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attackfishI do on occasion venture into the adult section of the library, almost entirely on recommendations, true, but it does happen. So, since I normally love Guy Gavriel Kay, and I gave him one of my few negative reviews a while back, and my library finally got Ysabel, it’s only been out for TWO YEARS (yeah, that’s like nothing for my library, but, come on, it’s me and a book) I decided I’d review it.
Ned Marriner isn’t sure what he thinks about Provence, but he really likes getting out of school for a while. His father, a famous photographer and his crew are making a book, and between scouting out places for his father to shoot and buying history papers off exchange students, he starts to discover something about his family’s past, and the fabric of history. When the parties to an ancient love triangle come back to haunt the present, Ned and his friends have to race against them to save one of their own...
Even when I brave the adult fiction shelves, I somehow end up with a YA novel anyway. It’s not just that the point of view character is fifteen. His voice bursts through the prose, and the readers get a feel for him from the first paragraph. Of course the YA or adult fiction label is frequently a purely marketing decision, but there’s a YA feel, and Ysabel has it. It’s a coming of age story about a boy touching the supernatural for the first time, but also about a boy realizing his choices affect other people, and that he has responsibility.
It was both very entertaining and a little odd for me to read the world as seen through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy. His self-centered-without-being-particularly-selfish way of viewing everything was a bit of a challenge at first. I had to force myself to remember that there were other views in the story than Ned’s. Fortunately Kay seemed to realize this too, and occasionally helped me out.
Kate was a wonderful female semi-foil for Ned, trying to impress him, and with her own limited immature viewpoint on the world, with caustic, childish opinions of her roommate even as she was the more scholarly, reliable one. I liked them separately, and together, and I loved watching teenagers just be teenage in the middle of the whole adventure.
Kay always writes excellent characters (usually a whole bunch of extra characters, actually). Ned, Kate, Melanie, Ysabel, and the rest made me laugh, and sympathize with them, and want to talk to them all the way through the book. When Ysabel took Melanie, I wanted Ned to get her back, not just because I wanted Ned to succeed in his coming of age quest, but because I liked Melanie, and I didn’t want Ysabel to have her. It’s one of the few times I really really enjoyed the damsel in distress character.
I was a little worried going in that Kay’s usual style of lyrical prose wouldn’t work as well in a contemporary setting that the otherworldly nature of it wouldn’t lend the reality necessary to allow me to suspend my disbelief. But he saved the otherworldly prose for moments of wonder within the story and made the rest of the prose solid and down to earth.
Also, Kay wrote witty dialogue and practical jokes to break up the tension. Ned talks like a fifteen-year-old boy who thinks he’s brilliant, and who likes to make himself and others laugh. When this mood changes, and Ned changes, the readers are pulled along with it. It’s a shock to the system, and it works perfectly.
Kay’s choice to focus only on one character’s experiences works very well for Ysabel. It helps build the tension and keeps the plot tighter than it is in some of his other books. There’s no chance for him as an author to shift to something just as the story starts to rise. Kay always has wonderful characters and prose (and you’d really think that would be enough, right? Picky Fish) but he sometimes falls down on plot. Not here. The plot is fast paced, the action is frequent, and the whole thing hangs together.
I was just a little nonplussed that Ned’s dad was completely alright with him buying a school paper from someone, and that he only told him not to make a habit of it. If either of my parents had found any of their kids pulling that one, there would have been hell to pay, and my parents are pretty easygoing. I suppose if you want to, though, you can read what happens after as a cautionary tale as to why one should always write one’s own history papers. You, dear readers, might get a trio of long dead nutjobs tossed in your lap who use historical landmarks in a gigantic puzzle that you have to solve to save your sort of babysitter, sort of crush if you don’t.
The one thing I really didn’t like, was the way at the end, there was the almost rescue romance of Melanie and Ned. Wait, isn’t Melanie well into her adulthood? Not only was I rooting for Ned and Kate, which was set up from the very beginning (and did end up being the primary romantic pairing) and Melanie and Ned weren’t set up as anything but a kid with a crush on an adult woman, but the whole idea is a bit creepy. Also, it seemed way out of character for Melanie, who was portrayed throughout as a hyper-competent hyper-responsible woman who saw Ned as a responsibility and sometimes friend. I did like the way it was resolved, though.
On the whole, however, this is one of Kay’s better works, deliciously fun, thrilling, tense, and at times even a little scary. There isn’t ant deep meaning or tragic sense of worlds ending as there is in most of his novels, just drama, excitement, and the perfect antidote to my winter blues.
Well, I still want The Lions of Al-Rassan back, but in the mean time, Ysabel can consol me.
