Tigana

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

Any time I read a book that has a publication date beginning with a one, I start with a simple question: if this book came out today, what would the reception be?

Really good stories have transcendent staying power.

This is one of those books that rings as true today, in terrifying ways, as it did when it was published. An intense 800 page journey with a band of freedom fighters (...or terrorists?) through a Renaissance Italy analogue, Tigana tackles questions of memory, erasure, and authoritarianism in ways that I unexpected and with a deftness I was blown away by. One thing that really works in this book’s favor is that it is a one off. Where most modern sweeping fantasy is serialized and therefore the impact of each ending is lessened, Tigana has a neatly logical and satisfying ending which lets the characters and themes live on long after you close it.

I loved how the scenes in this book are layered. You dive right into the story and there are very few lulls in it. Action is injected with intrigue throughout. The characters are designed well to create inherent tension. It’s a story that is just so complete top to bottom, and as I’m writing this I keep coming back to that in relation to the first statement I made. It’s so, so rare at any point to come across such a unique, sweeping, and complete story in a single book. For a book that is 35 years old, it feels like it was written for this time.

It’s not perfect–there are some odd love triangle choices, GGK has a bad habit of writing women the same as men, and there are a few ancillary plot hole fillers that are haphazardly tossed in toward the end. It doesn’t detract from the ending landing but I also wonder how necessary they were at all. I read two other books by this Author, Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, this year, and while I had fun with both they ended up 11 and 14 points lower respectively than Tigana. There are times when this author misses, but when he hits for me it's some of the best fantasy ever written.

If I read this book as a kid, I’d have loved it. Reading it as an adult I loved it for a completely different set of reasons. It’s not as good as The Lions of Al-Rassan, one of my favorite books of all time, but it gets close.

Final Grade (all out of ten):

Plot: 9

Characters: 8

Conflict: 7

Theme: 10

Setting: 9

Prose: 8

Tone: 7

Quality: 8

Impact: 9

Enjoyment: 9

Overall: 84/100

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A/N:

And there you have it! Thank you everyone who has been following this series. From here, I plan on publishing a weekly book review. I’m hoping this is a way to keep me reading regularly and academically.

A quick note on my grading philosophy which I formed listening to a few movie critics. I believe that a 7 in any of the categories above constitutes “Good”. Anything above that is something that is above and beyond in any one particular category. I believe this creates a more nuanced evaluation of any Story. Very, very rarely do I give scores above 90 (8 since I started grading books back in 2022). Consider anything a 70 or above the equivalent of 5 stars. You may note that some entries are tied. The tiebreakers are the higher individual score in Enjoyment, then Impact, then Quality, then back up to Plot and descending from there.

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