Ysabel BY gUY gAVRIEL kAY

©Inchoatus Group

March 13, 2007

A critical review...

Title: Ysabel

Author: Guy Gavriel Kay

Publisher: Viking Canada / Penguin

Length: 432 pages in hardcover

Cover Art: (Larry Rostant) This cover is beautiful... absolutely beautiful. One of the best we've ever seen. It's relevant of the theme, evocative of the ancient myths and human conditions it investigates... it is perfect. 

Rating

This is a troubling book for Kay, whose narrative voice is so strong for fantasies involving poetic, heroic language... bringing that narrative to contemporary fantasy somehow trivializes the content.

Guy Gavriel Kay Fans                                   BUY (4/7)

Teen Romance Adherents                             BUY (5/7)

Speculative Fiction Audience                        PASS (3/7)

General Literature Readership                      PASS (3/7)

Other Novels Exploring this Theme

Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (the Victorian era with magic where a young magician of awesome ability attempts the rescue of his wife abducted by faerie)

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (a young man has a mythical heritage and brought into an ancient feud)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (a gifted nerd is abducted by dark forces and sought by his sister in a continuing battle between good and evil)

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (a 15yr old Ned is revealed to have magical abilities and drawn into a struggle between the Light and the Dark)

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (Kay sets the standard for himself in a romantic world where a young man is drawn into a generational old feud between warring houses)

The author's historical detail, evocative writing and fascinating characters--both ancient and modern--will enthrall mainstream as well as fantasy readers alike.

--Publishers Weekly

His latest fantasy blends time and place in a crossing of worlds and universal truths. Highly recommended.

--Library Journal

Let's open with some pros who apparently really liked this book. We should note that several critical sites specializing in fantasy adored Ysabel as well. Guy Gavriel Kay (rightly) commands a great deal of respect and we feel that his pedigree is somewhat shaping his critical reception. While we like the "historical detail" of the book we simply can't agree with "fascinating characters" and "enthralled mainstream readers" for reasons which we'll explain below. Certainly, we can't "highly recommend" the book. Yet it is enough to give us pause--and should give you pause as well--when the pros disagree with us like this. 

It's nice to see Kay branching out into a different approach to fantasy, as he's taken some criticism over the years for being a guy who just writes fantasy-tinged historical fiction with the serial numbers filed off (Sarantium instead of Byzantium, that kind of thing). But you know, Kay's good at that kind of thing. So while his willingness to come at the genre from a different angle with Ysabel hasn't resulted in a bad novel, he's not fully on form here either.

Tim Wagner, SFreviews.net

Yep... here we agree with Wagner. We're similarly pleased to see the stretch from Kay but we think it didn't work out very well. And we think it hurt Wagner like it hurt us to then criticize his effort--but we would be less than honest critics if we didn't.

The writing is pure Kay, and I'd read it for that alone, but the story is oddly disappointing, stretched too thin, consisting of a number of nicely sketched characters, a fading legend, and the light of Provence. I expected... more. I guess that might be the danger of writing something as transcendent as Tigana -- the bar has been set very high indeed, and while there are plenty of nice things that could be said about Ysabel, it can also be said that it has failed to clear that bar.

--Alma A. Hromic, SFsite.com

Another example of a critic who desperately wants to say good things about the book out of a great respect for the author... but can't. You're about to see more of that from us. 

What We Say                                                        

Kay writes with a special kind of courage; a courage that he shares with Stephen R. Lawhead (Taliesin) and--when she's at her best--Robin Hobb (Assassin's Apprentice). These authors write and are committed to the genre of fantasy--and surely the backs of their ego are scarred and scored with the lash of a thousand venomous insults about the lack of seriousness and relevance from writing "Fairy Tales" fit for youths. Kay and writers like him unabashedly write not just fantasy but fantasy that resounds with the language of the "high mimetic mode" (with a nod to Northrop Frye)--that is, words that are splendid, large, faintly archaic, and unselfconsciously heroic. It is appropriate because these characters are heroes and, by extension, the author/narrator is practicing the tradition of Homer itself. These modern authors are able to say things like "wine-dark sea" and "rosy-fingered dawn" where other writers would not dare. Kay has been marvelous at this through his many publications. He channels the era in which he writes and he infuses it with the heroism it needs to inspire the kind of fantasy that is relevant, is serious, and a "fairy tale" in the same sense that our own mythology invents us. 

Thus it is with some excitement that we approach this new work by Kay: Ysabel. We are promised that Kay has tried his hand at a novel set in the modern era; indeed, a fantasy set in modern times. Other authors of note have tried this. We can recall Raymond E. Feist who, after making his name in The Riftwar Saga (for you people who adore The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, and other fantasy series you should understand that in the 1980s there was a different lot of you all saying the same thing about Feist and The Riftwar Saga two decades ago--believe us when we say, let's see if these things stand the test of time) went ahead and published a kind of horror novel with fantasy elements in Faerie Tale. Who can forget Terry Brooks, after making a fortune on his Sword of Shannara trilogy published his Landover novels beginning with Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold. There are probably many others. Most of them aren't quite able to pull it off (some are terrible, as was Orson Scott Card's Treasure Box). We were excited because--while it's always interesting to watch authors try this--Kay brings a kind of skill and credibility to the table that few others can match. Can he set a high-mimetic novel--that is, high fantasy--in the modern world? How will it look? How will it read? 