Ned Marriner isn’t sure what he thinks about Provence, but he really likes getting out of school for a while. His father, a famous photographer and his crew are making a book, and between scouting out places for his father to shoot and buying history papers off exchange students, he starts to discover something about his family’s past, and the fabric of history. When the parties to an ancient love triangle come back to haunt the present, Ned and his friends have to race against them to save one of their own...
Even when I brave the adult fiction shelves, I somehow end up with a YA novel anyway. It’s not just that the point of view character is fifteen. His voice bursts through the prose, and the readers get a feel for him from the first paragraph. Of course the YA or adult fiction label is frequently a purely marketing decision, but there’s a YA feel, and Ysabel has it. It’s a coming of age story about a boy touching the supernatural for the first time, but also about a boy realizing his choices affect other people, and that he has responsibility.
It was both very entertaining and a little odd for me to read the world as seen through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy. His self-centered-without-being-particularly-selfish way of viewing everything was a bit of a challenge at first. I had to force myself to remember that there were other views in the story than Ned’s. Fortunately Kay seemed to realize this too, and occasionally helped me out.
Kate was a wonderful female semi-foil for Ned, trying to impress him, and with her own limited immature viewpoint on the world, with caustic, childish opinions of her roommate even as she was the more scholarly, reliable one. I liked them separately, and together, and I loved watching teenagers just be teenage in the middle of the whole adventure.
Kay always writes excellent characters (usually a whole bunch of extra characters, actually). Ned, Kate, Melanie, Ysabel, and the rest made me laugh, and sympathize with them, and want to talk to them all the way through the book. When Ysabel took Melanie, I wanted Ned to get her back, not just because I wanted Ned to succeed in his coming of age quest, but because I liked Melanie, and I didn’t want Ysabel to have her. It’s one of the few times I really really enjoyed the damsel in distress character.
I was a little worried going in that Kay’s usual style of lyrical prose wouldn’t work as well in a contemporary setting that the otherworldly nature of it wouldn’t lend the reality necessary to allow me to suspend my disbelief. But he saved the otherworldly prose for moments of wonder within the story and made the rest of the prose solid and down to earth.
Also, Kay wrote witty dialogue and practical jokes to break up the tension. Ned talks like a fifteen-year-old boy who thinks he’s brilliant, and who likes to make himself and others laugh. When this mood changes, and Ned changes, the readers are pulled along with it. It’s a shock to the system, and it works perfectly.
Kay’s choice to focus only on one character’s experiences works very well for Ysabel. It helps build the tension and keeps the plot tighter than it is in some of his other books. There’s no chance for him as an author to shift to something just as the story starts to rise. Kay always has wonderful characters and prose (and you’d really think that would be enough, right? Picky Fish) but he sometimes falls down on plot. Not here. The plot is fast paced, the action is frequent, and the whole thing hangs together.
I was just a little nonplussed that Ned’s dad was completely alright with him buying a school paper from someone, and that he only told him not to make a habit of it. If either of my parents had found any of their kids pulling that one, there would have been hell to pay, and my parents are pretty easygoing. I suppose if you want to, though, you can read what happens after as a cautionary tale as to why one should always write one’s own history papers. You, dear readers, might get a trio of long dead nutjobs tossed in your lap who use historical landmarks in a gigantic puzzle that you have to solve to save your sort of babysitter, sort of crush if you don’t.
The one thing I really didn’t like, was the way at the end, there was the almost rescue romance of Melanie and Ned. Wait, isn’t Melanie well into her adulthood? Not only was I rooting for Ned and Kate, which was set up from the very beginning (and did end up being the primary romantic pairing) and Melanie and Ned weren’t set up as anything but a kid with a crush on an adult woman, but the whole idea is a bit creepy. Also, it seemed way out of character for Melanie, who was portrayed throughout as a hyper-competent hyper-responsible woman who saw Ned as a responsibility and sometimes friend. I did like the way it was resolved, though.
On the whole, however, this is one of Kay’s better works, deliciously fun, thrilling, tense, and at times even a little scary. There isn’t ant deep meaning or tragic sense of worlds ending as there is in most of his novels, just drama, excitement, and the perfect antidote to my winter blues.
Well, I still want The Lions of Al-Rassan back, but in the mean time, Ysabel can consol me.
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Date: 2009-12-11 03:04 am (UTC)It's really wonderful, though I might be biased, because it's the first fantasy I read with an analogue to Jews in it's analogue to Medieval Europe.
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Date: 2009-12-11 03:10 am (UTC)In my defense, didn't he use the Yeats poem "Sailing to Byzantium" as his epigraph(s) for the book(s)? I think that's where he got the title from, anyway.
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Date: 2009-12-11 04:24 am (UTC)I have no idea, as I said, I've never managed to get my hands on it.