there's a trick with a life that i'm learing to do: the works of guy gavriel kay

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awesome

tigana wuz robbed imo

I obviously didn't see this in time to vote b/c would have voted Fionavar Tap. Just breaks me me into pieces.

Finished Ysabel last night, brings it all back.

I'd never heard of the author until just last week when a friend posted about picking up the Sarantium book and recommended it. I've got a bunch queued up, v. excited.

btw i'm finally reading lions about [checks thread] only 10 years later! it's quite a quick and fun read. i do have impressions. the prose writing is strong, the theme is interesting but a little weird (i do get what he's trying to do - recreate these religious dynamics but around totally new theological constructs) tho i'm not sure it makes much sense without the correct theological context. and thematically it's more of a pulpy genre work than literary fiction (which is okay!). one thing about that that struck me tho is that when reading shogun (which is also v pulpy in some similar ways and not even as well written on a stylistic prose level) it helps that it was so intensely researched and you're clearly getting some access to something real in a particular time and place. whereas with this despite understanding the milieu he's drawing from i can't help but wish he just carefully researched and wrote about historical spain you know? i'm not sure how much he gained from fictionalizing it so deeply. also not sure how much the religious schema would work without some tricks he pulled like basically giving the various characters the "correct"(ish) names. "rebka bet jacub" or "ahmin ibn mabn" or whatever.

sometimes the prose writing is strong and sometimes tenses switch btwn present + past for no particular reason within a few paragraphs and i get a headache :/

i'm almost finished reading lions. i did enjoy it, it was well-paced, and although i was ultimately disappointed in its ideas it had a few. re the question of presentation of the kindath it's funny but i'm reminded of the comment lamp made above "he does fail in giving the asharites religious figures a ~human face~" and how that applies the kindath as well whose representatives are only these cosmopolitan highly educated kindath (and really only jehane her family and mazur). jehane doesn't even believe in the traditional kindath god (the only real god she worships is the hippocrates analogue whose name is escaping me). in that sense the kindath really are super marginalized in this book - both by a lack of avatars, their one major example being such an exception, and then finally their major role being as victims (repeatedly) without real agency or even a sense of what they're doing beyond just being tragic. are they writing important medieval texts? maimonides, probably the greatest jewish philosopher, rationalist and legal thinker (as well as court physician), was around the time of this era in spain. mazur is sorta analogous in that the rambam was an advisor to kings and jehane as a physician to kings but neither capture his leadership and service to the jewish community. which is a shame bc some of it would fit this world and this story perfectly - like the rambam answering difficult questions from jewish communities about whether it was permissible to convert to islam rather than submit to bloodshed. here mazur and jehane seem totally cut off from their community. there's great stories to be told about jews suspended between the jewish world and the broader world but even here they seem to lack any real connection to their communities. jehane is closer and talks more with the prostitutes of the city than any other jewish characters.

anyway, this didn't turn me off the book and i have other considerations about other depictions of the world and time tho this one i feel like i could probably speak to the best in so much as i actually know some things about this era spain (thanks to my jewish education also thanks to crusader kings II). ultimately it's good and entertaining and extremely clear maybe too clear in its themes, ideas, politics and characters that there's some level of depth i feel it's missing. maybe i'm asking too much war and peace from a fantasy novel. i did appreciate how little actual fantasy was in it.

sometimes the prose writing is strong and sometimes tenses switch btwn present + past for no particular reason within a few paragraphs and i get a headache :/

btw this only happens once or twice and is not such a big deal and i wonder in those occasions if he was trying to use it for literary effect and it just doesn't work bc i can kinda guess at the purpose for that (a sense of immediate + directness in a dramatic moment) but it's used inconsistently and might just be sloppy editing. anyway it's not a big deal i don't want ppl to think it's terribly written.