[D'rek]

Over the last while I've seen a lot of intriguing comments pop up, like Abyss declaring Lions of Al-Rassan to be the best standalone novel of all time, or some such. Which to me is a bit weird since I think it's one of GGK's worst novels. And then when I say Lord of Emperors is phenomenal but then DW will probably laugh at me and point at Last Light of the Sun instead. Plus my roomate has a little shrine built to Song of Arbonne in the basement...

So out of his books which ones do you like and dislike, compared to each other and the rest of fantasy? And why, of course!


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For myself, I didn't like Lions at all and am confued why people exalt above the others. The characterization is good, but the schizophrenic jumping of perspective from place to place makes it to annoyingly confusing to figure out what I'm supposed to be giving a crap about. And the pacing doesn't help in that regard - more time is spent being mercenaries off in the country than in the actual pivotal conquest later.

My own top three (in order) would be:

Lord of Emperors
The Darkest Road
The Last Light of the Sun

but let's get some other opinions in here!

[Astra]

I have read:
Tigana
Song for Arbonne
The Last Light of the Sun
The Lions of al-Rassan

Loved Tigana and The Last Light of the Sun.
The best stand alone fantasy books I have read. It is coming from someone who is not fun of stand alone fantasy. I believe there is not enough room for a writer to tell Fantasy story properly, but Kay proved me wrong.

Song for Arbonne was average

Disliked Lions mostly because of the time/places jump with big gaps of what happened to characters during these jumps. Didn't like the story that much too.

Right now I am reading Under Heaven and so far I am disappointed. So much raving about the book, I am 1/3 into it and it leaves me absolutely cold. Some places even boring.

This post has been edited by Astra: 18 June 2010 - 12:07 PM

[amphibian]

I've read Ysabel and The Last Light of the Sun. I hated Ysabel and was ambivalent about Last Light.

I don't get the hype for GGK.

[fidge]

I started reading Fionavar and then went on to read all his books after that. While I feel his fantasy is good, it his historical fiction that has kept me coming back. Lions and the two set of novels are great. Ysabel was my favorite. The quality of writing was better than anything I have ever read I felt.

[acesn8s]

I've read all his novels, I think the only thing I haven't read is his poetry . . .

It's been at least a decade since I read A Song for Arbonne or Tigana but I remember I enjoyed them.

I enjoy Kay's characters and their development. His stuff makes a nice contrast to the brain candy novels (which I enjoy) like Gemmel, Butcher, Brust, Eddings, etc.

[Use Of Weapons]

I've read:

Tigana
The Lions of Al-Rassan
A Song For Arbonne
The first book of the Sarantine Mosaic
The Fionavar Tapestry


Favourite by miles is Tigana, followed by Lions and then Fionavar. Hated Arbonne, but I have a feeling that if I were to read it again now, I'd change my mind.

How you feel about GGK seems to depend quite markedly on where you are in your life when you read the books. Tigana was the first book I'd ever read where the twist in the end shocked me to the core, and I just read and reread the killer lines going, "shit, shit, shit."

[Abyss]

I'll approach this in the order i read them, which is more or less the reverse of the publication order (newest to oldest)...

LIONS - I read this on the strength of various forum recos. i totally enjoyed the characters and the style of storytelling. it wasn't the novelty of the plot or the setting so much as how GGK worked with the personalities within all of it. I thought the friendship between the two main male characters was really well done.

ARBONNE - I liked the setting, a Matriarchical society with a heavy 'high cultural' slant, surrounded by more or less barbarian 'Man rulez' countries. Again i thought the characters were excellent and the interpersonal dynamics were really well done and were the political bits and the minimal magic elements. Good humour too.

THE SARANTINE MOSAIC - this two parter blew me away. Kay totally hit his stride here. Great original characters (minimal typical archetypes), interesting political and religious plots, absolutely the best chariot scenes i have ever read and just overall a superior piece of work. I give LIONS the edge only because the action was better and the pace a bit faster.

THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY - ah, portal fantasy... humans from 'our world' go to fantasy land, become important archetypical characters, fulfill prophecies, shag royalty, accumulate power and then return home. Mostly. With a healthy does of Arthurian legend thrown in for no especially good reason. Despite its general lack of originality by the time i read it, i liked this. It didn't blow me away at any point, but it worked well enough and there was at least one scene per book that was awesome.

TIGANA - This book gets a lot of love, but i wasn't feeling it. Instead, i found it dreary and depressing. The characters were unoriginal. There was an undue amount of 'oh, isn't that convenient' plot development. I did like the overall plot of the enchantment forcing people to basically forget the country ever existed, but otherwise it was just bleh. Complete with gratuitous incest, subplots that went nowhere in particular (what the fnck was that 'fight the demons at midnight' stuff?)... just overall didn't wow me. I'll reread LIONS and SARANTINE. Not this.

LAST LIGHT. BoooOOOOOOoooring. Omg, it's a book about vikings. Frikkin vikings. And it was SO. SlooooOOOOOooooooow. Yawn. Dull. Forced myself to finish.

YSABEL - the cruching weight of negative reviews have me leaving this aside for the moment. I'll check it out eventually.

[Tsundoku]

I have all of his novels except for Ysabel and Under Heaven. I loved them all - except for Last Light. For some reason I just could NOT get into it. Like Abyss says above, it was "boooooooooooriiiiiiiiing". Kinda left me cold for a bit, so I have yet to either try again or get the new stuff.

I read the Fionavar Tapestry first a long, long time ago and loved it. I still recall exclaiming out loud "What? You fucking arsehole!" (and having my Mum chide me for my language) when Diarmuid well ... you know ... in The Darkest Road. I guess it helped prepare me for GRRM and SE in that regard.

[KalamMekhar]

I have only read the sarantine mosaic and just finished under heaven last night, and these books were simply fantastic and are my top shelf of the better books ive ever read. i thoroughly enjoyed, GGK's writing is fantastic and really lets you into his characters and what they are thinking, not to mention how he tells the story.

[D'rek]

First time I went through Last Light I found it boring and unremarkable. Not too long ago, though, I read the Sarantines, Lions and Last Light back-to-back, which improved it a lot. The nearly complete absence of any actual fighting in Lions (and when there is fighting the narrative doesn't show it, choosing instead to showcase what the people are watching are thinking and talking about the entire fight) improved Last Light a lot, because it actually had some goddamn fighting/battles. That being said, Last Light does have a handful of pointless characters that could easily have been removed in favour of more pillaging and raping to action it up a bit, rather than more scenes about the trepidation of walking into a forest...

Lord of Emperors is the best to me. Sailing to Sarantium got kind of dry at a few places and suffered from the plot changing completely a few times (ie the walking to Sarantium and the in Sarantium are completely disjoint). And while there's no armies clashing in LoE, it doesn't build any expectation of ever seeing that happen, because unlike Lions the main character(s) is not the type that would ever be with the army. And even then they manage to pepper in some murderous chases through the city and violent rioting. But all that is secondary. The main reason I really, really like LoE is that we actually get to feel the passion of the main character. In this case its for mosaic, and while there's plenty else going on that distracts him from it, Crispin nevertheless has many opportunities to speak about it, think about it, plan it, build it and curse about it.

