attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2009-02-17 11:23 am
attackfish) wrote2009-02-17 11:23 am
Entry tags:
Row Row Row Your Longship Gently Down the Sea: Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun
So, I made a mistake, and lent The Lions of Al-Rassan to Cat as soon as I dug it out of the box just to show my book craving doesn't rule me, but it does. It does. Left without my favorite Guy Gavriel Kay fix, I shelled out the last of my Hanukkah gift certificates for the horribly expensive trade paperback edition of The Last Light of the Sun and read it in one day when I should have been studying for my Law midterm.
In the British Isles of Kay's fictional Europe (the one with the two moons) in the time of Alfred the Great (or his fictional equivalent) Erlings have settled amidst the Anglcyn, paying tribute to their king, while others raid the coasts. A young man, Bern, escapes his life as a landless servant to join a famous band of Erling mercenaries As two brothers seek to kill a Cyngael who killed their grandfather. When a Cyngael prince falls to them, his brother and a cleric find themselves in the Anglcyn court as the Erling raiders descend upon them...
Kay includes so many fantastic and unexpected historical details to his richly detailed historical fantasy, and this one was no exception. From the very first page, he includes a Asharite (read Muslim) trader, a group fairly common in the wealthy pagan trading ports of the real Vikings. Aeldred (Alfred the Great)'s court is a place of learning and sophistication, unique in his part of the world. Details of culture and military structure abounded, giving the world substance.
Kay uses his masterful ability to create characters to deliver a whole world of living, breathing people, many historic but for a name change. Judit, modeled after Aethelflaed, or as I like to call her, Aethelflaed the Awesome, Alfred's daughter, manages to be a passionate defiant, transgressive, battle-ready woman without falling into the "angry feminist" strawwoman role so many such characters are written into. It was interesting to read about her imagined youth, knowing she would grow up to be a great ruler and warleader. Kendra, quieter than her sister, and more traditionally feminine was equally able to get done what needed to be done, and make a worthy, happy life for herself. Bern, the Erling (Viking) mercenary, and his father Thorkell were engrossing pictures of the mostly moral. Frigga, Bern's mother and the second volar made me feel all tingly. He had wonderful men, and wonderful woman, and he let them all be awesome together, men with men, women with women, and women with men. It passed the Bechdel test many times over, in other words. Kay developed the three historical cultures he had and made people to fill each. Conversely, I swung between wanting to see more about the less mentioned characters like Hakon, and wishing he'd settle one one viewpoint.
Yet for all the rich characterization and atmosphere, Kay fails to build to a climax, and the climax itself was weak. He kept interrupting it, such as it was, to show the minor goings on of people not present. The novel seemed to drag on with nothing really happening. Also, the repeated use of first person plurals and second person in an otherwise third person novel got really old really fast. Furthermore, if he wanted to write a historical fantasy, he should have woven the magic in a bit more thoroughly instead of just sprinkling it on top, but that was just one more symptom of his overall inability to connect all the pieces of his world. As enjoyable as each was individually, the novel as a whole left me feeling unsatisfied.
His otherwise brilliant, realistic, and compelling characterization of every member of his ensemble cast made Kay's terribly cliched use of a cowardly sociopathic albino all the more disappointing. Ivarr would have been a far cooler more sinister villain if he had looked like everyone else. Using a physical characteristic to denote evilness is a tired, lazy writing device, and one that probably pisses off most albino people.
Kay always conducts scrupulous research, but this time there were little inaccuracies that annoyed me and threw me out of my suspension of disbelief. Viking is the old Norse word for a sailor and a pirate, not for the whole people, so the use of a similar term as denoting the entire corresponding people wasn't strictly correct. Besides, the Anglo-Saxons called the Norse who settled amongst them Danes, because they were from Denmark, not Vikings, And why the repeated use of the Blood Eagle? If it were as common as portrayed in this novel, there'd be a hell of a lot more references to it, and it would have made its way into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at least once.
Damn it, I want The Lions of Al-Rassan back.
In the British Isles of Kay's fictional Europe (the one with the two moons) in the time of Alfred the Great (or his fictional equivalent) Erlings have settled amidst the Anglcyn, paying tribute to their king, while others raid the coasts. A young man, Bern, escapes his life as a landless servant to join a famous band of Erling mercenaries As two brothers seek to kill a Cyngael who killed their grandfather. When a Cyngael prince falls to them, his brother and a cleric find themselves in the Anglcyn court as the Erling raiders descend upon them...
Kay includes so many fantastic and unexpected historical details to his richly detailed historical fantasy, and this one was no exception. From the very first page, he includes a Asharite (read Muslim) trader, a group fairly common in the wealthy pagan trading ports of the real Vikings. Aeldred (Alfred the Great)'s court is a place of learning and sophistication, unique in his part of the world. Details of culture and military structure abounded, giving the world substance.
Kay uses his masterful ability to create characters to deliver a whole world of living, breathing people, many historic but for a name change. Judit, modeled after Aethelflaed, or as I like to call her, Aethelflaed the Awesome, Alfred's daughter, manages to be a passionate defiant, transgressive, battle-ready woman without falling into the "angry feminist" strawwoman role so many such characters are written into. It was interesting to read about her imagined youth, knowing she would grow up to be a great ruler and warleader. Kendra, quieter than her sister, and more traditionally feminine was equally able to get done what needed to be done, and make a worthy, happy life for herself. Bern, the Erling (Viking) mercenary, and his father Thorkell were engrossing pictures of the mostly moral. Frigga, Bern's mother and the second volar made me feel all tingly. He had wonderful men, and wonderful woman, and he let them all be awesome together, men with men, women with women, and women with men. It passed the Bechdel test many times over, in other words. Kay developed the three historical cultures he had and made people to fill each. Conversely, I swung between wanting to see more about the less mentioned characters like Hakon, and wishing he'd settle one one viewpoint.
Yet for all the rich characterization and atmosphere, Kay fails to build to a climax, and the climax itself was weak. He kept interrupting it, such as it was, to show the minor goings on of people not present. The novel seemed to drag on with nothing really happening. Also, the repeated use of first person plurals and second person in an otherwise third person novel got really old really fast. Furthermore, if he wanted to write a historical fantasy, he should have woven the magic in a bit more thoroughly instead of just sprinkling it on top, but that was just one more symptom of his overall inability to connect all the pieces of his world. As enjoyable as each was individually, the novel as a whole left me feeling unsatisfied.
His otherwise brilliant, realistic, and compelling characterization of every member of his ensemble cast made Kay's terribly cliched use of a cowardly sociopathic albino all the more disappointing. Ivarr would have been a far cooler more sinister villain if he had looked like everyone else. Using a physical characteristic to denote evilness is a tired, lazy writing device, and one that probably pisses off most albino people.
Kay always conducts scrupulous research, but this time there were little inaccuracies that annoyed me and threw me out of my suspension of disbelief. Viking is the old Norse word for a sailor and a pirate, not for the whole people, so the use of a similar term as denoting the entire corresponding people wasn't strictly correct. Besides, the Anglo-Saxons called the Norse who settled amongst them Danes, because they were from Denmark, not Vikings, And why the repeated use of the Blood Eagle? If it were as common as portrayed in this novel, there'd be a hell of a lot more references to it, and it would have made its way into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at least once.
Damn it, I want The Lions of Al-Rassan back.