Sadly, the result is somewhat lacking. Kay seems effortless writing fantastic novels in a kind of alternative past. He seems somewhat out of place in a contemporary setting. It's rather like inviting a guy with a faint English accent, educated at prep schools, finishing schools, and summer camps in Europe, and then through undergraduate and post-graduate programs at an ivy league institution, being invited to the neighborhood poker game in blue-collar Chicago. He doesn't say anything wrong--exactly--but what he does say is out of place. In fact, the things that fellow would talk about: his interests, ideas, and modes--are all faintly foreign to the blue-collar environment of the guy's basement. This is Kay's book: a language and a mode and a subject matter that seem out of place. 

This is apparent immediately when the opening chapters chronicle Ned, a 15 year-old only son of a famous and somewhat wealthy photographer. He is on a half-work / half-vacation with is father (Edward Marriner) who is on a photo-shoot project in France while his mother is practicing volunteer medicine in a war-torn third-world nation. Kay tries very hard to capture the spirit of modern-youth. He tries to insert slang into the speech of Ned, he often comments about the Internet and the iPod that he carries around but it is just like listening to middle-aged adults try and talk about something teenagers care about today. It doesn't work. Consider: as Ned wanders through the opening scene of an ancient cathedral we're assured he's listening to his iPod--the 15yr old 3rd person limited narrator makes pointed references to Led Zeppelin, U2, Pearl Jam, and Alanis Morissette. We get an equally pointed reference to his wearing Nikes and that he will e-mail his friends back home a joke that's come to him there in the cathedral. Kay's trying to hard and it's too obvious that he's trying too hard. These are not top-of-mind artists for today's contemporary music--certainly not all of them together... this is Gen-X all the way (the only reason we know is that we're Gen-X). Kids don't refer to their shoes as "Nikes" or, if they do, they're more specific when they're sneaker-philes (as Ned may be since he's a competitive long-distance runner). That he runs, however, presents another problem: no serious runner would use an iPod since they're notorious for breaking over the shaking and abuse--they use iPod Shuffles. Finally, e-mail is a bit prosaic for these kids... we're assured Ned has a cell phone and far more likely he'd text it. Ned's interior monologues read like this: Kay trying very hard to be in the mind of a Gen-Y kid and it doesn't fit exactly right. 

Credit for trying--maybe even an A for effort--but Kay is clearly out of his comfort zone here. This issue plagues Ned's interactions with his peer group, the 20-somethings in the employ of his father: Melanie, Greg, and Neil. Again, Kay is not quite able to deliver the voice of that tension between newfound freedom, thirst for childhood, and sense of burgeoning responsibility that permeates this age group. Kay's efforts feel especially hard when Ned meets Kate Wenger at a coffee shop and enters a mild flirtation that strains credulity to the utmost. (Surely a great irony that an author so easily able to write about magic and fantasy should strain credulity when talking about the relations of teenagers in this same decade.) Because he cannot quite speak with the voice of these characters, we find ourselves bored and distracted by earlier chapters. Where authors better at this modern voice might be able to tell us something about ourselves at these junctures or at least give us a sense of nostalgia, we yearn only for the "real story" to start. Great authors writing great books about contemporary times can write only about the thoughts and feelings of the modern mind--see Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) or Something Happened (Joseph Heller) for example. 

So, after a stuttering start, the "real story" finally begins. Ned and Kate enter some ruins--mystical ruins as it turns out. Like a bloodhound leaping in joy to the hunt, the narrative about magic is afoot. We are introduced to a man--a strange man who behaves strangely (tautology!)--in the tomb of some of these ancient peoples. Here Ned has his first brush with his own latent magical abilities. Revealingly, this strange man with strange speech reads the most sincere of any characters who have yet entered the book. This trend will continue as Ned and Kate begin to encounter events of a more and more fantastic until the conflict is set up: the magic of the ancient times begins anew in a series of recurring feuds that have been endlessly repeating through the ages. There will be a fight, and a victor. And a crime--an abduction--is committed upon Ned and the people with him embroiling them in the struggle. We are here introduced to what is surely one of Kay's favorite characters, Ned's long-lost and family-spurned aunt: a family member who herself manifests magical abilities (they run in the family as they always seem to do in these novels) and is aware of this world in which Ned suddenly finds himself. She and her husband Dave soon enter the novel as allies of Ned. The quest is underway. The joy and relief from Kay is palpable.

