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A review by leann_bolesch
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
I've been struggling to figure out why I really didn't care about this book, and I have a few theories.
First, I don't like the way the author handles emotion. In general, I don't like when an author tries to explicitly spell out to me that something is weighty, rather than let the mood of the scene convey that on its own. Also, I just fundamentally disagreed sometimes when the author told me to my face that something serious or significant happened. More than once, I was told something serious or weighty passed between people or was felt in a moment (often rather than being shown it) and subsequent scenes made me think: "Ah. Nothing has actually changed as a result of that last scene."
This issue, I feel I should mention, covers a lot of the character development as well. The book likes to say "Something had changed in so and so since whatever happened" without any major changes to their behavior that I could notice. A lot of these developments also felt conveniently fast and off-page, which might be a consequence of the author trying to give so many characters development arcs and set up three different romances in a single stand-alone book. The romances, it's worth noting, get the same lack of development. I didn't even realize one was supposed to have been set up until the couple got together.
Second, while I normally love books with multiple POVs showing things afoot in various different factions of some larger conflict, this book didn't switch POVs enough. Especially not early on. Enough time is spent with one POV to be deeply focused on their story, only to shift gears to a radically different situation and stay there so long that the original POV is almost totally forgotten. At which point we shift back. The passing of time within the book to accommodate the POVs was also surreal. Nothing noteworthy apparently happens to Dianora until half a year or so after Devin gets involved in the plot, so we time skip several months forward for her lengthy POV section, then jump back months upon returning to Devin and spend most of his next POV section trying to catch back up to the time period we meet Dianora in.
Third, there were just too many characters that I never figured out the purpose of, aside from to make it feel like there were more people involved in the whole affair. I suppose that's all good and fine, except that some of those characters were common POV focal points.
Between certain characters feeling pointless, going too long without seeing characters who nonetheless took up large chunks of the book, and just not being sold on the emotions, I was unable to connect with or care about the characters, which is too bad. The plot, while a little slower than I'd usually like, was the sort of thing I'd normally love to read about.
(Also sometimes the book just switches between past and present tense and maybe I'm just dense, but I never figured out how it decided when to use which one, and it drove me nuts.)
First, I don't like the way the author handles emotion. In general, I don't like when an author tries to explicitly spell out to me that something is weighty, rather than let the mood of the scene convey that on its own. Also, I just fundamentally disagreed sometimes when the author told me to my face that something serious or significant happened. More than once, I was told something serious or weighty passed between people or was felt in a moment (often rather than being shown it) and subsequent scenes made me think: "Ah. Nothing has actually changed as a result of that last scene."
This issue, I feel I should mention, covers a lot of the character development as well. The book likes to say "Something had changed in so and so since whatever happened" without any major changes to their behavior that I could notice. A lot of these developments also felt conveniently fast and off-page, which might be a consequence of the author trying to give so many characters development arcs and set up three different romances in a single stand-alone book. The romances, it's worth noting, get the same lack of development. I didn't even realize one was supposed to have been set up until the couple got together.
Second, while I normally love books with multiple POVs showing things afoot in various different factions of some larger conflict, this book didn't switch POVs enough. Especially not early on. Enough time is spent with one POV to be deeply focused on their story, only to shift gears to a radically different situation and stay there so long that the original POV is almost totally forgotten. At which point we shift back. The passing of time within the book to accommodate the POVs was also surreal. Nothing noteworthy apparently happens to Dianora until half a year or so after Devin gets involved in the plot, so we time skip several months forward for her lengthy POV section, then jump back months upon returning to Devin and spend most of his next POV section trying to catch back up to the time period we meet Dianora in.
Third, there were just too many characters that I never figured out the purpose of, aside from to make it feel like there were more people involved in the whole affair. I suppose that's all good and fine, except that some of those characters were common POV focal points.
Between certain characters feeling pointless, going too long without seeing characters who nonetheless took up large chunks of the book, and just not being sold on the emotions, I was unable to connect with or care about the characters, which is too bad. The plot, while a little slower than I'd usually like, was the sort of thing I'd normally love to read about.
(Also sometimes the book just switches between past and present tense and maybe I'm just dense, but I never figured out how it decided when to use which one, and it drove me nuts.)