blancavelasco

It is pretty clear reading this book that this is Guy Gavriel Kay's first book. He wrote one of my favorite fantasy series the two book 'The Sarantine Mosaic'. I re-read that a few years ago and it really holds up for me. I like him enough as a fantasy author (even if one of his other books disappointed me) that I figured I'd read all his books. I figured I'd start at the beginning so I could probably get the worst out of the way. I'm hoping this is the worst of the lot. The writing is very awkward. He enjoys writing sentences like 'He would know soon enough. Soon enough'. Over and over he writes sentences where he tries to share the majesty or deep meaning of what he just wrote by repeating a phrase. I found this incredibly annoying. It distanced me from the book and put the author in the middle between me in the story in a glaring way. It also made the narrator omniscient even though there wasn't really a narrator. I can't describe it better. Also the premise is a little 'eh'. Fionavar is the prime world among all worlds so 5 people are taken from our world to that world where they all become avatars of sorts within this world (powerful seer; rider & horn carrier among the plains; etc). Before those characters become something special I could not, for the life of me, tell them apart or remember anything interesting about any of them. Not all of the characters get anything interesting in this story either. One of the females basically stands around being pretty and having to say no to men propositioning her for sex. The women in this novel are not written well and the sexual innuendos are a male fantasy. The premise of the prime world means that all kinds of myths and other fantasy stories can be told in this one: this feels like a lord of the rings rip-off at times (it is an homage; Kay did work with Tolkein's son on 'The Silmarillion') and of course Odin and his tree are in it, and eventually King Arthur, etc. I don't know why this bugs me in this book when I loved American Gods which clearly uses the Norse myths. Probably mostly because the writing is clunky. On the whole I enjoyed it. It is not great. I'd recommend other books by Kay first. ... and then you get to the last chapter. (view spoiler)

2022-11-14 16:11