Free The Wandering Fire Rendered By Guy Gavriel Kay Viewable As Text
the second novel of the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, was truly amazing, The blending of Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend was artistry,
Vivid imagery and spectacular storytelling, this is Epic Fantasy at it's very best,
Best image: Diarmuid singing in battle, So very Celtic.
Best fight scene of all time: In Chapter, on the Plains near Adein, It surpasses any and all fight scenes of the myriad books I've read, It'll stay with me for a long time,
Everything about this book is fantastic and Kay is an impressive author, If you love Epic Fantasy, The Fionavar Tapestry is not to be missed,
By
this point in reading the trilogy, you've probably decided whether you can bear with Guy Gavriel Kay's style or not whether you can be invested in his characters or not.
If the answer is yes, then carry on: he won't disappoint you, If not, then I don't think he will get your attention at all,
Less seems to happen in this book until the end: it's a time of waiting, of things coming together, If you're invested in the characters, though, there's plenty to worry about: Kim's dilemmas, whether she has a right to do what she's doing Paul's separation from humanity and Kevin's initial helplessness, and then his journey to the Goddess.
. . And there's Arthur, of course, and the Wild Hunt, and Darien, . .
Yep, and if you were wondering, I really do mean Arthur, King Arthur. I love what Kay does with his story, with the image of his tapestry but I can't say more because I'd plagiarise my essay, again, My academic life needs to stop getting in the way of my fannish meta, ugh, Suffice it to say that Guy Gavriel Kay nods to the Arthurian tradition whilst creating something entirely his own,
Not the strongest of the three books, but still beautiful, This review is from my reread of this series in/,
The middle volume is often a let down in trilogies, I would argue that this one is anything but a let down, In this one the Arthurian myths get weaved into the story, although they had been foreshadowed in the first book, We also get the results of Jennifer's violation and rescue from the first book with the birth of the new andain Darien, Of the five visitors to Fionavar from the first book it's only Kevin and Jennifer's roles that hadn't been set out and both have big roles to play here.
There's much more on the themes of sacrifice and power as well,
In many ways this is my favorite book in the series, partly because of the desperate acts of bravery, Vae's simple declaration that Darien will need a lot of love when she finds out his parentage, Arthur's complete acceptance that he will fall in the coming battle and why that is just, Kevin. Matt Soren at the climactic mage's battle, Even poor Gereint and his lost travels over the sea he has never seen,
We also get to see Gwen Ystrat and much more about Jaelle's priestesses, I'm a little conflicted about the representation of female power here, mainly because it's all tied into blood, mystery, sex and sacrifice, but I think it needs to get a pass in that it is female power, and that's largely lacking in these books.
Still one of my favorite series of all time, Bookopoly. Fantasy
Kumski Book Club,
Puno toga mi u ovoj knjizi nije odgovaralo, Prvo, za što u biti nije kriva knjiga, nego razmak od dvije godine od čitanja prvog dijela ni uz najbolju volju i Kayev sažetak na početku, nisam se mogla sjetiti većine detalja iz prvog nastavka.
Sve mi je bilo zbrčkano, a imena likova i predjela su mi se sva pomiješala, Tome nije pomogla ni mirijada likova koji su se izmjenjivali pa smo s njima u sadašnjostu, a onda s nekim drugim skočimo u blisku prošlost na drugo mjesto.
To se, kako je radnja napredovala, donekle posložilo jer sam povezala tko je tko i prisjetila se nekih događaja iz prvog nastavka,
Ono što mi jako nedostaje je ta nekakva širina knjige i radnje kako to po mom mišljenju u epskoj fantastici treba biti, Tu nedostaje opisa, premalo ima unutarnjih monologa likova, Većinom se brzinski izmjenjuju događaji, Zanimljivo, kod prvog nastavka mi je to baš odgovaralo, ali sada više ne, Previše je likova i nisam se ni s jednim uspjela povezati,
Osim toga, zašto kod svih pisaca mora biti neko iskonsko zlo koje se budi na sjeveru u planinama i donosi sa sobom hladnoću, snijeg i led.
Ok, karikiram malo, ali ono, . . Martin, Williams i sad Kay, . .
A ono što mi se najviše od svega nije svidjelo, bilo je pojavljivanje Arthura, Lancelota i Guenevere, Zašto, o zašto je to bilo potrebno Nije li Kay mogao osmisliti neke nove likove koji bi u priči odigrali njihove uloge Ovo uopće po meni nije bilo potrebno.
Kad sam se prisjetila svega, priča mi je postala odlična, ali ovo me je razočaralo, I zato samo tri zvjezdice, A good sequel, although not as good as the first book in the trilogy, It suffers from a slight case of secondbook syndrome, there is not the same sense of wonder as in The Summer Tree, and I did not enjoy the introduction of the legendary characters at all.
