Tigana

Title: Tigana

Author: Guy Gavriel Kay

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: High Fantasy

Number of Pages: 692

Publication Date: 1990

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Summary: Eight of the nine provinces of the Peninusla of the Palm, on a world with two moons, have fallen to the warrior sorcerers Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior.

Brandin's younger son is slain in a battle with the principality of Tigana, which the grief-stricken sorcerer then destroys. After sweeping down and destroying the remnants of their army, burning their books and destroying their architectures and statuary, he makes it so that no one not born in the province can even its name.

Years later, a small band of survivors, lead by Alessan, last prince of Tigana's royal house, wages psychological warfare, planting seeds for the overthrow of the two tyrants. At the centre of these activities are Devin, a gifted young singer; Catriana, a young woman pursued by suspicions of her family's guilt; and Duke Sandre d'Astibar, a wily resistance leader thought dead.

Meanwhile, at Brandin's court, Dianora, his favourite concubine and - unknown to anyone, another survivor of Tigana - struggles between her growing love for the often gentle tyrant and her desire for vengeance. Gradually the scene is set for both conquers to destroy each other and free a land.

The thing that really stood out for me in this book was the world making. Mostly because rather than creating this great descriptive world, Gavriel Kay focused more on creating a culture, more so than any other book I have ever read. This book made you understand the importance of friendship, loyalty, oaths and religion to these people in such a way that it became as if you had actually seen it with your own eyes and encountered it rather than simply read about it. Very little was ever said about the physical world of the Palm outside of direct descriptions of where they were currently and to say that there were two moons.

The writing style of this book is extremely descriptive. Rather than saying what anything is, everything is told in an almost poetic way. While this made the writing give a lot more depth than a lot of books I also found that this made it difficult at times to follow the specifics of the story line. Because Tigana was written in a way that didn't always say what was happening you had to try and work much of the hints out yourself. While this is usually fine in a book as it helps bring creativity and a flourish to an authors work, at times I found there were too many descriptions and not enough direct writing that there was nothing to grasp a hold of and follow.

I also struggled quite a bit in the beginning of the novel, as I do with many high fantasy books, with the names. For some reasons fantasy authors always seem to pick one letter in the alphabet and give all the characters a name starting with this letter, the letter A in this case. Take into account that they are usually names that are not natural to us and they do begin to blur together. I was well passed half way in this massive novel before I could begin to fathom who was who.

The plot of this story moved very slowly. The first four fifths of this novel was Alessan and his rag tag group turning the western and eastern tyrants against each other. Alessan as a character is very intelligent and good at reading how others will react. While this makes most of his plans run smoothly and flawlessly in an entertaining read, it also caused the final battle to be rather anti-climatic. Of the 692 pages in this book the ending was a sudden turn around pages 620-30, all of a sudden everything went from a big lead up to the main event. Like all of Alessan's plan the final skirmish went off with few faults and at the end I kinda went 'is that it?'

But over all I have to congratulate Guy Gavriel Kay because this high fantasy novel is a stand alone. It isn't often you come across stand alone fantasies of any sort much less a high fantasy. Overall this book was fantastic. While its length was a little off putting especially when it was told slowly in a very descriptive and creative way, this only made the fact that it is a stand alone more impressive.