The Novels of Guy Gavrial Kay

Last updated May 1998

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the best, most talented fantasy writers active today. His most recent novels have been lush "romantic" fantasies that are very good. Unlike the earlier great fantasy writers (Tolkien and Eddison) Kay places human relationships, the loves and the hates, strongly at the center of his stories. This is a good thing in moderation, though I worry about the danger of Kay simply turning into a romance novelist. Kay got his start in the world of fantasy when he helped Christopher Tolkien put together the Silmarilion (J.R.R. Tolkien's last published work was not finished at his death).

Kay's two best novels were writen in the early 90's, after he had finished his homage to Tolkien in the form of his Finovir trilogy.

A Song for Arbonne

Losely based on the history of southern France, this story features some strong characters, some lovely chapters, and real heart. Major characteristics: the very limited use of magic, the important role bards play in the story and society, and the lack of non-human characters (though some of the humans act fairly beastly). Two of the scenes in this book brought tears to my eyes and that doesn't happen that often. One nice thing about the novel is that at least one of the obvious romantic pairings does not occur. All in all, I can't say enough nice things about this book other than this is my favorite novel by Mr. Kay and for me it is the best fantasy book I have read in the 1990's.

Tigana

This book was written a year or two earlier than A Song for Arbonne. It is perhaps not as mature a work as Arbonne, but Tigana has great merit. It has more killing, more violence in general, and (I would say) some excessive sex scenes. In Tigana Mr. Kay created two wonderfull characters (the king-in-exile and the mistress of not-so-evil wizard). Tigana also has a rather unusual plot as our heroes try to win not through sheer force of arms, but through clever strategy. Unlike A Song for Arbonne and The Lions of Al'Rasan, there is magic in Tigana and Mr. Kay handles magic in an interesting way.

Another very nice element to the book is the fact that one of the chief enemies of our hero is actually a fairly decent and honorable person. Painting the opposition to the hero in terms other than pure black is rare in fantasy (though Eddison had this element in The Worm Oroborus). Tigana is worth reading and enjoying.

The Lions of Al'Rasan

This is Kay's most recent book and it confirms what I was worried about. This book is so close to being historical fiction that I don't know why he isn't just writing "the real thing". As Kay says, this story is based on Spain during the fall of the Spanish Caliphate. OK, there are a couple of "magical" elements to the story but aside from some name changes, the story is a retelling of the story of El Cid. It has some great scenes, two very good characters (the Jewish woman doctor and El Cid) and the writing is excellent, but overall, its not good history and its not very good fantasy either (too little of it).

If Mr. Kay had used the real names (Madrid, Valencia, Cordoba, France, Spain, Morocco, Grenada, Christian, Moslem, Jewish, etc.) then his readers would have learned quite a bit about the very interesting history of Spain during the Medeival era and the interesting place that it was once. For several hundred years it was the main the mixing ground for three civilizations: Western European Christian, Moslem, and Jewish. But, because Mr. Kay uses made up names, he lost his chance to educate his readers and gained (I think) little in the way of freedom to write his story. Some people will not think much of this objection. I'm an historian by training and this sort of thing bothers me.

My recommendation to Mr. Kay is: write historical fiction or write fantasy, but don't write both together in the same book.

The Fionavar Tapestry: The Summer Tree -The Wandering Fire - The Darkest Road

These books are the first novels Mr. Kay published (in 1984, 85 and 86). Like most first novels they have their charms and their weaknesses. Overall I rate them as OK, but they are not in the same league as his later novels.

The weaknesses: To many words. Mr. Kay needed to be far more ruthless when editing these novels. It seemed like nearly every time someone said something, Mr. Kay wrote a paragraph on the emotional reaction the statement produced. He needed to give his readers more credit for figuring out people's emotional state on the basis of what they say and do. This is not so much of a problem in his later books, though it is still a weakness of his.

The curse of Arthur: Midway through the series Kay suddenly introduces the Arthurian legends into his story. Suddenly one of his characters is transformed to Guinevere, and both Arthur and Lancelot are raised from the dead and join his already over-crowded cast of characters. I really disliked this development on two counts: 1) It was totally unnecessary, and 2) Kay did a bad job of integrating these mythic characters into his world. Also, Mr. Kay repeatedly calls the story of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot "the saddest story ever". This is stupid. When your five children die because a vicious murderer kills them at their school yard, that is a sad story. The love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot doesn't even rank in the top 10 of sad stories. It irked me every time one of his characters said it, and it got said a lot. The world Mr. Kay created in these books was OK on its own, it didn't need the Arthurian legends, and it was worse off with the addition.

The Tolkien influence. Well, any writer of fantasy since 1960 has to deal with Tolkien in some fashion. Obviously, since Mr. Kay worked directly with the Master's words he was more likely to be influenced than others. However, the Tolkien influence is so strong as to be nearly overpowering. To put it simply we have elves very much like Tolkien's elves, dwarvers much like Tolkien's dwarves, Riders of the Plain very much like the Riders of Rohan, Loren Silvercloak = Gandalf the Grey, a Lord of Evil named Rakoth Maugrim = Sauron (or Morgoth), Orcs = Svart Alfar, Trolls = Urgach, and there is a Dragon too. In a typical Tolkien touch, things were so much better in the previous age of heroes when all the good guys got together and defeated the bad guy. Now the bad guy is free and its up to the much weaker heroes of the current time to deal with the situation. To be honest I can stand a great deal of Tolkien influence, and I thought Mr. Kay put enough differences into his world to get by, barely. However, there is no question that his later works have almost none of these Tolkienesque elements.

Almost nothing of import happens in most of book #2. Although King Arthur is raised from the dead early on in book #2, he does nothing until the very end of book #3. I thought this was inexcusable and it is another reason why the series was worse off with the addition of the Arthurian legends. The fact that so little happened in book #2 is another reason why I think editing could have been better.

Lastly, it was all so pat. Everything works out so neatly: rings activate at the right time, a super power is created to combat the otherwise unstoppable dragon and it gets there just in time. The Gods intervene just when they need to, our main characters do the right thing at just the right time always. Throughout all the books only one really bad thing happens to any one of our characters, and there are a lot of characters. Talk about treating your creations with kid gloves. (And yes I don't count Kevin's sacrifice to end the winter nor do I count the heroic death in combat that happens to one of the good guys at the end, in both cases someone had to do it, they were necessary actions and the characters choose their fate, it was not forced on them.

The charms: OK, enough about the problems, there was much to like about the books. To begin with, the ending, though obvious from early on in book #3, was both impressive and touching. In fact, the last hundred pages of book #3 were great. Really fine writing and story telling.

The plotting of the "random" child Darien was done well. There was real heart in that story, as everything the child knew slipped away. At the end, the child went to face the darkness alone, and it was a very sad situation.

To my mind, at least one of the characters, Dave, came alive. Dave's life among the Riders was well done, and something new (Tolkien talked about the Riders, but never talked about their life outside of war). The other characters were all just archetypes (the warrior king, the devil-may-care rouge with a heart of gold, the wizard, etc.) or were always driven by forces beyond their control (Paul and Kim).

The Dwarves were somewhat new and I liked the small glimpse we were given of Dwarven life. Again, it was something Tolkien never did, showing a bit of the life the Dwarves had in a place like Moria.

As I said at the beginning, not a bad work of fantasy, but not in the major leagues either.

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