The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

It took a long time from first day of reading to last day of reading, but I recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay's history-based fantasy The Lion's of Al-Rassan.  It took me a long time because everything these days takes a longer time, what with all the moving planning stuff that has to get done and the pain and such, but the real reason it took a long time is because I was dragging my feet because I knew this book would end in tears.  And holy cow, did it ever.  I've read four of this author's books now, and there are SO MANY TEARS IN EVERY ONE that I think I will need a Terry Pratchett chaser.  (Sorry, new Dresden Files book.  I will continue to exercise extreme self-control and put you off until I really need a pick-me-up and have a whole day to give you.)

I see why writers like Kay.  He is a master of technique.  He does things I would not let many other authors get away with doing, but he does them so well I just have to smile crookedly and bow to his mastery.  For instance, I should really be irked with Kay for this dragging out of cliffhangers he sometimes does.  Other authors have the decency to open the next section far away with another set of characters to distract us or just start out the next section by handing us the information in the first sentence.  Kay sometimes drags it out for PAGES.  And he does it brilliantly.  It just grinds the tragedy with the uncertainty for that much longer, and I should resent him for this obvious artifice.  Instead, I suppose I appreciate his acknowledgement that patient readers can sometimes savor the not-knowing for a while, that good readers can trust good authors to only use this device when it intensifies something important.  He uses these techniques with restraint, so they don't get tedious.

I knew that one of the characters was based on El-Cid, but I purposely didn't go and look to see how that story ended.  I didn't need to.  The fun thing about making fantasy out of history is that you don't have to be a slave to it.  Also, I was sure it was going to end in tragedy.  I don't know a lot about that period in history, but I did know that it was around the time when Spain went from being a society where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could mostly co-exist rationally to a place where that really wasn't the case anymore.  Lots of war and religious extremism and violence and religion used to disguise a desire for power and domination and the destruction of an era of peace that allowed some things to flourish that never had before.

Kay's omniscient point of view is excellent.  He effortlessly switches between characters, always moving to just the right character to keep the plot going, and he is deadly with his foreshadowing.  (It's kind of like a bludgeon, but he adds this foreshadowing sentence at the end of an otherwise seemingly slow-moving section, and it's like a punch in the gut.  You don't go on to the next section wondering what will happen.  Instead, you keep reading and wondering exactly how it will all go wrong.)  It's not that all of the POV characters are likeable; it's that they are all expertly drawn.  You understand something important even about the ones you dislike (and Kay knows how to limit your time in their heads to just the parts of the story that need to be told from that point of view to best move the plot along).

The story is so very timely for me right now, too.  The radio has recently been reminding me that this kind of "ideological" clashing didn't stop in the 11th century.  It's happening in the Middle East and in Southern Asia right now.  It is scary and it is ugly and it is messy.  It always has been.  It always will be.  It destroys things and people.  It breaks my heart, it probably breaks God's heart, and it breaks the world.  Reading the kind of mindset that causes it is important but difficult and a little terrifying.  

I love Kay's books.  His grasp of story is very strong, and his voices are compelling.  I'm off to read some Pratchett, though, because I need some more gentle humanism right now.  I'm a couple Pratchett books behind, so I can probably read a few powerful and slightly soul-bruising Kay books followed by some Pratchett.  Not a bad plan in a stressful time.


NOTE: For those of you who like to see book covers, check them out here.  My favorite is the top left (Canadian Hardcover).  No confusion about who the fourth person is; though I understand the desire for architectural symmetry.

Much Fall of Blood: History with added dragons!

b Much Fall of Blood by Lackey, Freer, and Flint: Dragons!  And Mongols!  I had no idea we were going here.  None at all.  We follow the knights way far east, where we meet a Mongol princess in disguise doing her best to save the life of her brother (heir to the khanate [khan-ship?]) and teaming up with our favorite prince of the Holy Roman Empire (who really is slowly and realistically turning into a really good man) and his awesome Icelandic bodyguard (and a stupid, young rascal from the Middle East).

Meanwhile, there's this guy named Vlad, some shape-changing wolf people, a couple of dragons, and some super-evil folks, one of whom unexpectedly totally dies.  Strategy, tactics, awesome practical jokes, possessions, a wedding, an unexpectedly useful female secondary character, hordes of Mongols, blood, weddings, good and evil, and dragons.  Good stuff.

This Rough Magic

b This Rough Magic by Lackey, Flint, and Freer: Well, Benito went a bit crazy.  Not that I blame him because I'm kind of angry at Maria for her choice at the end of Shadow of the Lion.  I thought Benito was really starting to pull it together and would have been great . . .  Well, anyway.  Maria chose to marry someone safe and uninvolved (i.e. not Benito), which is sad because you know from page 1 of this book that this husband will surely die, so you don't want to like him.  (That is not really a spoiler because it is SO obvious, even if precisely when he's going to die is up in the air).

