Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of Summer (Big Book of Summer)

"I have a tale for you:"

The opening words of Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun, and so he does. That's a quote from the Liber Hymnorum, a collection of hymns from the Middle Ages.

It's a fantasy novel, but in the common way of Kay's works, it's set in a clear historical period: this is set in Scandinavia and the British Isles; the time period is that of Alfred the Great (the later 800s AD). Danish Vikings are raiding England, and Anglo-Saxon kings are barely holding on. Celtic Wales is still a separate kingdom; they don't necessarily get along with the Anglo-Saxons, but maybe they need to in order to stop the Vikings.

In the novel, the Welsh are renamed the Cyngael; the Anglo-Saxons, the Anglcyn; and the Vikings are the Erlings. There are major characters from each group. Red Thorkell the Erling has been exiled from Erling lands after he committed a second murder in a drunken frenzy; the story starts with his son, who has been sentenced to five years of slavery for his father's crime in addition to the confiscation of the family lands. 

The exiled father has returned to raiding, but his raid into the Cyngael lands fails, and in exchange for mercy, he pledges loyalty to a Cyngael lord Brynn and his wife. (Who just happen to have a beautiful and spirited daughter.) But in the course of the raid, Alun, a Cyngael prince, sees his older brother killed (and that brother's soul stolen by faeries for the Wild Hunt); he's now an avowed enemy of Erlings in any shape.

Meanwhile in the Anglcyn lands, another raid, involving Red Thorkell's son, who has escaped from slavery, is being stopped by Aeldred, the king of the Anglcyn (and our Alfred the Great character). Aeldred, too, has a couple of daughters, the younger of whom can also see the (generally invisible) faeries, just as Alun can.

Anyway, a very fun story. The relations between brothers, between fathers and sons, are important. Various romances are in the offing. I've read maybe half of Kay's books, and this did not become my favorite, which I think remains A Song for Arbonne, but it's a very good entry.

At 545 pages, it's a Big Book of Summer:

And it's actually one of the books I put on my 20 Books of Summer pile!

Poem of the Cid

In my current quest to both read up about Spain and clear off my TBR pile, this volume did double duty. And if the question arises what book did I read this year that was longest on my TBR pile, this one will definitely be a strong candidate.

The Poem of the Cid (according to the back cover) was "written by an unknown Castilian around 1140, nearly a century after the birth of its hero." As the introduction points out, there could very well have been people alive who had known the Cid; still it feels like the world of legends.

Rodrigo Ruy Diaz de Bivar is the Cid, the successful military leader of a band of knights that fight the Islamic states at that time in the south of Spain; also he has to deal with enemies at court that poison his relationship with King Alfonso, and the beginning of the story finds him exiled.

I'm no expert and I'm a little reluctant to say much. I thought it was a good read as translated by the American poet W. S. Merwin. Only three points:

One, I was a bit surprised by the class elements in this. Rodrigo the Cid is aristocracy, but is looked down upon by the more high-born; when the king pushes his high-born enemies to marry the Cid's daughters, they're resentful and deliberately insult the Cid's daughters. I suppose it's a bit like Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well but his aristocratic enemies are much worse than Bertram is.

Two, it ends well for the Cid. Somehow that strikes me as unusual for a medieval epic. The Song of Roland, the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf all have a melancholic ending. The Cid is triumphant over his enemies. Be honorable, stick with your king, and things turn out well. That's the message.

And three, I read Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of al-Rassan about a year ago and quite liked it. I suppose it's not a surprise, but he really had the Poem of the Cid on his mind.  His Rodrigo Belmonte owes quite a lot to Rodrigo Ruy Diaz.

A well (?) - read book

Alas, what was it about books printed in the seventies? They finally get the acid out of the paper so the pages don't yellow, but they were still being cheap about bindings. I've had this for years (though not since its publication date of 1975) but it did not survive even one reading. Pity, because I liked it and I would otherwise keep it.

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of al-Rassan

Kay's The Lions of al-Rassan is a high fantasy novel set in a place something like Spain around the the period of the First Crusade. The peninsula (al-Rassan) is ruled by a number of warring kingdoms, half of which arise from the desert and worship the stars; these are in the south and have the cultural markers of the Islamic kingdoms of Spain of the time. For example, they were loose white clothing and have a religious prohibition against alcohol, not always honored. The kingdoms of the north of the peninsula worship the sun, favor armored horsemen, and make a sign with the hands as a religious gesture.

But the wars are not just wars of religion, or at least not initially; the three northern kingdoms fight among themselves, and the southern kingdoms are descendants of a unified kingdom after assassinations and civil wars tore it apart.

Our three main figures are: Ammar ibn Khairan, poet, soldier, and assassin of the last khalif of the unified southern kingdom; Rodrigo Belmonte, leader of the best band of horseman, and formerly constable of one of the northern kingdoms until he was ousted in a power play, and Jehane, the daughter of the most famous doctor of the peninsula, and an important doctor in her own right. Kay despises zealotry and religious intolerance, and all three of these figures long for a peninsula where the more tolerant elements rule.

But the First Crusade means that zealotry and religious tolerance is on the rise. Kay's previous novel A Song For Arbonne has a similar conflict; it takes place in a France analogue at the time of the Albigensian crusade. That novel has all the zealots on one side, and the side of intolerance, unlike in the actual historical event of its model, loses. Here the zealots are on both sides, and our heroes and their allies feel the squeeze, especially since none of the three should get along. There is war all across the peninsula.

There is also romance. I thought Kay in the previous novel was very good at integrating the personal and the political, and I think he's very successful here as well. With so many more threads the exposition felt a little more cumbersome, and there were times it felt a bit static: one set piece after another.  So I thought it was not quite as good as A Song For Arbonne, but I still thought it was very good.

This entered the house late last summer; I've read it (other than for its own very good sake) for the My Reader's Block Mount TBR Challenge. But by my standards eight months is hardly time to collect dust. I think my next book will have to come from somewhat deeper in the TBR pile...

Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song For Arbonne

A few years ago the cable guy was here, saw I had a lot of books, and said I must like to read. He recommended, very highly, Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. He had said he'd identified with the one of young people in it, I don't remember which one, and it was a special book for him. I take my book recommendations from nearly anywhere and his was very enthusiastic, and I know that sensation he describes. I got a copy and read it.

None of the characters was me. I enjoyed it, kept in the back of my mind that Kay was somebody I might read more of, but didn't do anything about it. Then six months ago, Kay's agent's firm was moving office--I live near there--and they had a bunch of books for free on a table out front. Though I should be one to pass up free books, I'm not, and I came back, among other things, with two of Kay's novels. One of them was A Song For Arbonne.

It's a high fantasy novel set in a medieval, but pagan, Provence. The kingdom of Arbonne is devoted to both a goddess Rian and a god Corannos, but their geopolitical rival to the north, Gorhaut, sees only Corannos in their pantheon, and their current leaders celebrate a particularly savage and intolerant vision of the god. Arbonne's southern ways and their tradition of love and song, their troubadours, are an abomination to Gorhaut.

There are a number of well-delineated characters; there's a subtle intertwining of the personal and the political in the story of these two (and other) nations; its pacing is superb. I was a little unhappy with the psychology of the most important family of the north, two brothers and their father. It seemed heavy-handed. And at the end, though as a reader I generally like this, the effort to bring all the characters back on stage for a last bow was a little too obvious. But on the whole, I charged right through this, in the best way.

Very enjoyable. The other Kay I picked up for free has moved much higher in my TBR list...

Read for the My Reader's Block Mount TBR Challenge.