Re: The Last Light of the Sun

The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay returns to type. Various sympathetic characters’ lives weave together toward an unexpected climax. And there’s a battle at the end.

Re: The Lions of Al Rassan

Perhaps because I wasn’t drawn strongly to any particular character in The Lions of al-Rassan, I found myself checking off tropes from previous Guy Gavriel Kay books. Leisurely beginning introducing us to the characters, check. Cast of extraordinary people, check. Historical setting (Spain when it was Al-Andalus, just before the Reconquista) with the serial numbers […]

Re: A Song for Arbonne

Set in a world based on the times of troubadour in Provence, A Song for Arbonne stars a group of extraordinary characters who do extraordinary things. As in Tigana, much of the story is driven by men who cannot give up their fixations. Also, Fionavar is mentioned, and there’s a big battle at the end. […]

Re: Tigana

Last year, when I read Ysabel, I remarked that Guy Gavriel Kay looked like the sort of writer I would like, and that largely turned out to be true. And now I’m noticing that I never got around to talking about his books that I do like. The first of his books to break away […]

In Search of Lost Sleep

The flip side of the 150 page rule is the quest for the holy grail of books, the book that’s so compelling, you stay up all night to finish it. When that happens to me, it short-circuits all my judgment, which makes it really hard to describe these books. But I can tell you how […]

Re: Ysabel

I started reading Guy Gavriel Kay because I had the feeling I was supposed to like him. The Fionavar books looked like just the thing for my Tolkien-warped brain. Well, I hated Fionavar, only making it partway into the second book. It got better once he stopped playing insert-the-Simarillion-reference and started writing his own ideas, […]