salinea

Yes.

There is romance and romance, in my mind.

I totally agree. I don't think Lions or Priviledge are romance. But they both have strong elements of romance. (Almost every fantasy novels have some elements of romance, hence my formulation ^^)

I found Lions romance minor, flavouring, not the plot point around which everything revolves like in a Kushner.

I don't think Priviledge of Sword revolves any more around the romance points than Lions do. Swordspoint may set romance as more central, but even there, I wouldn't call it a romance novel. There are other driving points, the picture of a social milieu (comedy of manner), the various intrigues, all of Michael's subplot, the elements of swashbuckling, etc.

The main theme for me was the passage of time, the ephemeral nature of existence, and the way history is written.

Theme is not the same thing as plot, nor as tone. I think you can address a lot of different themes through a lot of different genres, so I'm not sure how relevant it is.

The only thing that bothered me was the strong nationalist elements that somehow detracted from the impermanence theme.

That didn't disturb me. Also, I wouldn't have called it "nationalist" (it's a bit avant la lettre for that). But attachment to cultural identities (with religion playing a big role to those cultures) is a natural thing to treat given the subject. I didn't feel like Kay was trying to make a point about how attached we had to be to nationalist ideas so much as aknowledge the strong role that those cultural identities play in people's life, in their histories (with smallcap and bigcap H), in their motivation, and in their art...

Of course I have personnal ties to all three identities (Jewish, Arab, and Western), so that whole theme had a lot of resonnance to me.

That chapter when we don't know who is who was really superb, though. Maybe too obvious an attempt at tugging the reader's string, but I liked it nonetheless, only the aftermath bothered me.

I liked it, but I would have liked it so much more if I had been feeling Kay was playing with me.

I didn't like the epilogue much either, so i guess I'm with you on your spoiler point too, although maybe I wouldn't go as far as you

Also, I've heard some people accuse him of being chick-lit. I don't know if I'd say so, but he certainly is compared to say, Scott Bakker. Lots of strong female characters and it almost feels like you're supposed to be swept off your feet or something by ibn Kairan, so that is a little chick-lit to me.

I think I'm the only person who called his writing "chick lit". It wasn't an accusation - I wasn't using it to demean his work - but I was using it in an ironic way to make fun of the people who have missuse the name of "chick lit" to describe other novels (and in their mouth at the time, it was definitly an accusation), which I feel have some things in common with Kay's writing (It all started with a thread about Ellen Kushner's Priviledge of the Sword, but I think other female writers have a similar aesthetism to Kay's writing : Jaqueline Carey or Judith Tarr for example).

By the way, none of those books are "chick lit" in the true sense of the word, although they do seem to have some strong elements of romance (as you comment about Lions ^^) and seem to be more popular among female reader.

I think the problem is when overused it creates the feeling of a cheap effect. It's too obvious. The reader loves being manipulated, but doesn't want to be aware of how they're being manipulated.

I'd agree Kay overuses it in Lions (although I still loved that novel). I think some people would say that GRRM abuse it as well (mostly in order to create cliffhanger) even if he gets away with it because of the other qualities of his work.

I got into ASOIAF about a year ago and I just finished The Prince of Nothing. Looking for a new book to read and this guy seems interesting from what I've read. Anyone have anything good or bad to say? Thanks

It's Chick Lit

Oh, okay. Hmmm. Kay's my Jordan. Meaning that he used to be my favourite fantasy writer, before I read ASOIAF, and then along the way I started liking him less and being annoyed by some of his gimmicks. He is, overall, a very good writer. Top of second tier if not first tier - not quite to the level of Barker but definitly the level of Robin Hobb I'd say. He's a very decent stylist up until the point when his gimmicks start being annoying. He writes very good and likeable characters, and his stories are very much character driven. His characters tend to be very charismatic, witty, intelligent and beautiful - all of them - which can be slightly annoying though. His writng is lyrical, and most of the themes he writers about are bittersweet and melancholy, with little manicheism. He's remarkable as a fantasy writer for writing lots of standalone fantasy. There's usually little magical elements to his writing as well, and the most popular of his novel are very closely patterned after historical periods. As a result his plotting seldom involves epic element.

His best novels are Lions of Al Rassan and Tigana. The Sarantine Mosaic and Song for Arbonne are also pretty good. I was a bit disapointed by Last Light of the Sun, and I haven't read Ysabel. The Fionnavar Tapestry is usually not reccomended to start of with Kay because it's different from his other novels - being a trilogy, High Fantasy, and of a very obvious Tolkienite influence (he collaborated to the writing to the Silmarillion and said he needed to get it out of his system or some such), I still have a personnal fondness for those novels but they're generally less well written and mature than his other works.