"Under Heaven", the new Guy Gavriel Kay

[Calibandar]

So the new book by Guy Gavriel Kay comes out in April 2010, he says it is a long historical novel based on the 8th Century Tang Dynasty in China, and this is the synopsis for the book:

The world could bring you poison in a jeweled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was...

Penguin Group (Canada) is pleased to announce the new novel from World Fantasy Award Winner and international bestseller Guy Gavriel Kay

UNDER HEAVEN will be published in April 2010, and takes place in a world inspired by the glory and power of Tang Dynasty China in the 8th century, a world in which history and the fantastic meld into something both memorable and emotionally compelling.

In the novel, Shen Tai is the son of a general who led the forces of imperial Kitai in the empire's last great war against its western enemies, twenty years before. Forty thousand men, on both sides, were slain by a remote mountain lake. General Shen Gao himself has died recently, having spoken to his son in later years about his sadness in the matter of this terrible battle.

To honour his father's memory, Tai spends two years in official mourning alone at the battle site by the blue waters of Kuala Nor. Each day he digs graves in hard ground to bury the bones of the dead. At night he can hear the ghosts moan and stir, terrifying voices of anger and lament. Sometimes he realizes that a given voice has ceased its crying, and he knows that is one he has laid to rest.

The dead by the lake are equally Kitan and their Taguran foes; there is no way to tell the bones apart, and he buries them all with honour.

It is during a routine supply visit led by a Taguran officer who has reluctantly come to befriend him that Tai learns that others, much more powerful, have taken note of his vigil. The White Jade Princess Cheng-wan, 17th daughter of the Emperor of Kitai, presents him with two hundred and fifty Sardian horses. They are being given in royal recognition of his courage and piety, and the honour he has done the dead.

You gave a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You gave him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor.

Tai is in deep waters. He needs to get himself back to court and his own emperor, alive. Riding the first of the Sardian horses, and bringing news of the rest, he starts east towards the glittering, dangerous capital of Kitai, and the Ta-Ming Palace - and gathers his wits for a return from solitude by a mountain lake to his own forever-altered life.

[shortstark]

hmmmm, different....

[Ran]

I'm sure it'll be another amazing read.... but I admit, I'm not quite enthused about this one. It's not the setting or anything like that, but more the description of the opening which just seems a bit ... I don't know. Hard to put my finger on it.

I'm sure it'll be fine, exceptional even as with all of Kay's work, but I admit to being disquieted by this lack on my part.

[Bellis]

I'm happy to see him taking his historical fantasy further afield, geographically speaking, and I'm sure it'll be sufficiently researched to be a competent effort. I'm hoping it's better than that.

Ten years ago, I would have listed GGK as my favorite author, but his last couple offerings were a bit, shall we say, tepid.

[Ran]

Quite liked TLLotS and Ysabel myself, but I know mileage varies on those. In retrospect I probably prefer TLLotS more; I really appreciated his approach to making a point about stories. I think what's off-putting about this one is that there's something terribly indulgent about starting off with a guilt-ridden character alone in the wilderness burying tens of thousands of bodies. I guess it feels like an Erikson kind of thing, and I fear the philosophizing (Kay can turn a pretty philosophial argument, but I tend to find them much easier on the narrative flow than Erikson's). But it's doubtless without basis.

I've a vague recollection of Kitai and/or Sardians in the Sarantine books, so I'm assuming it's in the same world. Anyone able to confirm?

[Gigei]

I look forward to reading this. I just hope for once that it won't be full of gorgeous women who are "the most beautiful" and one man whom every single one of them falls in love with.

[automne]

I just visited Kay's authorized site .

There was a link to the first online review at sfreviews. It's a poor review full of spoilers I wish I didn't read.

Five-star reviews like this one are harder to write than you might think, not only because so few books (at least by my standards) rate this highly, but because when they do, the trick becomes not only communicating my own pleasure at the experience but getting my readers to want that experience just as eagerly. And you don't do that by piling on the gushing hyperbole in Amazon fashion. You do that by being willing to say as little as possible when you want to say so much.

Really? What a joke.

