Guy Gavriel Kay: Ysabel
Ysabel
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Urban? Fantasy
Pages: 432
Final Thoughts: Thought-provoking, beautifully written.
This was one of the books I read for calico_reaction's fantasy book challenge, to read all the books presented as options for required reading at Seton Hill this past June. I have no idea if that sentence made sense. At any rate, she issued the challenge in part to see whether one of the books on the list would have been more appropriate as an example of fantasy than the one that was actually chosen, Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora.
The fact that Kay tells the story without revealing everything, without answering all the questions, is satisfying in some ways and not in others - just like in life, when you want to know how this "works".
The premise, that these three people are connected and return to one another throughout time to re-enact their love triangle/feud, was an interesting one. The implication that the bloody history of France's region of Provence was essentially the result of this centuries-long connection was great, and the incorporation of various pieces of history and folklore from the area was superbly done. Kay's prose is beautiful, as well.
At this point, it's been nearly two months since I read this, so I forget most of my specific praises and complaints, but in reference to the fantasy challenge and whether this would have been a good representative for the fantasy genre as a whole, I don't think it would have been the best choice. There's too much here that doesn't exemplify the "standards" of fantasy as a whole for it to be entirely effective. The real trouble, of course, is that fantasy is such a diverse genre that it's impossible to hold up any one book as a true representative of "what the genre does" and "what all its readers expect".
As I mentioned, this is a beautifully written book, and one that got my mind's wheels turning in a number of "what if" directions, but I probably won't pick it up again. Maybe it was a little bit too beautiful?
I might not be coherent today.
Book #75