Kay, Guy Gavriel: Ysabel
Ysabel
Writer: Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Fantasy/Modern
Pages: 416
I hadn't even heard of Guy Gavriel Kay until Odyssey 2005, but thanks to the glowing recommendations of a few of my classmates, I've been looking forward to reading him ever since. Why haven't I until now? Don't ask: my brain works in strange and mysterious ways sometimes, but I can say that by time I'd decided I would read Tigana first, I couldn't find a good copy in the store, and I was too lazy to order it from Amazon.
Ysabel had caught my eye from the start, mostly because it was a modern, contemporary fantasy. I waited for the trade to come out, and I had an additional incentive to read it because this book was another on the SHU fantasy ballot that the fantasy writers didn't pick.
The premise: Ned's spending the spring in Aix-en-Provence (France, for those of you not in the know) with his father, a famous photographer. During a shoot, Ned wanders into a cathedral and meets a cute, geeky girl who'll become his best friend, a scar-faced man who could become his enemy, and discovers a magic he never knew he had. He'll need it too, and he'll need all the help his family and friends can give him as he's drawn into a tale thousands of years old, when the past comes into the present to change and claim lives.
I'm not going to bother with a cut for this one, because frankly, I can't spoil the book even if I wanted to, and there's not a whole lot I can say without rambling like an idiot. I want to ramble like an idiot too. It's something I tend to do when I find books I fall in love with.
Despite the eyebrow-raising start of a prologue, the story that unfolds is simple but beautiful, and what makes it work is the uncanny ability to create real characters with real motivations and interactions with each other. I never once found myself disbelieving a character or his/her actions, that's how realistically drawn these people are. If not for the measured, organic feel of the plot, I might label this as a YA novel, as 95% of it is told through Ned's limited third person POV. Kay has no trouble simple letting things happen as they aught, and he doesn't provide easy answers. Even the most frequented question in the book, Who are you? is never fully answered directly, but there's beauty in that, and you still get the answer, if you're paying attention. Beauty, too, in Kay's refusal to tell the reader EVERYTHING, like what the white boar really is, and what really happened to Kim and Dave all those years ago (I want a prequel, damn it!).
This might frustrate some readers, but Kay handles it with finesse, revealing only what's necessary to the main plot and never purposefully withholding just to be coy. That's a hard thing to do, and I admire him for it. There's a real sense of atmosphere in this book, and I don't know if that's just the mastery of Kay's work or a particular kinship I felt with the setting, especially the Villa Sans Souci (the French spelling of my last name), which makes me want to visit Aix-en-Provence so badly it's not even funny. Whatever it is, I was sucked into this book pretty quickly, and it wove a beautiful tale that was both familiar but different. Comfortable, yet tense. In some ways, I was reminded of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Charles de Lint, and even Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron, but never directly, if that makes a lick of sense.
Ysabel would've made a fine choice for the SHU readers. The slow, deliberate pace might have bored some people, but it would've taught EVERYONE, including fantasy writers, something about the genre, and I think it would've satisfied a good many people outside of the genre as well.
My Rating
Must Have: But it's really, really close to "Keeper Shelf." In time, I might bump it up, but for now, I'm happy with just having a read a very beautifully written book, and I can't wait to read more of Kay's work in the future.
Next up: The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty