Gorgeous Words: Guy Gavriel Kay & “Tigana”
Last week, my Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World series on SF Signal featured Dianora from Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana.
Slightly over a year ago now, I let you all in on a secret: I Simply Adore Reading! Not only because “I love stories and storytelling”, but also because I love “revelling in the gorgeousness of some writers’ way with words.”
In order to prepare the Dianora post, I reread Tigana for the first time in some years — and revelled all over again in the gorgeousness of Guy Gavriel Kay’s words:
“The two men were both gazing into the flames while all around them there was already a purposeful stir and bustle in the kitchen…In their silent gravity they seemed to him to be a part of a frieze, a tableau, emblematic in some complex way of all such predawn hours for those on the long road. Neither man was a stranger to this hour, Devin knew, to sitting before a castle’s kitchen fire among the servants in the last dark hour before dawn, easing into wakefulness and a fugitive warmth, preparing for the road again and whatever turnings it might offer in the day that had not yet begun.”
I love the way he builds a picture that gives a sense of both world and characters, of events turning on a moment or an hour, and the emotional ebb and flow beneath them.
This is one of my “perfect books,” by which I mean everything about it just works. Of all GGK’s excellent books, Tigana is my favorite. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett is another one.
I agree with that in terms of everything working. In fact, I may have to have a specific post just on the perfection that is the ending. Although I personally feel “A Song For Arbonne” is just as strong a book. Patricia McKillip’s “Riddlemaster” trilogy is also an “everything just works” series for me.
Wow! I haven’t read or even thought about the Riddlemaster of Hed in years. I’m off to check the library’s catalogue.
I don’t think you will be disappointed by a re-read. I also did a “Gorgeous Words’ for Riddlemaster last year: http://helenlowe.info/blog/2014/03/10/gorgeous-words-patricia-mckillip-the-riddle-master-of-hed/