Tigana

Rating:
Summary: Tigana...One book that's hard to forget
Review: GGK is a true master and a complete joy to share in the worlds he creates. In this haunting and touching novel, we are taken for an excellent ride that not only titillates our intelligence, but also strokes our most primal feelings of honor and belonging. This is a book that promotes the human spirit...Kudos to Kay! I've re-read this book enough to have to buy another one. A true masterpiece...

Rating:
Summary: Complex, haunting, powerful. . .unforgettable
Review: My husband is a huge sci-fi and fantasy reader; I've never really cared for the genre. I let him talk me into reading this book while I was recuperating from surgery, and I am eternally grateful to him. It is one of the best novels I have ever read. To call Tigana a "fantasy novel" simply doesn't do it justice; it is so, so much more. It is a love story, a political thriller, a swashbuckling adventure, a grand fairy tale, and a character study. The characters of Tigana are not one-dimensional figures of pure good or pure evil; they are complex mixtures of both. The elements of magic and mythical creatures are secondary to the story, rather than central to it. Kay has done a marvelous job of flushing out his characters and the land they inhabit, giving it a complex history and mythology all its own. The overlapping stories and sometimes wordy prose can bog you down, but it's worth working through. The people of Tigana could be the people of Israel, Russia, Czec! hoslovakia, Germany when the wall fell. . .anyone who has ever sacrificed everything he had for the good of the world. This book and its people will stay with you long after you are done reading. A permanent edition to my collection!! Maybe there is something to this fantasy stuff after all. . .

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Summary: Great story but maybe a bit overdramatic at times?
Review: Kay's book was wonderful. I had been searching for a one novel fantasy and having a hard time at finding one when I ran across his. If you want a great story without purchasing four and five books just to find out what happened-Kay's book is great. It's also marvelous because it has the depth and feel of a trilogy or a series but is still a single novel. The descriptions and intrigue are wonderful. Perhaps, due to a sense of today's loss of deep values, I don't understand some of the drama in the book. At times, things seem too dramatic to the point of silly...or maybe it's just that I don't understand such emotion. Either way, it's a great book, worth the read, perhaps not second to Tolkein but up there in the ranks of great fantasy.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastical, Magical, Awesome
Review: Another Great author, Guy Gavriel Kay gives this book a magical quality that won't let readers put it down. A novel filled with magic, betrayal, war, love, and fantasy! Certainly one of the best books of all time!

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Summary: One of the 10 best fantasy books I've ever read.
Review: I admit that I hadn't been able to finish a fantasy book for years when there was a time that's almost all I read. All the plots recently seemed simplistic and rehashed. However Tigana restored my faith in the genre. A fantasy book that makes one almost cry for the the "evil sorcerer" is amazing. I'm still thinking about the book's images over a week later. No, its not a perfect book (and it could have been with one more rewrite) and it is overly gruesome at times (the death-wheeling image more than made its point the first time) but not since Ursula LeGuin have I been so entranced by the image of a world and by the choices made and consequences borne of the inhabitants. Read this book if you love fantasy.

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Summary: A trivial matter of astronomy
Review: Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I love this book, I have read it several times and will probably read it again. More's the pity that Mr. Kay seems to have an insufficient grasp of basic astronomy, the nature of moons in particular. The only reason I raise such a trivial matter is that the moon (or moons), without being a crucial story element, seem to have special properties in all his books. I don't mind the moon of Fionavar turning red and being moved around - in that world there is high, wild magic on the loose, and it's at least theoretically possible. But in Tigana (as in The Lions of Al-Rassan, if I remember correctly) there are two moons, one blue and one white. Still OK, but when they rise together, one waxing and the other waning, my sense of logic is seriously disturbed. For this phenomenon to occur, each moon would have to be lit by it's own sun, or by one very small sun placed between them. Since the sun of Tigana seems to be just like ours, I have to conclude that Mr. Kay's poetic imagination has got the better of him in these instances. All science-fiction writers on the lecture cirquit know and fear physics majors who gloat over marginal errors in planetary movements or quantum mechanics. I hope I don't sound too much like one of those, but when an oversight like this gets to be a habit on the part of the writer, I feel it's reasonable to point it out. And, moons or no moons, I'm eagerly awaiting the next heavenly body of work from Mr. Kay's word processor.

Rating:
Summary: Not sure why people love GGK so much.
Review: This book is a 10 maybe on a scale of 1-15! It is an OK read, but I won't read it again. I don't find his world building, or his characters very believeable. Maybe I just don't like books where people's heads explode!

Rating:
Summary: Best single-volume fantasy I have read
Review: Tigana is a magical, moving novel. Based very loosely on the fractious history of Italy, Tigana is one of the few fantasy novels where the embodiments of good and evil are varying shades of grey instead of the typical black-and-white portrayal. The premise is entirely original and Kay's style is engaging and moving. Only certain immoral acts by two of the protagonists keep this book from a higher rating.

Rating:
Summary: very predictable
Review: Why are people so enthusiastic about this book? It is average at best, with a very predictable plot and setting. The worst aspect of the book is that the main characters are poorly drawn, presented as simplistic, unidimensional, and often highly unpleasant people. The only reason I bothered to finish reading it was because it was pouring rain outside.

Rating:
Summary: Be it Tigana or Arbonne, Kay truly shines!
Review: When I entered the world of Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry) I could not envision enjoying another authors work in this specific genre. Tigana was an epic tale consumed with emotion and although I felt there were too many background characters who enter the story yet impact upon it in no particular way, 'twas still a brilliant novel. Then again, everything Kay has written has been fascinating.