Serves me right. I shouldn't have read that review. Kay's books are among the ones I'll buy no matter what.

[Avalon]

I hope this one improves on Last Light of the Sun and Ysabel, neither of which I thought came up to the level of the Sarantine Mosaic or Lions of Al'Rassan. There is certainly a lot of material in the setting he's chosen for the kind of fantasy/quasi-historical novel he specializes in.

[Avalon]

I look forward to reading this. I just hope for once that it won't be full of gorgeous women who are "the most beautiful" and one man whom every single one of them falls in love with.

This makes me wish that I was a character in a Kay novel.

[Galactus]

I'm sure it'll be another amazing read.... but I admit, I'm not quite enthused about this one. It's not the setting or anything like that, but more the description of the opening which just seems a bit ... I don't know. Hard to put my finger on it.

It certainly sounds very... Kay.

[Lupigis]

This makes me wish that I was a character in a Kay novel.

Male or female? ;)

[Insert Edit]

I look forward to reading this. I just hope for once that it won't be full of gorgeous women who are "the most beautiful" and one man whom every single one of them falls in love with.

But in a strange development, all the women protagonists are going to be BIG beautiful women. :)

[Imagica]

I look forward to reading this. I just hope for once that it won't be full of gorgeous women who are "the most beautiful" and one man whom every single one of them falls in love with.

This :) It managed to ruin Sarantium for me, something I really enjoyed reading otherwise :(

P.S. I admit I kinda lol'd when I've read the name of Kay's fantasy counterpart of China :)

[Theodor]

Direct link to the review:

Under Heaven Review

[TerraPrime]

Hmm... the posted excerpt didn't bear all that much resemblance to the story of the Tang dynasty, other than a big victorious battle with the west-ward barbarians. But then, I think his most historically literal work was Lions of Al'Razan, and that's still fairly derivative. Loosely based on history, I'd say?

[jurble]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Kitai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay

[Gigei]

This :) It managed to ruin Sarantium for me, something I really enjoyed reading otherwise :(

P.S. I admit I kinda lol'd when I've read the name of Kay's fantasy counterpart of China :)

Sarantium was the worst in that particular area I mentioned. The other books have the same thing but if you have a famous and handsome general/poet/prince/assassin/whatever then at least you could imagine they were like Brad Pitt and had women falling in love with them all the time. The guy in Sarantium though was nothing that special.

[Ran]

Never really got that complaint. Good-looking and brilliant artists get laid all the time in the real world, by all accounts.

I think Crispin being muscular, bearded, and red-haired (on top of the whole brilliance thing) just made him stand out at the Sarantine court, and in fact I think the way relations seemed predicated, in part, on experiencing something new is one of a number of tactics Kay uses to show how jaded Sarantium is. Just being exotic is enough to recommend you.

And back on topic, I'm looking forward to Under Heaven quite a bit. Linda was not so sure, never really having been very interested in fantasy that draws from non-Indo European sources, but the fact that the plot turns on horses somewhat helps. ;)

[Imagica]

Never really got that complaint. Good-looking and brilliant artists get laid all the time in the real world, by all accounts.

Never got the impression he was especially good-looking.

I think Crispin being muscular, bearded, and red-haired (on top of the whole brilliance thing) just made him stand out at the Sarantine court,

Oh, but it started happening even before getting to Sarantium :) The slave girl, I get. Middle-aged and bored nobleman's wife, OK. Young and beautiful female ruler who gives him the message? Not so.

There is also the thing that in the beginning, Crispin is practically a celibate hero, who can't get over his dead wife, yet not only he gets over it pretty soon, he has women falling all over him practically in dozens. I certainly didn't expect that, and being female, find this type of male wish-fulfillment somewhat unpleasant to read. So, naturally, when I hear that Kay's new book features a lot of female characters, I become very wary, as this cliche seems to be well-loved by him to the point of "author appeal" (in fact, Lions was the only book of his I truly loved, and it doesn't have this kind of thing - though it is reversed and overdone a bit, too).

[Calibandar]

Terra,

Where did you see an except from this book?