I am reading The Fionavar Tapestry for the tenth time and loving it, like I always do. IMHO, it is superior to LOTR. The characters are more developed, the writing is more poetic, the storyline is a little more complicated, and the morals are faaaaaar more ambiguous (Aideen’s story comes to mind).
So I just sit on my bed in a sunny spot and read it and cry. I cry and cry and cry when I read it.
I cry when Loren finds out what happened to Ysanne.
I cry rivers when Paul is forgiven on the Tree.
I cry when Kevin comes to the end of his journey.
I cry when Jennifer goes to Arthur.
I cry when Prydwen meets the sea monster and they find out what has been happening to the lios alfar.
I cry when Arthur awakens the Sleeper in Cader Sedat.
I cry when Kim goes to the Paraiko.
Every single time.
I cried when I read The Sarantine Mosaic, too.
Kay’s stories just go so deep. They remind me of BtVS, with all the character development and the heartwrenching choices and the sacrifices and the loss. But then, when there is joy, it is so much sweeter.
Someone should give that man a prize. Anyone else have something to say?
I finished Tigana about a month ago and gave it 3 stars out of 5. It was good enough to finish, but I don’t think I’ll ever read it again. I didn’t really get into it until about the last third of the book. Kay’s writing style was a little too sappy and melodramatic for my tastes in that book.
I think the Sarantine mosaic duology is his best work to date.
I read the Fionavar trilogy when it came out, and I guess it’s a little too “romantic” for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it. But I wouldn’t put it in my top 50 favorite books. YMMV.
::raising hand::Hi, my name is bobkitty, and I’m a Kayaholic.
[sub]hi bobkitty…[/sub]
I love, love, love, LOVE his writing. I just had this conversation with a friend the other day, and I’m planning on unboxing the Tapestry books for his perusal. I just got the Mosaic books, and can’t wait to get started on them.
I found Fionavar to be far too derivative of JRRT. And in view of how Kay had helped CJRT edit JRRT’s works, I just found it too close for comfort. I mean, really: dwarves, elves who sail into the west, a high kingdom with its heir in exile, an evil power gaining ascendancy after many years, traitorous mages, a nation of horse riders!
Granted, it’s better than Terry Brooks. But the similarities turned me off from reading his other works. Perhaps he is a fine author in his own right, and I’m missing something by not reading his other works. But there’s already so many books and such little time.
Love, love, love Tigana. tdc spent a good portion of our senior year of college trying to get me to read that book. When I finally picked it up, I was confused for the first third (as I was confusing it with another series he reads–about tigers in space!), but then the plot and characters just overcame me.
We also have Fionavar (but tdc didn’t recommend it too highly), The Lions of Al-Rassan, A Song for Arbonne and the mosaic books. (Ha. That would be all his books, wouldn’t it?)
I haven’t gotten into the others nearly as much as Tigana, however.
I’ve only read the mosiac books*. I really really really liked the first one, but only really liked the 2nd. A bit too much palace intrigue for my tastes.
Can somebody give me a 20 or so word summary of what the other books are about?
Brian
*of Kay’s books that is, I HAVE read other books
I love love love The Lions of Al-Rassan, and I love love love The Summer Tree and about half of the second Fionavar book, but am I the only one who finds the third Fionavar book pretty forgettable? And sooo derivative? I mean, all epic fantasy is derivative, but I really did love what Kay was doing with it all until we get Arthurian legend coming out of nowhere and crapping everything up. I cared sooo much about Paul and Kevin and Dave and Kim, and I did care about Jen until we get all this reincarnation Arthur crap. Then it becomes almost impossible to give a crap about her. It really ticks me off , because the parts that are good are sooo good, but the parts that arent are pretty awful, in my opinion.
To the OP: I’m sorry, but you can’t this board’s Number One Guy Gavriel Kay Fan - that’s my job. After all, Kay never wrote a character called kung fu lola, did he?
Actually, I’ve never been that crazy about Fionavar; It’s more of a guilty pleasure than an actual favorite. We’re talking about, after all, the biggest mess of fantasy cliches in the history of the genre - if it wasn’t so well written it would be awful. I blame the Silmarillion. I think Kay spent so long poring over Tolkien’s notes and background lore, immersing himself in so much Germanic and Celtic history and mythology, that eventually his head exploded. Fionavar is the result.
As for his other works: while Tigana is nominally my favorite (and possibly my favorite bok by any writer), I also dearly love both Arbonne (my first Kay ) and Al-Rassan. I like Sarantium a lot, but I haven’t really managed to love it - I gues because I never really connected to any of the characters, or even more important, I never really connected to Sarantium itself, not like I did to his other countries. And since the countries are always the most important love objects, that’s a problem.
I really loved the Sarantium books and * A Song for Arbonne*, but I couldn’t get past the first few chapters of the Fionavar books–they just struck me as generic sword and sorcery. But I really dig his trick of writing almost-but-not-quite-historic fiction. Kay’s not the most literary fantasy writer I’ve come across, but he tells a hell of a story.
But it is well-written. So it can’t be all that awful. Nyah.
I guess how you feel about the whole JRRT-derivative thing depends on which you read first - and I read Fionavar first. I had to read it because my dance class turned it into a production, so well all had to learn the story. As for JRRT, I had tried to read The Hobbitt and I found the style so dense and impenetrable that it took me four tries to get past the first chapter. Having read LOTR, like I mentioned earlier I found there to be no character development (people were the same at the end as they had been in the beginning), and the characters were cardboard and two-dimensional. Fionavar was more elaborate and creative. Kay took the skeleton of LOTR and built it up into a truly great Fantasy story. In LOTR, everything was black and white and good things were eternal; in Fionavar, choices were much harder and double-edged, and good things passed away, not necessarily to ever be replaced by something equal. LOTR didn’t touch my heart.
FWIW, I felt the same way about Fionavar. I’d heard many people recommend it highly, but I was barely able to finish the series, and didn’t enjoy it much at all. I think it’s the worst of the half-dozen or so things I’ve read by him.
Give some of his pseudo-historical stuff a chance; it’s far less derivative and much, much better. Sailing to Sarantium is my favorite.
Based on recommendations on this board, I tried to read… I think it was Tigana. Got maybe fifty pages into it, set it down, and just never came back. I can’t put my finger on why it didn’t grab me: there was nothing egregiously stupid about it, it just didn’t engage me for some reason. Maybe I should give it a second chance.
Kung Fu Lola, that is exactly what happened to me (except the dancing part) - It took me about 18 tries to get through the Hobbit (which I only managed because I wanted to read the whole LOTR prior to seeing the first movie) but I absolutely fell in love with Kay around the age of 11.
I like his books so much I can’t even pick a favorite. I even have two copies of the Fionavar Tapestry because my first set is so wrecked.
