Guy Gavriel Kay

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Royce

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« on: May 04, 2015, 11:06:19 am »
Any fans/haters around?

I am thinking about starting The Fionavar tapestry. Is it any good?

Francis Buck

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« Reply #1 on: May 06, 2015, 01:51:13 am »
I personally enjoyed all of Kay's stuff that I read on some level, some more than others (I believe I've read everything of his aside from The Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana, and Ysabel). My personal favorites are The Sarantine Mosaic and Under Heaven and River of Stars. The latter two mainly because the setting is a pseudo-Ancient China, which is fairly uncommon in fantasy, and I'm really into that culture/history and such. A lot of people laud him for his prose, which I would somewhat agree with, although it began to feel somewhat formulaic the more I read of his work.

In addition, a lot of his novels tend to have a group of main characters who, while flawed in some fashion, are often still these slightly exaggerated Great Noble People, who are beautiful and progressive and wondrous and so on. This isn't ALWAYS the case, but it's definitely a noticeable trend.

As far as his actual style, the books are basically historical fantasy. The fantasy elements are very light, for the most part, and if you happen to know a bit about whatever historical tale he's riffing off of, then it will sometimes become a bit predictable. Even so, he does a good job of generally portraying the various cultures he's emulating with a decent amount of integrity and realism. He doesn't shy away from the uglier aspects of them, but nor are they overly stereotypical.

Overall though, I'd definitely recommend checking out his stuff. I think in-general, The Sarantine Mosaic (a two-parter) is his most well-looked upon. The Lions of Al-Rassan is also up generally quite popular, and while I did like it, it did suffer from that "all the main characters and great and noble and beautiful" syndrome.

Camlost

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« Reply #2 on: May 06, 2015, 03:40:33 am »
I've read a handful of Kay's stuff, and liked what I have read. Haven't read The Fionavar Tapestry; however, I can fill in for what Buck is missing, I have read Tigana and Ysabel.

Tigana is a favourite of mine as far as Kay's work goes. It's a well contained stand alone in a fantasy world, which I feel can be difficult to pull off satisfactorily. I read it years ago and was surprised by a particular element of the ending. The spell work surrounding Tigana itself is a rather interesting plot device too in my opinion.

As for Ysabel, it read a bit "urban-YA" to me, but it was still a good story nevertheless and had great pacing. It kind of just dips its toes into historical fiction as Buck put it (which is very much accurate in regards to some of his other works, ie Under Heaven [haven't read River of Stars yet, but it's in the pile] and Last Light of the Sun [vikings oriented, if I remember correctly]), in that the story is heavily influenced by a period of history that had two dominant cultures meeting for the first time.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe he also worked with Christopher Tolkien in compiling JRR Tolkien's notes and fragments and what not into what we now know as The Silmarillion.

Alia

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« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2015, 09:08:10 am »
I read quite a lot of Kay in my time and I really like his prose. It is very heavily history-based, which for me is a good thing (I have a historian at home ;-) ). For example, having read the Sarantine Mosaic, I picked up a history textbook, searched Bysanthium and then looked for paralels. And then I went "wow, that's really neat".
The same goes for Tigana, the Lions of Al-Rassan and The Last Light of the Sun, only periods of history differ.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake