Under Heaven (Under Heaven, #1) in The Alternative Worlds

Jul 05, 2012 Brad rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, canadian-lit, in-the-shower, doing-the-dishes, intrigue

After The Last Light of the Sun (a novel I didn't like), I took a long, much needed break from the writing of Guy Gavriel Kay.

I bought Ysabel, but it languishes on my bookshelf even now. I avoided Under Heaven until it became our fantasy book in the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book club. Once it won the vote, I thought it might be time to return to Kay.

I was a third into the book when my daughter, Scoutie, booknapped it and hid it under the love seat in the Sun Room. It resurfaced while we were vaccuuming After The Last Light of the Sun (a novel I didn't like), I took a long, much needed break from the writing of Guy Gavriel Kay.

I bought Ysabel, but it languishes on my bookshelf even now. I avoided Under Heaven until it became our fantasy book in the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book club. Once it won the vote, I thought it might be time to return to Kay.

I was a third into the book when my daughter, Scoutie, booknapped it and hid it under the love seat in the Sun Room. It resurfaced while we were vaccuuming, but by then my book club had outstripped me, and their comments suggested that the rest of the book was a let down. I let it sit for a few more days for fear I would be let down too, and I may have been if not for the pause.

Reading the comments in the book discussions and flirting with a couple of my friends' reviews (I've not read any in detail yet) prepared me for disappointment, and because of that preparation the disappointment never came.

I expected to be disappointed when it was revealed who sent assassins to kill Shen Tai and why, but I wasn't disappointed. I expected to be disappointed by the way each thread in the story touched others in the story, the way everything wove tightly together, but I wasn't. I expected to be disappointed by the resolutions of machinations and intrigues, but I wasn't. I found that by expecting to be disappointed I was released from disappointment, and I feel like that release gave me a way into the book that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

I would have expected the more traditional Kay narrative of big armies and big wars and heroic battles playing out in our faces or the little battles playing out on the periphery, but I was freed of that expectation and was able to luxuriate in the simplicity of this tale. I think that's what Kay was trying to achieve with Under Heaven -- simplicity. It was in his prose. His prose was as adjective free as it has ever been, moreso, and there was an immediacy born of that simplicity that worked for me. And the poetry of Kitai was just as simple. Another reflection of Kay's purpose, I imagine.

Moreover, that simplicity went further than just the words Kay chose. This simplicity defined the plot and action. We've come to expect complicated motivations from Kay, but here the motivations were the most mundane (disappointingly so for many); we've come to expect complicated emotions, emotional cross-purposes, but the emotions of Shen Tai and Wei Song and Le-Mei and Spring Rain and Sima Zian were only complex because of their simplicity. Many strands of this story appeared and hinted at great complexity then turned out to be tiny threads poking out of the tapestry merely needing to be trimmed. Simple in their messiness. But true.

I came to love this book by the end for its simplicity. I think it was what Kay was going for, but I can understand the disappointment of others. As I said, I think I'd have suffered from the disappointment too if circumstances had been different. But they weren't different. My circumstances were what they were, and they led me to love this book. I am glad for that, and sad for those who only met disappointment.

Finally, I thought the resolution, the ending at Kuala Nor was beautiful. Full circle. Honourable. And a sentiment I share with the men who put those ghosts to rest.

Years later ... I finished it a second time, and I felt the disappointment more distinctly but still ended up appreciating many of the simple things I did before. It's not my favourite Kay, but it is still worth a read. ...more

24 likes · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2010 Brooke rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, 2010

First a moment of sadness - even after making this one stretch out for a week, I'm yet again facing another likely 3 years until my #1 favorite author releases a new book. I do hate that.

To be truthful, after the wait for Under Heaven, the result was a little anti-climatic. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that it was The Sarantine Mosaic Lite. In both books, a commoner gets embroiled in the politics of an emperor's court during a tumultuous time in the empire's history. In both books, the m First a moment of sadness - even after making this one stretch out for a week, I'm yet again facing another likely 3 years until my #1 favorite author releases a new book. I do hate that.

To be truthful, after the wait for Under Heaven, the result was a little anti-climatic. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that it was The Sarantine Mosaic Lite. In both books, a commoner gets embroiled in the politics of an emperor's court during a tumultuous time in the empire's history. In both books, the main character exists almost only for the purpose of letting the reader view through his eyes all of the women who are influencing events in a male-dominated society. The Sarantine Mosaic just does it with a little more sharpness, and with richer characters. Under Heaven excelled when it came to weaving Kay's themes through the story, but the themes sort of overwhelmed the characters and pushed them to the background.

