Tigana

When times are tough, sometimes you need a comfort reread of fantasy books from 1990. This book still resonates well for me, but it's hard for me to know how much of that is nostalgia having read it so many times. I suspect I am biased for this one and for GGK in general.

Tonally, this book can sometimes feel overwrought and full of told-not-shown sentimentality. That said, it's also a book about grief and memory and tyrants, and I think its style is not out of place for what it's trying to achieve. There's a few lines that jar me as a reader thirty years later, but on the whole I think it stands up better than I would have expected.

I quite enjoy its fantasy politics and scheming, but I also really appreciate the fact that the clash between Alessan and Brandin is specifically about two very similar proud leaders who are too stubborn and unwilling to forgive sins from the past. They each have plenty reason to hate the other and not give up their fight, and it makes them both believable and imperfect characters in their own way. I like that this is not a book about military battles but rather an angry, grief-filled sorcerer who erases memories of the country that killed his son so it can't be spoken of again.

I still never know what to think about Dianora. I do think she makes for a very interesting character in terms of her inner conflict and the way her perspective humanizes one of the potential villains of the tale; on the other hand, she's the only significant woman point of view character, and she has incredibly limited agency. The end result is that her character arc is not particularly satisfying to me and I wish she had a better goal that her actions were aiming towards. I also think Caterina might have been a better point of view character than Devin.

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 read this a scary number of years ago, and have remembered since how much I loved it. Now, rereading it, I remember why. I love G.G. Kay's writing style and the themes he explores in his books. also, randomly, loved the author's note at the end of the version narrated by Simon Vance.