williamjm

It's always the most remarkable thing when people discuss their favourite Kay novels, we've had quite a few of such discussions over the last 15 years here with different participants. Everybody has a different favourite. There's no consensus whatsoever. Really speaks to the consistent great writing that Kay produces.

 

Though having said that, one can acknowledge that Ysabel, Last Light of the Sun and River of Stars rarely, if ever, come up as the no.1.

The praise for Song for Arbonne has faded as well, and while I personally loved the Fionavar Tapestry and still see that as one of the best epic fantasy trilogies ever, it's not a series that ranks the highest amongst fans in general.

I've noticed the same that there's little consensus. I've also seen a lot of people who love some of his books and really didn't like some of the others and again there's no consistency about which are the loved and which are the hated books.

Looking on Goodreads, the highest average rating is for [i]Lions of Al-Rassan[/i] which is marginally ahead of [i]Lord of Emperors[/i]. [i]Ysabel[/i] and [i]Last Light of the Sun[/i] are a considerable distance behind his other novels in terms of popularity.

1 - Tigana - it always seems to be a divisive book and I know some people hate it but I liked it a lot. One of the things I found I found interesting about it was that it questioned whether the heroes attempt to regain their lost homeland justified all the things they did or not, although I think one flaw is that maybe sometimes it doesn't explore the question as well as it could have done and I think that might be part of the reason for some of the negative reactions it can get.

2 - The Sarantine Mosaic - the start of the first book was a bit slow but I really liked it once it got going. I liked the setting and the characters (although the way every woman in the books seems attracted to the protagonist got a bit absurd). The chariot racing was a lot of fun as well.

3 - A Song For Arbonne - perhaps doesn't quite reach the heights of some of Kay's other books but also less flawed than many of the others

4 - Under Heaven - the first two-thirds are among Kay's best work, unfortunately the last section gets a bit unfocused

5 - The Lions of Al-Rassan - Kay's penchant for explaining in great detail how awesome his characters and how emotionally powerful the events that occur are reaches its peak, if you can tolerate that then it's a great book.

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6 - River of Stars - the opposite of Under Heaven in that it starts off a bit dull but has a strong second half

7 - The Fionavar Tapestry - some bits of this are among Kay's best, other bits I didn't really like. I wasn't keen on the 'Canadian students called on to save a fantasy realm' plot device.

8 - Ysabel - a fun read but a bit lacking in depth compared to his other books. Kay seems more comfortable describing medieval warriors than contemporary teenagers

9 - Last Light of the Sun - I liked the setting and the characters well enough but the plot wasn't particularly compelling.

I am interested in comments as well. I only read the Fionavar and Tigana (in the mid/late 90ties, almost 20 years ago). I preferred the latter. I do not remember so many details about the former, but I disliked both the college kids enter another world trope as well as the "re-enacting" of the Lancelot-Guinevere-Artus-Triangle

and the mystical stuff like the self-sacrifice. It is very well written (better than a lot of contemporary stuff) and atmospheric, though.

Fionavar isn't really representative of his later books (with the exception of Ysabel), his other works don't have the modern world/epic fantasy crossover and the fantasy elements tend to be much less prominent.

Curious, I know he has a lot of historical fantasy - does Under Heaven or Lions have any actual magic in it? Doesn't seem like it at first glance.

I think Lions has the least magic of any of Kay's books - one character has visions, but that's about it. Under Heaven has a bit more, mainly some shamans who act as antagonists in one of the subplots.

My question is- should I read the Dunk and Egg books after I get done with A Clash of Kings, or should I wait and read them after I am done with the main books?

Welcome to the board :)

You could read them before A Dance With Dragons (or earlier), since there are some references in ADWD to some things that appear in them, particularly in the third story, The Mystery Knight.

Hello. I'm new. Or at least, I think I'm new. Did this place used to be an EZBoard? I know that the main forum for the series way back when, around or just before AFFC, was an EZBoard.

Yes, Westeros was on EZBoard until late 2005 when it moved over to this incarnation of the board, so welcome back.

My feeling is that the rep system would be a lot more useful if there was more indication of what positive or negative rep actually meant. As I said in another thread, if the +/- signs could be changed to Agree/Disagree or Helpful/Unhelpful or Like/Dislike, or something along those lines, there would be more value in looking at someone's rep or at the post rep.