I think this was the first Kay book where I didn't feel a fierce connection to multiple characters. They just lacked a richness and seemed more like 2D figures that existed to move the story forward. Had I never read a Kay book before, I probably wouldn't have even noticed, but creating fully realized characters is something he normally excels at above and beyond what most other authors are capable of. There were quite a few people that I wanted to know more about, but Kay just didn't dig quite deep enough for that.

The themes, however, really came alive. Kay's obviously still looking at many of the same ones from Ysabel relating to history and our places in it. There were many passages noting the differences between the history recorded by poets and the history recorded by scholars, and how their different focuses and distance from the events can affect what we know about what transpired in the past.

One theme that rolled over from Ysabel was the idea that every story has many many threads running through it, and each person that touches one story will have a full story of their own. Kay notes towards the end of Under Heaven, "Tales have many strands, smaller, larger. An incidental figure in one story is living through the drama and passion of his or her own life and death." He illustrated this throughout Under Heaven by switching to the POV of various minor characters for a few pages, only to never speak through them again. It hammered home the idea that there are all these lives going on outside the main story.

Like Ysabel, Under Heaven says a lot of smart things about history, things that I'm not quite smart enough to articulate. My only complaint was that the epilogue sort of made these themes a little TOO explicit. I'm at least smart enough to pick up on all of this as I was reading, and I didn't need the equivalent of the ending of Pan's Labyrinth, which laid out the moral of the story that had been communicated quite well in a subtle fashion up until that point.

Kay's writing, as usual, was just wonderful. Kay's writing has become so familiar to me by now that when I came across the line, "He didn't dismiss her. He remembered, instead, how she'd fought at sunrise, in a garden in Chenyao," I thought to myself, "That is SO Kay!"

At the moment, I'm thinking I'm more likely to re-read The Last Light of the Sun, my least favorite Kay book, before this one, but we'll see how this one sit in my head after time has gone by. ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2010 Lori rated it liked it

I finished this almost 2 weeks ago, been remiss in my review of it, probably because I was undecided about how many stars to give it, 3 or 4. Kay is one of my favorite writers which is one reason I've been wishy washy about giving it 3 stars, altho that is still a good rating for me. However, I feel I can not rightly give it the super 4 stars, it didn't linger with me.
I went thru stages with it. I started it and read solid for a little, then I went and got all productive with stuff (!) and didn' ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Aug 31, 2011 Wealhtheow rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, fantasy, pocmaincharacters

Historical fiction heavily influenced by the Chinese Tang Dynasty, with a faint brush of the fantastical.

Shen Tai has spent the last two years mourning his father and burying the the dead of a decades-old battle ground. It's a quiet, mostly solitary life, punctuated by monthly supply runs from both countries that fought the war (who seek both to honor his work and to outdo each other in courtesy) and by the wails of the dead. But at last, an old friend visits, bringing news from the capital.

Tai Historical fiction heavily influenced by the Chinese Tang Dynasty, with a faint brush of the fantastical.

Shen Tai has spent the last two years mourning his father and burying the the dead of a decades-old battle ground. It's a quiet, mostly solitary life, punctuated by monthly supply runs from both countries that fought the war (who seek both to honor his work and to outdo each other in courtesy) and by the wails of the dead. But at last, an old friend visits, bringing news from the capital.

Tai is swept up into the plots and schemes of his empire, while yearning desperately for a way to reclaim his lost love and rescue his sister from a political marriage to barbarians.

This book should have been a lot better than it actually was. The poetry is not particularly good, which is a huge problem when so much of the book is poems. When characters catch their breath at the transcendent beauty of a poem, those poems better be more eloquent than any teenager's fumbling attempts to copy a haiku. The characters themselves are interesting, but Kay doesn't seem all that excited by or emotionally attached to them, and neither was I. The pacing of the plot was rather haphazard--nothing much happens for 400+ pages, and then suddenly WAR and DEVASTATION and FAMINE. (It's so grim and realistic, guys. Ooh, how bout another half-assed poem to capture the ~sorrow~ of it all?) A mob of armed men demands someone's death, and Tai and another character have a THREE PAGE conversation while everyone else stands there watching them. I get that it's a formal, stylized sort of culture, but geez, no mob is going to calmly wait while you have a three page heart-to-heart. The Kanlin (ninja mercenaries with a precise understanding of honor and loyalty) are nearly a deus ex machina at times. And the writing is so damn stilted that I nearly gave up on this book. He loves fragments. He loves comma splices. He loves to have characters exchange words the reader doesn't hear, and then refer to this conversation in self-important tones for chapters until all the juice of the ~enigma~ has been milked out. Blargh!

