves and nomads where the yarn of a story long begun, never finished, unravels.
All that characteristic of Kay, you will find here: beautiful and strong women, men equally skilled in art and warfare, and a story within the story, all colored by romanticism and sprinkled with a pinch of fantasy. Once again, the motifs of honor, love, friendship, and revenge are intertwined in the richness of his written word and give us an unforgettable experience at times giving us the impression that we are watching the films "House of Flying Daggers" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in which, just like here, romance and martial arts are skillfully intertwined.
Just as good wine gains quality by standing in barrels, Kay gains quality with each subsequent novel and grows as an author, offering something that may not please everyone and is not everyone's "cup of tea", but it is indisputably good.