Tigana

A very good work of fantasy playing with deeper concepts than “magical secret orphan prince” tropes. The long time I spent reading it is unrelated to its quality (but more related to my brain's bandwidth capacity these last 6 months). The characters are compelling, the Aragorn-type is way more human than Tolkien’s Aragorn and the bad guys are well rounded and have interesting motivations. On the other hand I don’t remember if the book passes the Bechdel Test and the women roles could have been bigger.

I discovered this from the Esquire 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. A lot of books I wasn't familiar with in that list, this was one. The books I did know I generally agreed with, and in fact I've now read a couple of others from it as well.

Possible that my 4 star review is slightly unfair, I enjoyed it a lot. I suspect if a book like that came out within the past few years, it would've been broken up into 3 volumes. Call it 4 1/2 stars.

One thing that made me enjoy it, completely unrelated: Love Death & Robots season 3 came out while I was in the middle of it, and somehow Jibaro became my mental palette as I read.

I enjoyed the world building and the writing, but there a few things that bugged me. Almost every female character had to be described as beautiful and sexy when introduced. I hope more modern fiction gets away from that. I felt some ambiguity about the main quest, restoring Tigana to the way it was 20 years before; and the methods used to do this. All the factions we led by men who had their own ambitions and didn't care much for the common folk. The lead character was very much the best of the them, but ... In the afterword the author addresses this and I understood his intentions better. It still bugged me.

I really don’t know. Pretty sure it was good by a few different measures but I’m not sure if I liked it.

This book was amazing. It's rare that you see such a well-developed epic tale in a single volume (ie, not part of a trilogy or larger series). The plot and setting are great, but it's the characters that really make the story shine. They are intricate and feel utterly real.
Kay is an amazing author and has crafted an epic masterpiece in Tigana. Despite being one of the first few books I've read in 2013, I'm confident that it will be among the top 5 books I read all year. I will certainly have to pick up his latest work, River of Stars, some time soon.

For a full review, see my blog: strakul.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-review-tigana-by-guy-gavriel-kay.html

Saccharine sweet and formulaic. Kay tries to give the impression that these dudes have been building this conspiracy for years but it just seems kinda shallow. Meh. I'll not be reading the rest of the series.

I'd say the style and themes would be fine for a YA audience but Kay has a few outlandish sex/love scenes that keep this out of that demographic. Not because they are too steamy; more because they aren't at all believable. They are setup more like crappy porno scenes but don't have the good payoff and descriptions that you would expect of real erotica. It's just kind of an awkward book.