All that said. This is still Guy Gavriel Kay. Even when his characters are pale retreads of other characters, his poems clunky, his plot less clever than he thinks it is, it's still a damn sight better than the vast majority of fantasy out there. I don't know how closely he followed the Tang dynasty, but he describes a culture in vivid and alluring detail. And there are scenes (as when Tai thinks about his complicated relationship with his brother) that feel true and are eloquent indeed. It's not a book I'd recommend to everyone, but it's worth it for those looking for an ambitious piece of historical fiction. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Aug 04, 2010 Sandi rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, audiobooks, 2010

I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Guy Gavriel Kay. I've also heard nothing but good things about the audio book narrator, Simon Vance. Sadly, I wasn't impressed with either listening to the audio version of Under Heaven.

The pacing of this book was absolutely terrible. It's far too erratic. The beginning is very, very slow and it takes a long time for very little to happen. Then, it switches to the story of the hero's sister getting sent to be a bride to a neighboring country's princ ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2010 Nicky rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, historical-fiction-alternatehistory

I loved so much of this book. Particularly the opening. Guy Gavriel Kay writes beautifully, and the images and thoughts in the opening are beautiful, and had me hooked right there -- even if it is a relatively quiet, contemplative opening. I loved the characters, the women with their subtle ways of power, the politics of the court. I found it hard to follow, in a sense, especially because it's so strongly based on the history and ideals of a culture I've never been very familiar with; I felt lik I loved so much of this book. Particularly the opening. Guy Gavriel Kay writes beautifully, and the images and thoughts in the opening are beautiful, and had me hooked right there -- even if it is a relatively quiet, contemplative opening. I loved the characters, the women with their subtle ways of power, the politics of the court. I found it hard to follow, in a sense, especially because it's so strongly based on the history and ideals of a culture I've never been very familiar with; I felt like I was often a step behind what seemed obvious to the characters involved. That didn't bother me too much, though.

I loved the first three parts a lot. I loved the characters of Tai and Sima Zian, and Wei Song. I loved the relationship between Spring Rain and Tai, how honourable they both are, and I find it interesting how it works out. I loved Tai's relationship with Wei Song, up to a point. In a lot of fantasy that seems based on history, it feels like the author decides that because women in medieval times didn't have much agency, the female characters in their own books should be powerless. Guy Gavriel Kay rarely submits to that, if ever. Wei Song is mouthy, independent, not submissive at all. The way her relationship with Tai ends up, I didn't like so much: I didn't like how much she surrendered of herself, although in the context of the story and the society portrayed, it makes plenty of sense.

The first three parts, I loved pretty unconditionally. Part four, however, was a bit of a problem. Which I kind of expected, knowing that the central character is an expendable piece in the war: a pawn with one protection and one purpose only. Following him through the story, it gets so far and then he isn't there to witness it any more, which absolutely makes sense for his character, but makes parts of the narration very much like a summary.

And I didn't get the ends for some characters that I so much hoped for. I'm quite resigned to that, with Guy Gavriel Kay, and in some cases it is gracefully, beautifully done, and makes absolute sense for the story. I thought part four could have done with more of Li-Mei, Meshag, Spring Rain and Sima Zian. I didn't like the way their stories ended. It felt like the threads were snipped short, instead of followed to more interesting conclusions: everything made sense, really, but it wasn't the most interesting way for it to play out. Li-Mei and Meshag especially earned better send-offs.

Part four is written beautifully, and there are some excellent, well-placed, well-written scenes. But it doesn't seem to fit quite so easily with the rest, and I wish it had been five parts, and less summary.

I will probably love this even more and understand even more of what Guy Gavriel Kay is doing, when I reread this book. That, I expect. I'm looking forward to letting this book wine and dine me next time. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 27, 2010 Thermopyle rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, historical-fiction, 2010

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorite authors, but the lyrical prose I've enjoyed so much previously was almost the undoing of Under Heaven. As he states in the afterward, the poetry of T'ang Dynasty China was a major inspiration for this novel but it seemed to me that he tried too hard to infuse some of that poetry into his prose.

Tai would wonder about this later, too. If the world as it went forward from that day might have been otherwise has another leader and his fifty men been shifted to th

...more

Like · see review

Jul 18, 2012 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fantasy, book_club, ghosts-hauntings

4.5*

a layered story of intrigue and betrayal in the not-ancient-Chinese imperial court, full of courtesans, princes, and minor second sons that change the world. Kay writes richly interesting people, intelligent and thoughtful and very humanly foolishly flawed, doing richly interesting things. the storytelling is as stately and deliberately paced as the formal poetry the scholars declaim at each other.

no, it's not The Lions of al-Rassan, but it's absolutely charming anyway. ...more

Like · see review