• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Guy Gavriel Kay: Ysabel

Curious you didn't post this in the science fiction/fantasy forum, ions. :)

I'm incredibly excited about this book, obviously, but also a little apprehensive as he's going in an incredibly different direction with the book.

Btw, GGK fans should go to brightweavings.com - his official website. Very good.

ds
 
I didn't put it in Sc-fi and fantasy because from what I heard it wasn't being pitched as that. It's being sold by the publisher as fiction/literature. At least here in Canada.

Some cover comparisons:
Canadian/American/UK
abrightweavings.com_artgallery_can_ysabel_final_s.jpg abrightweavings.com_artgallery_americaysabel_s.jpg abrightweavings.com_artgallery_ukysabel_s.jpg

I like the Canadian cover best myself.
 
I just finished Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. Forced to read despite by hellish schedule because the weekend maid forced me out of my office at home with a vacuum cleaner. Ended up getting sucked in (sorry!) the book so hard - frenzied reading in 2 days.

Very different book from GGK this time around - not as deep as a regular historical fantasy that he usually writes, but offers a simple plot and an engaging story. GGK's trademark thoughtful and evocative ending is back after he decided to let it take a vacation in The Last Light of the Sun.

Readers of GGK will be rewarded with something that will make their eyes widen with surprise at some stage in the book (it depends on whether you cheated or how diehard you are).

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit - he took it in a different direction from The Last Light of the Sun, but I definitely prefer the Ysabel direction better then the Last Light direction. Lions still tops! :)
 
Ysabel-Guy Gavriel kay

One thing is, if you like Kay as much is i do/did, stay away from this.
It's a bit like a Dan Brown, with investigation in churches and acheological places in France, or Perez Reverte at best. But not the author of the lions of al Rassan and Tigana, i feel cheated, like coming home and finding my wife in bed with a rugby team. One can't come back from that and be innocent again.
I'm disapointed with you Guy.
The narrator is a teenager and the novel, from start to finish, is pickeled with humorous retort that would make blush the aging Roger Moore with the worst James bond puns.
Pathetic.
Like the Brown and Reverte, one is aware of what will happen in the next pages like watching a movie with a granny with a gift of forsight and who is alway right about the next move. Which might give some pleasure of deduction to some retarded but is mighty enoying when you expecte a bit more from the man.
The worst of it is, i'm affraid i won't be able to read him again without seing this side of him, like the rugby team, it sort of color all the rest. What as been seen or read cannot be unseen or unread, i say.
 
Saliotthomas, I just read this, LOl! I hope you did get over your rugby team image and got on with Under Heaven, because that was quite good. A return to form, I must say.

Anyway, I wanted to share this for those who hadn't seen it yet: afarm1.static.flickr.com_127_415539797_63492605cd_m.jpg
 
Back
Top