However, it's Guy Gavriel Kay, It's still beautiful and highly enjoyable, It's just not on the level it could be, the second book in the Fionavar Tapestry is not quite as impressive as the first, but hey it's still pretty damn good, two things in particular stick out for me:
Sex, i love how this novel places sexuality at the center of much of its magic, both implicitly and explicitly, it is really refreshing. and not corny! i suppose that is the danger of including sex in fantasy if its not done right, it is a trashy sex scene or, even worse, an eyerolling tantric experience featuring new age nonsense that makes me gag.
sexuality in this novel is mysterious, natural, unnatural, a profound part of some magic, a threatening form in other kinds of magic, and just a regular part of life as well, no big deal.
it is taken seriously but it is also not turned into the whole point either it is an important part of the tapestry, so to speak, it is a refreshingly adult perspective,
Rape. at the end of the last novel, a major character was captured, tormented, and raped repeatedly, it was a horrifying sequence and also exceedingly, surprisingly welldone, i have actually never read its like before in a fantasy novel i was horrified while simultaneously impressed by the language, by the ability of the author to remove all traces of potential, repulsive "sexiness", by the way the author showed how the raped character retained her strength while never shying away from how truly negating the experience was, in every way imaginable.
in the sequel, Jennifer does not just bounce back, it is not an easy journey for her and she doesn't try to make the people around feel better as they try to comfort her, in a way, reading about Jennifer took me to a sad place, as i recalled the couple friends i've known who were assaulted sexually, and the struggles they lived with for so long after, and probably still live with to this day.
Jennifer's character and her struggles seemed so true, in particular her detachment, and when she at last is able to make a faltering step, then another, and another, on the road to recovery, and when she's finally able to even experience sex again, to experience a connection to another person that is both emotional and physical.
. . it was like seeing something slowly coming through in an endless gray sky, some light at last appearing, after waiting for so long, that's a trite image, i know, but that's how it felt to me, i teared up a little bit reading that scene, and i think that's the first time tears have ever sprung to my eyes when reading something so basic as a love scene.
As the evil of Rakoth Maugrim threatens the very existence of Fionavar, the five from our own world must cross over once again to play out their given roles: Kimberly to summon the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom Dave to take his place in battle among the Dalrei of the Plain Paul, Lord of the Summer Tree, once more to weave his own bright thread through the tapestry Jennifer to become the agent of a timeless destiny and Kevin to discover finally the part he is to play in the struggle to save the Weavers worlds from the Unraveller.
Guy Gavriel Kays classic epic fantasy plays out on a truly grand scale, and has already been delighting fans of imaginative fiction for twenty years, I've been falling into and out of this book in almost precisely the same way I had in the first, I love the short lyrical descriptions, I enjoy the mythic references, and I especially love how each character eventually gets woven into each of the underlying story structures.
There is a great deal to love in these books, and I've enjoyed tracing much of the straightline continuation of style from this fantasy novel into the types that have enjoyed much fame and popularity in the eighties and nineties.
But I'm going to be very honest with ya'll, It just wasn't for me,
There's very beautiful language, assuming you love pastoral and glacial story progression, filled with enough ooohs and aaaahs to stun every romantic bone in your body.
This is what it is, after all, A romance. It's turning war into romance, rape into romance, summoning undead into romance, and all it's missing is Spenser's sitelinkThe Fairy Queen, Oh, wait there's even some of that, and sitelinkLe Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table, too,
I'm not saying that sexuality is the key to the tale, although there is plenty of it that makes magic either powerful or weak or unimportant.
I'm saying that this novel is all about the romantic frame of mind,
If you like novels that gloss over the grimdark features of life, speeding through epic battles to focus on the epic heroics, or wallow in the myriad buildups that are there to push the fullyengrossed reader into a paroxysm of legendary legends legending the legendixed legendonier, then you're in good hands.
I just couldn't get into it,
I finished it, and I'll do the next in the trilogy because I'm willful like that, but I just can't get all starryeyed with a build up of prophesied and lost babies, the idea that women are the true strength behind their heroic men, Why can't they be their own heroes, exactly, or the fact that we've got not only a lantern hung on a specific character here , but an entire lighthouse hanging on his neck like an albatross.
What do I mean Even Kay knows he's cribbing the legend so much that he doesn't even bother to submerge the meme into any of his characters.
He just brings him back through a universespanning curse and forces him to replay both his deeds and his lost love story as penance, nearly fourthwallbreaking borrowed pathos, and the Weaver's serendipity.
The fact that Jennifer/Guinevere was fairly interesting doesn't spoil the fact that the rest of the novel was a slogfest for me, I really wanted to like it a lot more than I did, I tried liking it repeatedly as I was reading it, giving excuses to myself, tracing all the mythological elements and revelling in it, even trying to summon a truly heroic effort in my heart to like Paul, our resident mage, as he learned to walk the spaces between life and death, tickle fish, and beat back winter.
I have no complaints about the mythos, It's beautiful how Kay brings in so many cool elements, such as the basic connections between winter and death and summer and life, including the greater and lesser mysteries, and how it all interwove into the defeat of the Wolf.
If the novel had the speed and excitement of modern novels, I'd have been rocking hard to this,
As it was, it felt so oldfashioned and pedestrian and mild and old hat that I wanted to cry and plead that I had just read this novel too late in my life, that I have already read too many great novels that explored all these themes too well, that the characters just weren't strong enough to make up for that fact, or that I am, in the end, sad that I'm just an asshole.
These are just my opinions, of course, I might not really be an asshole, I'll leave that to others to decide,
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