Despite this, I liked Under Heaven

[angualupin]

I really like Guy Gavriel Kay's books a lot, despite his aggrivating habit of killing off my favourite characters, but does he always* have to include a female character who's a prostitute

Comments

[rondaview]

Hullo, it just so happens that I've been eyeing GGK's books recently! Would you recommend the Fionavar Tapestry? The Internet tells me it's got Dunnett-influenced elements in it, but I've also heard the series is his exorcism of Tolkien, and very uneven.

As for Lions, there was a prostitute! ... Oh wait no that was a queenly consort character who had sex with and was kept by powerful men.

[angualupin]

"Uneven" is probably the best description of the Fionavar Tapestry. GGK's writing can be overwhelmingly beautiful; there are moments in Fionavar that are heartbreaking in their beauty. But the plot is questionable at best: he is trying to combine a Tolkien-scale epic with modern human immediacy and work in large amounts of Celtic mythology; he generally fails on all counts. (He also kills off one of the most interesting and original characters to service the Celtic mythology strand, something I still haven't forgiven him for.) As with many authors in the genre, he doesn't seem to quite know his own limitations -- he tries to be Tolkien and fails, whereas if he had scaled back just a little bit, I think he would have succeeded admirably. (His historical fantasies, which are scaled back just that little bit, are really good. Prostitutes aside.) Also, his mechanism for introducing the human immediacy is to take modern twentysomethings and physically transport them to the fantasy world to have their adventure, a trope which I hate, hate,

[rondaview]

Oh, yeah, I totally understand your luxuriating in GGK's prose -- a year and a half after reading Lions, I still remember the airless, stunned feeling that came from experiencing some of his sentences. LUCKILY FOR ME really well-crafted writing can outweigh almost all other flaws as well! Although there were parts of Lions that wrecked it for me (I couldn't even tell you what exactly took me out of the story, per se, although I do remember feeling annoyed by the fast-forward through like ten years of epic warring to get to the important bits, that is to say the STRICTLY NONEROTIC TENSION-LADEN SHOWDOWN between its male protags), otherwise it would've been the PERFECT READ. Kickass female physician! Political intrigue! Exotic lands! Oh my.

take modern twentysomethings and physically transport them to the fantasy world to have their adventure
XD You haven't by chance read Lev Grossman's The Magicians, have you? Another book I fervently like and want to chuck into the nearest landfill in equal measure

[angualupin]

I still remember the airless, stunned feeling that came from experiencing some of his sentences

That's exactly what GGK's writing makes me feel -- airless and stunned. Overwhelming, isn't it? I'd suggest you at least give Fionavar a try, then.

You haven't by chance read Lev Grossman's The Magicians, have you?

No, I haven't! Does it use the same trope? That trope is never a good idea, but the books using it can be good despite it.

So what would you say is your favorite GGK book? Tigana seems to be the most widely-read, with Lions coming in second.

That's hard to say. I would say Lions -- I think it has the tightest plot, and the female lead is seriously kick-ass -- but since it was always inevitable that he was going to kill one of the two male leads, I can't really forgive him for the way he wrote it. Tigana is really good, and probably has the greatest lyrical beauty outside of the Fionavar books. Last Light of the Sun (Vikings) and Sailing to Sarantium/The Sarantine Mosaic (sixth century Byzantium) are also really good. I just