It's horrible for me as a writer/reader because I know he needs to die because Maria and Benito are frickin' destined to be together, and I feel bad about that because he really is a nice guy, and then when he did die, I was sad but also happy.  It's complicated.  And not really a spoiler.

The location for this chapter of the story is Corfu; there's a new ancient land power lurking in the background, Maria has a baby, and you do find out whose it is.  Other highlights include a character unexpectedly falling in love (and falling really hard), betrayal, a siege, and terrible and evil people doing very bad things. 

Shadow of the Lion

b Shadow of the Lion by Lackey, Freer, Flint: This is a narrow but epic historical fantasy sort of thing.  Written by a team of three authors (some with a better grasp of punctuation than others) with tons of characters and complex, interweaving narratives, Shadow of the Lion is not for the faint of heart.  It is pretty awesome, though.  The complexity made this a slow stop-and-go event for me that dragged on over several months, but I am a sucker for alternative-historical fantasy in general but especially when the emphasis is more on the historical. 

Sometimes the world-building in this sort of book is a tad muddy; we're not precisely sure where history diverged, and we're not sure what the fantasy elements are.  This book makes these things pretty clear from the word GO, and the changes are inspired.  Magic is real and given a certain amount of respect and acknowledgement by the church.  When this change is made, a lot of the crazy things the monastic knights did and many of the wacky superstitions of the time actually make sense.  It's a very nice trick: to make history more sensical by adding fantasy elements to it (just like that word I made up there). 

There is intrigue, action, betrayal, drinking, whoring, church, state, old land Spirits, good and evil, hidden identities, danger, madness, and a ton of characters of all kinds that kind of make you hate it every time the point of view changes.  Centered in medieval Venice (and the lion of St. Mark legends).  Good stuff.

Sisters of the Sword and the occasional hazards of reading "historical fiction" for kids

I've been on a historical fiction/multicultural kick lately, and one of the series I started reading that I shouldn't have was one of those factory-created ones that always get canceled if I like them. I liked it, so of course the fourth book seems to be delayed indefinitely.  Drat.

A bit more than halfway through the first installment, I was rolling my eyes at the predictability and hoping there would be at least some surprises before the end. I was getting all snotty and composing a review in my head where I would heave a huge literary sigh and say that it was entertaining but it was hardly Tales of the Otori or Kaze Hikaru or even Rowland's Sano Ichiro Novels. I was, of course, ignoring the fact that this series wasn't trying to be as rigorously historically accurate and really couldn't be, so it wasn't fair of me to judge it for being what it was instead of what it was not intended to be.

And then, things started getting unpredictable. One professional review I read mentioned that because of what it is (a revenge drama), there are certain predictable elements, but the story weaves in a lot of unexpected turns and surprises. If you catch yourself thinking, "Well of course this is where the story will end up," be ready to be wrong.

I wish the series had taken pains to be more authentic because then I would have been able to turn my inner armchair sociologist off and just immerse myself in the story wholeheartedly. Multiple times every book, I wanted to get to a reference book to see if I was wrong or the book was.

However, the books aren't aimed at adult Japanophiles who get irritated when they know things are getting out-of-whack culturally or historically or otherwise. I would just prefer readers to get an exciting read that's not going to give them inaccurate history/culture lessons.  Maybe its intended audience would be driven to go do some research and find out more and get the truth that way.  I may also be frustrated that the theory seems to be that there's no need for that much cultural accuracy because the books' intended audience would likely be bored by such accuracy and just wants an exciting read, correct or not.

They probably also want to know how the series ends, so let's hope enough people buy the first three that the publisher starts releasing new volumes, especially after how that third one ended. So cruel.

Do you have any favorite historical fiction for the 8-18 age groups?

6 books in the queue (patience)

I did it!  I waited until two different trilogies were out before starting them!  This is what can happen when you pay attention.

John Twelve Hawks' third book came out recently, so I'm ready to start The Travelers. 

C.C. Finlay's alternate history fantasy trilogy was published using the new trilogy-published-in-a-three-month-span strategy people are trying out. (Brent Weeks' Night Angel Trilogy from Orbit was the first big success story of this kind, I think.)  Finlay has multiple degrees in history, and he loves to write, so he decided to combine the two loves, and we have the Traitor to the Crown series as a result.

There are apparently a lot of historically inexplicable things that happened around the Revolutionary War, so Finlay grabbed those and came up with a plausible explanation: there was a magical battle going on behind the scenes of the war with British and American magic users tearing at each other.  Kind of fun.  The Patriot Witch is the first one, and I'm looking forward to reading it soon.

Any other trilogies published at once that you've taken note of or read?  Do you like the idea?  Only if it's published in cheapie paperback?