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Guy Gavriel Kay


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23 hours ago, SansaJonRule said:

Has anyone read Ysabel?  The description has just never appealed to me so even though I am a big GGK fan, I have never read it.

I think it is one of his weaker books, but I still enjoyed reading it. It perhaps doesn't have quite the same depth as some of his other books. The most obvious difference is that it is set in the present day (although history and mythology play a big role in it), there was something slightly disconcerting about pop-culture references in a GGK book.

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  • 2 months later...

Having just finished Tigana, I've realised that I have somehow managed to read The Fionavar Tapestry, The Last Light of the Sun, A Song for Arbonne, The Lions of Al-Rassan, Ysabel, and Tigana without actually liking any of them. Kay clearly has a strange addiction to me that transcends the actual story - I think it's the prose.

Tigana was a frustrating one - I actually enjoyed the first part, and was pleased by the magical element (which is otherwise minimal outside Fionavar), but as the book went on, I found it more and more bloated and problematic. I started cheering for Brandin half-way through when the Tigana terrorists started torturing people (and I do see them as terrorists). Oh, and while I have no problem at all with sex scenes, I'm rather scratching my head about the multi-page, lovingly described BDSM scene between our protagonist and a character who then plays no meaningful role in the story. I get that Kay was drawing a connection between an oppressive political situation and odd sexuality, but reading it in 2017, I don't find anything particularly odd about BDSM.

Oh, and I can't be the only one who thinks the Night Walkers/Others/Ember Nights bit influenced ASOIAF - the dead walking, and all that.

Edited by Roose Boltons Pet Leech
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On 5/5/2009 at 6:40 PM, Foreverlad said:

Thank you for saving me the trouble of choosing between a new and old GGK thread.

 

I picked up Tigana awhile back but kept putting it aside. After finishing my most recent book and waiting for my next shipment to arrive, I gave the book another shot and I must say, I looooooove it.

 

Only halfway through, but he makes me feel like a kid reading fantasy for the first time all over again. I never know what's coming next or how things will play out. At this point I'm just along for the ride, waiting to see where the story will take me.

I could not get through this book! I actually asked Audible to refund my credit I found it so bad.

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  • 2 months later...

That feels like quite a fast turn-around! Wonder if it's a follow-up to one of the more recent settings, requiring less research on his part or research he'd already done in the course of a previous novel.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the last couple of weeks I've finished both River of Stars and Children of Earth and Sky.  I enjoyed both, but would have to say that River is a much better novel just because there's a sense of direction to it that's mostly lacking in Children. I always felt while reading it that River of Stars was going somewhere, while Children of Earth and Sky felt entirely the opposite. While enjoyable for the individual character stories, Children seems to never get to to it's main story. In fact, I don't think it has a main story line. Maybe that's fine, because, as I said, I still enjoyed reading it. But I didn't absolutely love it and I think that lack of a compelling, integrated central story is one reason why. Also, I think that time period in Eastern Europe, the Adriatic, and the Eastern Mediterranean, following the fall of Constantinople, should be prime source material for history-inspired fantasy or historical fiction. With Children, GGK kind of scraped the surface, sort of like when you go to Baskin Robbins and they give you that little taster spoon of whatever ice cream flavor you ask for. But, what I want is the full half-gallon treatment. Depth is what is missing here, I believe. Of course, to be fair, that wasn't what GGK set out to do. But someone should! 

As an aside, one sort of glaring observance that really stuck out to me was that when Pero finally begins painting the portrait of the Khalif, it was right around the 2/3 mark in the book, but I felt like that scene should have taken place somewhere in the first 100-150 pages. Of course, that's just my opinion. 

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the style of prose GGK is using in these novels, where he switches occasionally into the present tense. I don't hate it, exactly, but it feels a bit gimmicky to me. I don't know how long he's been doing that, but he does it a lot in both books. I've not read Under Heaven or Ysabel yet, so I'm not sure when this started. I don't recall that technique being present in Last Light of the Sun, which was the last novel I had read of his before about two weeks ago. 

I'm starting Under Heaven tonight and then will re-read Lions of Al-Rassan, which is easily my favorite of his novels. After that, I'll probably start the Fionavar books, which I've not read before. 

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  • 2 months later...
12 minutes ago, Astromech said:

I can't remember what the bizarre sex scene was in Lions. There seems to be one in every GGK novel.

Children of Earth and Sky has a nice shout out to the Bishop of Bath & Wells episode in Blackadder II, when the Seressan Ambassador gets presented with a picture of a prostitute sodomising him with a root vegetable.

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On 14/01/2018 at 6:22 PM, Pecan said:

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the style of prose GGK is using in these novels, where he switches occasionally into the present tense. I don't hate it, exactly, but it feels a bit gimmicky to me. I don't know how long he's been doing that, but he does it a lot in both books. I've not read Under Heaven or Ysabel yet, so I'm not sure when this started. I don't recall that technique being present in Last Light of the Sun, which was the last novel I had read of his before about two weeks ago. 

(I know this post is like 3 months old but I thought I'd chime in anyway).

I think The Last Light of the Sun actually is the first time he incorporated that tense-shift into his writing.

 

It's used in the sections with the Fairy, can't recall her name right now. 

 

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it either. Present-tense is also used in Under Heaven and actually feels even more discordant... The usage in Last Light at least made sense to convey that a certain character perceived the world differently, but otherwise it feels somewhat incongruous to me.

It's not intolerable or anything (GGK remains my favourite author) but it's... odd.

Edited by Macadangdang Jr.
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He used it in River of Stars for the poet woman, right? I actually thought it worked well there, reflected how she saw the world differently (more immediately?). 

Generally I dislike third person present tense though, even more so when it's dropped into a book that otherwise isn't. 

Edited by crowganic
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  • 4 months later...

New novel details are out, it is called "Brightness long ago", comes out in May 2019:

 

Quote

International bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay's latest work is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy and offers an extraordinary cast of characters whose lives come together through destiny, love, and ambition. 

In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man looks back on his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra's intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son of a tailor. He took service at the court of a ruling count--and soon learned why that man was known  as the Beast. 
Danio's fate changed the moment he saw and recognized Adria Ripoli as she entered the count's chambers one autumn night--intending to kill. Born to power, Adria had chosen, instead of a life of comfort, one of danger--and freedom. Which is how she encounters Danio in a perilous time and place.

Vivid figures share the unfolding story. Among them: a healer determined to defy her expected lot; a charming, frivolous son of immense wealth; a powerful religious leader more decadent than devout; and, affecting all these lives and many more,  two larger-than-life mercenary commanders, lifelong adversaries, whose rivalry puts a world in the balance.

A Brightness Long Ago offers both compelling drama and deeply moving reflections on the nature of memory, the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune's whee

 

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I've read Lions and Light....what are some other of his popular ones? I need something to read!

I am surprised as I THOUGHT one of his other novels already covered Italian Renaissance (obviously just one of them I had not yet read). Fairly excited to hear of this new one. 

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