In comparison:
-Lions has 2 expert fighters and military tacticians who's only seen battle is to ambush a dozen bandits and only fighting is a single duel that is told entirely from mysterious comments about their girlfriends' facial expressions.
-Of Fionavar's 5, the only one who gets to follow his passion in life does so while falling off a cliff
-Tigana's characters mostly seem to want revenge, and so they run around doing everything but confronting the evil dude(s) and going on weird magic quests in dreamworlds fighting with blades of grass

[Abyss]

GGK doesn't really do clash of thousands army battles (qualifier: i haven't read UNDER HEAVEN yet). He had a bit in FIONAVAR, one in ARBONNE where really the battle was more or less the least important thing going on, and a mess in TIGANA that didn't really make sense (if the whole point was to engage the big bad wizard, the rest of it was REALLY pointless), but overall massive action scenes aren't his thing. He does a lot of 'tell it after it happened by reference', which can be frustrating (notably in LIONS i REALLY resented not reading the first duel, and there was a reference in TIGANA to a crippled king taking out a champion that was thoroughly frustrating for its vagueness) but on the other hand the way he tells the penultimate chariot race in SARANTINE is brilliant.

[teholbeddict]

GGK's probably my favourite fantasy author, I've read all of his books and poetry. I'll list them anyways as everyone else seems to have done it:

The Fionovar Tapestry
Sarantine Mosaic
A Song for Arbonne
Tigana
Ysabel
The Lions of Al-Rassan
The Last Light of the Setting Sun
Under Heaven
Beyond this Dark House

Northumbria
At the Root of Her Tree
Shalott

My favourites would have to be Tigana, Sarantine Mosaic and now Under heaven, which I've just recently finished reading. His books are beautifully written. He's an expepert at conveying emotion and an over all mood or feel. He can suck you into his settings in one chapter and bring you into the world he's created for any given book. His books have made me laugh, and cry, there is an air of sadness and pride that's woven through most of his works but it's subtle in many cases and adds to the overall atmosphere of thing. While they may start out slowly at times his books are so thoroughly and well written, nothing is left unfinished or under developed. He normally has quite the page count to work with, but none of that is filler, it's all pertinent to the story, his pacing is excellent. There is no dragging along until you come to some massive ending out of nowhere, there is a gradual momentum and progression to things. I also have tremendous respect for the fact that he's not afraid to give the reader less than the fairytale ending. There is bitter disappointment in his books and saddness as well as loss. The endings may not always be the heppy ending you were hoping a character would have, but it's always fitting and appropriate.

The only book of his I haven't enjoyed was Ysabel and it's not even badly written. I just hold his works to a very high standard and I felt that one missed the mark. Under Heaven just blew me away, he's at the top of his game and is a master at what he does.

This post has been edited by teholbeddict: 21 June 2010 - 02:36 PM

[Abyss]

I remain very psyched for UNDER HEAVEN.

[KalamMekhar]

its good abyss, really really good.

[Mentalist]

Kay is one of the few authors I've read who has consistently delivered, ranging from "awesome" to "good"

I've read Fionovar when I jst started reading Fantasy. It was good, kept me e ntertained, although I've had 0 idea about the whole Celtic thing at the time.

of his pseudo-historical works:

Arbonne was very good, I was really into the Albigensian crusades at the time, so I enjoyed it.

Sarantine Mosaic was amazing. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was about regular people, as much as it was about the powers of the world.

Last Light of the Sun was alright. It had some good lyical moments, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the whole "times are changing and we must change with them" theme.

Tiganan left me underwhelmed after all the praise thrown its way. I guess the setting just didn't grab me as much as some of the others. it could've been the fact that the overtly magical nature of it didn't fit in well with the other works of pseudo-history.

I've read Lions last, and i've enjoyed it as well. the setting was another great choice by GGK, the Reconcista provided a lot of opportunity to build really interesting characters.

I'm excited for Under HEaven, and will get that as soon as I see it in MMPB. I just hope they release it in the edition that'll match all my other GGK historical stuff...

[Astra]

I have finished Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
I guess it was......... an interesting story.
Although, I have nothing else to add. It didn't feel like a fantasy. Just a fiction with a few mystical elements.
Mildly disappointed.

[Tapper]

I have a really hard time finding his books here, so only read the Fionavar Tapestry, way back when, loaned from the library. Loved it. Guess I'll have to show a bit more dedication in actually getting the other books