The quest itself is about Ysabel--a spirit of the past who is the object of romantic affection of the most pure, most obsessive, and most violent means by Phelan and Cadell, the two mythical figures from the past who seek her out. Some surprisingly adult themes emerge here. We see two men who, absent this Ysabel, might have been friends... we see a woman who has started wars in the same way that Helen caused the sack of Troy. We see Ysabel manipulating them and events around here in fickle ways... one could almost say, "bitchy" ways. In the eyes of Phelan and Cadell, she can have or do no wrong. Or more accurately, they can see her faults but refuse to criticize or correct her (or themselves). They are willing participants in this endless struggle over an impossibly romantic ideal--doomed to repeat and endlessly toil as long as the earth stands. Is this not the struggle of human nature itself? The fires of youth (and indeed Phelan and Cadell are perpetually young) causing riot and conflict only to have that tempered with age but repeated by the generations behind it. Love conquers all but Love is also blind and it conquers everything in its path for good or ill. 

The novel precedes--if not quite predictably than at least unsurprisingly--as Ned attempts to navigate the magical conflict and redress the crime. The feud itself is somewhat interesting and characteristic of a theme of great importance to Kay. In Tigana we are given a conflict and war that is inherited from fathers and passed on to children. It is in the larger form of revolution against occupiers but also resolves in the more personal conflict between royal houses. The stains and crimes of the past are pressed forward to the children who also suffer. This theme is explored in different ways in one of Kay's standout novels, The Last Light of the Sun, where major characters take very deliberate decisions in the name of its effect on their children or the future of nations. In Ysabel--who emerges as the central prize of the conflict as kind of metaphor for the endless yearning of man for beauty and greatness--we see this trope manifested much more directly as the progenitors of the conflict, Phelan and Cadell, wreak personal havoc upon the lives of this current time and, presumably, the lives of many, many others stretching back to antiquity. These descendants of those ancient times very literally cannot escape the past for it reaches to them and draws them in even as they struggle to remain neutral. These are powerful ideas and messages and it is in these moments that Kay finds real voice and the novel has real merit. 

But we bothered to mention teen romances above and that's what the other half of the novel turns out to be. Young kid trying to do something heroic. Perhaps Ned's not doing this quest necessarily in the name of love but he is certainly doing it in the name of romance. These moments, and the moments when Ned tries to reconcile his relationship with his father and then the relationship between his father, his mother and aunt (all the while to the appreciative audience of Greg and Neil) is rather distracting and in some cases counterproductive. So we're left with an uneven novel that has moments of fantasy that are good and compelling set adrift within a teen romance that holds only mild interest among a character set whose dialogue an actions seem mildly out of place. 

Place in the Genre                                               

Guy Gavriel Kay has created his own little sub-genre of an alternate history set slightly askance to actual historical events in both name and place and action. His books bring a kind of tantalizing familiarity shot through with moments of wonder and fantasy. Even within his own sub-genre, Ysabel will probably not be regarded as a notable effort. An interesting try but certainly not something with which you'd introduce something to Kay's worthy body of work. As it is, we find it hard to think of any novel that has been particularly successful in this sort of idea: bringing the fantasy close to contemporary times. It's tried in the fantasy setting, it's tried with alternate worlds, it's tried any number of ways. The exception to this might be Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, which itself explores philosophical issues of epistemology and ethics in contemplating this alternate world. In any event, while Kay's exploration of the literal reaching out of the past to the present is interesting as a metaphorical theme, it's hard to imagine it exerting any profound influence on the genre in general or the contemporary-set fantasy in particular. We do not expect it will sell widely outside of Kay's own fan base. We do acknowledge and give credit to the fact that the bulk of Kay's work is actively exerting a rather large influence on the genre. 

Who Should Read                                               

One of the rewards of writing fine novels and reaching an audience is that you have an audience with whom you can try things out... they'll take that journey with you and give you ever benefit of the doubt. Kay has that audience and they will buy and read this book. We expect their reaction to be similar to ours but should we decry Kay for trying? No... nor shall we try and discourage those readers from taking the journey with him. Additionally, this book probably would have a wide appeal to teenagers--particularly on the younger side--who are beginning to dabble in more adult fare. The novel deals with adult issues in a very pure and PG-rated way. With all of the really R-rated stuff out there, it's nice to be able to recommend a book for younger children who will probably find a great deal of merit in the book. Ned behaves very, very ethically; the parents are good, supportive, and role models; the 20-somethings all behave with something approaching (unlikely) sense of responsibility and decorum; and the book has something worthwhile to say about all of this. Merely because we can' recommend it as a genre-altering event doesn't mean it should deserve high marks for this audience. 

Who Should Pass                                              

Outside of that limited audience, it's difficult to recommend this book, which surely must be regarded as average in all other respects. With some ideas to recommend it, we don't believe that the execution and the setting will hold the interest of many general readers. It might They will not be able to properly suspend their disbelief if even we can't. They will obsess over the correct usage of iPods and popular music while trivializing the high-mimetic moments. For the general reader interesting in exploring fantasy elements in this fashion, they should start with other works, probably Susanna Clarke.

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