I agree that's possibly the most fundamental problem with the system, that even when votes are made it doesn't really add any useful information to the other people reading the thread (or the original poster) because, as previous threads on the system have shown, people quite reasonably interpret the meaning of + or - in different ways. If we don't know what a rating means then what use is it?

I'll just welcome myself then!!! *mutters to self* jezz I did an essay and everything :rolleyes:

Welcome to the board, Renya :)

I suspect the welcome thread is not the most frequently-read thread on the board, given that some other threads have more posts in a single day than this thread has had in its entire existence.

Ysabel has been optioned as a movie.

Although, as I said above, I didn't think Ysabel was Kay's best work, I think it is possibly the best choice to be filmed as a movie. Apart from the obvious advantages of having it being set in modern-day Provence rather than a medieval fantasy world, it's also a more straightforward (and shorter) story than Kay's other books and I think it would be relatively easy to translate into a screenplay. I think the likes of Tigana or The Sarantine Mosaic are too complex to make into a 2-hour movie without losing a lot of the plot, although they might make a good mini-series.

I'm afraid the book is geared toward teens. Not only is the protagonist a teen, but the presentation and his narrative thought is, I think, meant to appeal to teens at the expense of adults, where some other authors successfully pitch books to more general appeal.

Ysabel did feel a little bit like a Young Adult novel at times for the reasons you describe, it's unlike Kay's other books in that respect - Last Light of the Sun is the only other one with a teenage protagonist. This, along with the modern-day Earth setting, means that it isn't very representative of Kay's other books. I thought Ysabel was an entertaining book, but I thought Tigana, Lions of Al-Rassan, A Song for Arbonne and the Sarantine Mosaic were all much better books.

BTW, does anyone know when Kay's next book might be appearing? It's been a couple of years since Ysabel's release.

If the Belgariad was based on some myth, or the defeat of the Unraveller?

I meant the defeat of Rakoth, although I know Eddings also based his work on the tropes of traditional mythology.

The five are from 1970's Canada actually, not 1980's, as far as I could tell.

I assumed it was set in the same period it was written (the 80s), but I don't remember anything which really identifies the period. Fionavar being set in the 80s seems more consistent with Ysabel which is set in about 2005 and seems to be roughly 20 years later than Fionavar (although again I'm not sure if the time period since Kim and Dave's return is ever stated).

They were not kidnapped by Loren, they were invited as guests to celebrate the king's jubilee -- odd thing to do, I agree, but nothing to do with the war which Loren had no idea was coming.

I think it is quite clear in retrospect that Loren knew exactly what he was doing and who he was looking for. He even says in his second line of dialogue in the book that he's not just looking for the jubilee and later in the same chapter he's described as being deceitful and misdirecting when he tries to evade the question about the person under the mountain. Loren was taken by surprise by how quickly the war started, but I think he did have some idea it was coming. I said kidnapped, because I do not think Loren was honest with them about all the purposes of their journey or the danger they faced - if he had been honest most of them would not have gone (although the potential danger would probably just have encourage Paul).

Perhaps Loren picked them (Matt Soren actually pointed them out) for being the mentally-strong sort who could handle things.

No, he picked them because Kim was a seer. That her friends were also mentally strong was just a bonus.

Paul, Kevin -> come hang out with the prince's crew and ride down south with us on this awesome prank. Jennifer -> come shopping with the light elf and hear him sing. Dave -> keep watch on a good kid and come hunting with my tribe. Innocent, harmless.

The first one was a good example of what I was objecting to. For the most part it is a fairly light-hearted prank, but early in the trip Diarmuid has a farmer summarily executed in front of Paul and Kevin for criticising his father and although Paul and Kevin are a bit taken aback by it, they don't seem nearly as shocked as I would expect. Now you could argue that they should expect that sort of behaviour in a medieval world and maybe be able to intellectually accept it, but they seem far too blase about it - I'd expect most people from contemporary Canada who had never really seen any violence in person to be at least a bit traumatised when someone was killed in front of them, especially for what in their world would be a minor infraction.

There's an afterward in the tenth anniversary edition in which GGK explains that that's what he intended and that he wanted the debate on capturing the wizard to a real one.

