Comments on: Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay

By: The Literary Omnivore

The Literary Omnivore — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:14:39 +0000

In reply to Jenny. Oh, she was mine, too! But I felt that her ending robbed her of agency instead of having her complete what she set out to do. Trying to not spoil for anyone scrolling by… :)

By: Lu

Lu — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:34:00 +0000

Ugh. Its. Not it’s.

By: Lu

Lu — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:28:51 +0000

I love this post and all the comments. Thank you for sharing your embarrassing story. I think most of us can relate to this at some point as readers. I used to just straight up say how I felt about any book, but that got me the labels “book snob” and “mean.” Just because I didn’t like your favorite book doesn’t mean I think you are dumb! Even if I called your favorite book dumb! But I realize that that was probably rude. Now I sometimes swing too far in the opposite direction. I don’t want to offend anyone! So I’m too nice about things like Nicholas Sparks.

Also, I like terrible things! It’s okay to like terrible things. But then again, if someone told me that they thought my favorite book was drivel I might be a little upset. Because I probably don’t love my favorite book despite it’s drivel-like qualities.

Anyway, more on point to Tigana – I tried to read this book and did not succeed. I’m not sure if that’s because Kay is not for me? Or if I just wasn’t in the right mindset at the time? I will try again one day.

By: Lya

Lya — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:07:43 +0000

I mentally group Kay’s middle books, starting with Tigana, together, and think of them as all of apiece, and really do heartily recommend the others. They’re SO much better than Fionavar. Avoid Ysabel, which despite being YA (or maybe because of being YA??) has a lot in common with Fionavar; and hold off on his later stuff like Last Light of the Sun, Sarantine Mosaic and Under Heaven; which leaves you with Lions of Al-Rassan and Song For Arbonne, which everybody has recommended already. You should listen to everybody. I think the reason the “middle” books work so well is that there is an epic sweep to them that’s absent in the later ones. It’s not that he doesn’t depict the world of Tang Dynasty China, or Justinian’s Byzantine Empire, or Alfred the Great’s England, with the same meticulous care as Provence or Al-Andalus, but what’s at stake in the later ones isn’t so much the survival of the country/culture as the configuration of the protagonist’s own value system. And I think that by narrowing his focus Kay does himself a disservice, because epic fantasy is what he’s good at. This is the guy that Christopher Tolkien picked to help him edit the Silmarillion.

I dunno, Last Light of the Sun is borederline as far as the epic/individual distinction, YMMV but definitely start with Al-Rassan and Arbonne.

Also, as far as the decision to bind Erlein being a moral black mark against Alessan, I felt like Erlein’s eventual change of heart was a way of letting Alessan off easy. It’s ok to enslave people because everybody joins the revolutionary cause once they’re exposed to enough injustice. I’m not saying Alessan was wrong to do what he did, I’m just saying it cheapens everything Erlein went through the first night of his captivity, all the conversations they had about freedom, Erlein’s mental and physical anguish, all of it for what?

Ugh I am with you on the awful sex scenes 110%.

By: aartichapati

aartichapati — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:49:37 +0000

Oh, I totally agree with you on Tigana. I realize it’s Kay’s most famous work, but it didn’t rock my world, either. Kay often has this really frustrating habit of finding a man and a woman about 50 pages from the end of the book and going, “Oh, no! They can’t end up alone! Let me pair those two up together!” And then you get to the scene where the two get together and you’re like “WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!” That really bothered me about Tigana and a few others.

My favorite Kay is The Lions of Al-Rassan. I also really like A Song for Arbonne, but I push Lions more strongly.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:19:43 +0000

Hm. Your library must have had a different cover to the one my copy has. Mine was a pretty boring cover, not the kind of thing that would make me pick it up once, let alone a few different times.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:16:55 +0000

In reply to Jeane. Dude, yeah. Just skim on past them. You won't miss anything. They're very weird and sort pf...precious? Which is the absolute worst quality a sex scene can ever have, in my opinion.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:16:17 +0000

In reply to Ela. Hahahahahahha. I love this synopsis of the book. If anyone asks me why I don't like The Summer Tree, I'm going to copy and paste this to them instead of telling them my ridiculous reason. :p

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:15:39 +0000

In reply to geraniumcat. Don't you hate it when you get a book as an adult that you'd have loved at another stage in your life? It feels like a terrible missed opportunity! I think I'll probably give Ysabel a miss, and I've done my duty by The Summer Tree I think, but I still want to read at least one other GGK book before I quit.

By: Anastasia

Anastasia — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:58:14 +0000

Back when I used to work in a library I’d see Tigana on the shelf and it’d look so interesting! (The cover!) So I’d pick it up and flick through it and read a few pages. And it was boring. So I put it back. Then I’d forget about it and several months later find it again and the same thing would happen. For about three years this was going on! And I still don’t really want to read Tigana, even though I feel like I should for some reason.

Sooooooo. Yeah!