brenticus reviewed The Táin by Thomas Kinsella
None
3 stars
So a Queen gets into a pissing match with the King about who's richer and that spawns a massive military campaign, resulting in thousands of deaths, in order to get an impressive bull from Ulster.
On the other side, the men of Ulster are waylaid by a curse, so the only person to hold off this army of tens of thousands of soldiers is Cú Chulainn.
So he does.
There's a lot to like here, and a lot to put you to sleep. The Táin beats the Icelandic sagas in geographic minutiae, where it tips over from being neat to intrusive. Likewise, my least favourite part of the Iliad was when they listed off the combatants of both armies, and the Táin spends many pages some time doing that as well.
But there's some really great stuff, too. The feats of Cú Chulainn in his youth are astonishing to read; …
On the other side, the men of Ulster are waylaid by a curse, so the only person to hold off this army of tens of thousands of soldiers is Cú Chulainn.
So he does.
There's a lot to like here, and a lot to put you to sleep. The Táin beats the Icelandic sagas in geographic minutiae, where it tips over from being neat to intrusive. Likewise, my least favourite part of the Iliad was when they listed off the combatants of both armies, and the Táin spends many pages some time doing that as well.
But there's some really great stuff, too. The feats of Cú Chulainn in his youth are astonishing to read; his battle with Fer Diad was exciting and emotional; and the final battle where we finally see Fergus and Medb in action was pretty cool. Lots of really fun stuff in here.
But altogether, while there were a lot of impressive stories along the way, the Táin as a whole disappointed me a bit. It interrupts itself for random junk often, the pacing is nonsensical by most standards, and the ending is just kind of awkwardly there. I was expecting a great story, but I got something moderately entertaining instead. Which is fine, just not my hopes and dreams.