That was one thing I felt could have been done a little bit in Tigana (which I really liked, overall). There is a debate going on, but I thought the way it was written felt a lot more sympathetic to Alessan's point of view (possibly because we are seeing things from the perspective of him and his allies), often Erelein ends up sounding a bit unreasonable even though he does have a genuinely good argument. I know Kay did intend it to be a genuine argument, but I thought it could have been done slightly better (although it was still quite well done, I'm not saying there was really any serious weakness here).

I agree with Ran that there is a lot more ambiguity to Alessan's actions than just the enslavement of Erelein. As well as Ran's examples there are also things like the minor character who Alessan encourages to speak up against Alberico, who ends up getting executed for his minor acts of rebellion - he wouldn't have died if Alessan hadn't been trying to manipulate him to support Alessan's goals.

Thanks. And the Lios Alfar ARE Elves. "Lios Alfar" mean Light Elves in...was it Norse? I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it's related to Norse Mythology.

I'm not surprised the name is a direct mythological reference. According to Wikipedia you're right : "In Norse mythology, the light elves (Old Norse: Ljósálfar) live in the Old Norse version of the heavens, in the place called Ãlfheim underneath the place of the Gods. "

I've read there are various ties to our world, and the mythology of our world. Interesting.

The central concept of the world of Fionavar is that it is the 'true' world and all other worlds (including our own) are variations on it.

I'm guessing that there is a Godslayer (like in Belgariad)?

Kind of, although it's quite different to the Belgariad (again, I wouldn't be surprised if it is based on some myth, although I don't know which one).

Was the Fionavar Tapestry any good?

I'd say it was reasonably good, but not as good as Kay's other books, and different in that it is a fairly traditional High Fantasy with mages, elves (called the Lios Alfar, but they're fairly close to traditional elves), dwarves (who are actually called dwarves), dragons, an evil god in a dark fortress, bits of Arthur legend (including Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere as major characters) etc. Some bits of it are very good (the three nights on the Summer Tree, for example) but some bits I was unconvinced by. My biggest problems with it were mostly related to the five main characters who come from modern-day (well, the 1980s) Canada and are essentially kidnapped by a mage to join the fight against the evil god in Fionavar. I'm not particularly keen on that plot device in general, and there quite a few times when I found the reactions of the modern-day Canadians to the medieval fantasy realm to be unconvincing, they were just too accepting of some of the wild things they saw and the radically different society they encountered.

I absolutely abhorred Tigana and because of that I've been afraid to pick up anything else by Kay.

On of the points you raise shouldn't be such a big problem for his other books. There's very little magic at all in Lions or Sarantium so it shouldn't bother you as much (although since there's hardly any magic obviously there's not much explanation for it either). I agree the prince having the ability to capture the magician was a bit of a contrived plot device (Kay does have an occasional weakness for a contrived plot device sadly).

As for the nationalism, I think part of the point of Tigana is that the patriotism of the main characters isn't necessarily a good thing - for example the wouldn't be in the situation they are in if they hadn't stubbornly continued to fight in an obviously lost cause against the original invasion and, as you say, Tigana isn't really superior to the other countries. It is also implicitly and explicitly (by the magician) questioned whether Alessan's "end justify the means" philosophy is justified. Personally I don't consider it to necessarily be a disadvantage if I don't agree with the main characters' viewpoints in a novel but your taste may vary. It is important for character motivations to be believable but I don't think the patriotism is unrealistic since, whether or not it is justified, there are plenty of equally patriotic people in the real world - you say it is an archaic concept but it's still alive nowadays even if that is not a good thing when taken to extremes.

I agree with most of what has been said so far. Kay is probably my second-favourite fantasy author (after GRRM). He's good at characterisation, plotting and world-building and the books tends to be very addictive to read. As some people have mentioned he does occasionally have a few writing quirks that can sometimes detract from the story a bit (such as the vignettes detailing minor character's future lives in Last Light of the Sun).

I'd rate the books something like:

1 - Tigana

2 - The Sarantine Mosaic (although as Wert says, it should really have been one book rather than two. It's also very slow to start with, so not the best choice to read first)

3 - A Song For Arbonne

4 - The Lions of Al-Rassan

5 - Ysabel

6 - The Last Light of The Sun

I've not read Fionovar yet, although since apparently Ysabel is a semi-sequel to Fionovar maybe I should have read it beforehand.