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2013 books: late April, Kay
Apr. 30th, 2013 10:29 pmBy losing sleep mainly, I managed to finish Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars in a relatively short time. It's set in the same world as Under Heaven but a few hundred years (and dynasties) later in what is the Sung/Song dynasty in our world.
The two main characters are Ren Daiyan, second son to a civil government clerk, and Li Shen, daughter to a civil servant. Ren is convinced from a young age that he will take back some provinces lost to the barbarians years ago. Li is a well-educated (too educated to many people) poet who ends up caught up in the court and whose story intersects Ren's later in the book. There are plenty of other characters--the book is over 600 pages. Kitai (China) is threatened again by steppe tribesmen and stands to lose even more territory. The emperor is weak, and competing court factions. Generals are also usually ineffectual because the emperor and court know that in history, a strong or charismatic general often ends up emperor or at least forcing a change in government.
Unlike many of Kay's other thinly-disguised historical novels, there's some obvious fantastic elements: a fox-woman and several ghosts, among others.
Early in the book, Ren abandons his life for the forest. I thought it was going to turn into a retelling of Musashi, but nope.
Kay is very good at mythic moments and much of this book is filled with statements about how the path could have changed is X didn't happen. I thought some of these worked better than others. I was happy that Ren didn't have every woman in sight in love with him (unlike some of this other books). Not my favorite Kay, but up there.
The two main characters are Ren Daiyan, second son to a civil government clerk, and Li Shen, daughter to a civil servant. Ren is convinced from a young age that he will take back some provinces lost to the barbarians years ago. Li is a well-educated (too educated to many people) poet who ends up caught up in the court and whose story intersects Ren's later in the book. There are plenty of other characters--the book is over 600 pages. Kitai (China) is threatened again by steppe tribesmen and stands to lose even more territory. The emperor is weak, and competing court factions. Generals are also usually ineffectual because the emperor and court know that in history, a strong or charismatic general often ends up emperor or at least forcing a change in government.
Unlike many of Kay's other thinly-disguised historical novels, there's some obvious fantastic elements: a fox-woman and several ghosts, among others.
Early in the book, Ren abandons his life for the forest. I thought it was going to turn into a retelling of Musashi, but nope.
Kay is very good at mythic moments and much of this book is filled with statements about how the path could have changed is X didn't happen. I thought some of these worked better than others. I was happy that Ren didn't have every woman in sight in love with him (unlike some of this other books). Not my favorite Kay, but up there.
