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A review by mlore95
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay
4.0
Guy Gavriel Kay is my favorite author, so when I say River of Stars was a bit of a disappointment, it's in the context that it's still one of my favorite reads of the year. However, it's definitely still in the lower tier of his work in my opinion, never reaching the heights of Lions and the Sarantine Mosaic and brushing up against his more recent novels. Still compelling and richly evocative of the tumultuous Southern Song dynasty of China, but without the lasting impact I've come to expect from Kay.
Kay's historical fantasy never moves at a breakneck pace. The plot is woven through the novel at a steady, somewhat plodding pace, featuring all the usual Kay trappings - lots of rhetorical questions asked by characters to themselves, a bit of poetry, the main narrative focusing on a small core of primary characters with the point of view sometimes switching to secondary characters and sometimes, briefly, to other more minor characters (sometimes unnamed) to show how the big events at play affect the small people in the world.
The writing on display is as beautiful as ever, full of imagery and dripping with Kay's distinctive style. My main issue with the novel is with the protagonist, Ren Daiyan. He's just boring. With most of Kay's novels, the protagonists are nuanced, multifaceted characters. Sure, they generally follow a trend: intelligent, melodramatic, militarily skilled. Daiyan is all that too, but it feels unearned. He goes from being a guard as a boy, to an outlaw leader, to a commander of the army, and never truly goes through any character development. He's disappointingly flat compared to the likes of Rodrigo Belmonte or ibn Ammar.
Still a great novel, but if you are new to Kay it's not one I'd recommend to start with.
Kay's historical fantasy never moves at a breakneck pace. The plot is woven through the novel at a steady, somewhat plodding pace, featuring all the usual Kay trappings - lots of rhetorical questions asked by characters to themselves, a bit of poetry, the main narrative focusing on a small core of primary characters with the point of view sometimes switching to secondary characters and sometimes, briefly, to other more minor characters (sometimes unnamed) to show how the big events at play affect the small people in the world.
The writing on display is as beautiful as ever, full of imagery and dripping with Kay's distinctive style. My main issue with the novel is with the protagonist, Ren Daiyan. He's just boring. With most of Kay's novels, the protagonists are nuanced, multifaceted characters. Sure, they generally follow a trend: intelligent, melodramatic, militarily skilled. Daiyan is all that too, but it feels unearned. He goes from being a guard as a boy, to an outlaw leader, to a commander of the army, and never truly goes through any character development. He's disappointingly flat compared to the likes of Rodrigo Belmonte or ibn Ammar.
Still a great novel, but if you are new to Kay it's not one I'd recommend to start with.