Outside of a Dog: Kay, Guy Gavriel: Ysabel

Trent

Trent wrote on February 14, 2007 at 7:30 PM:

This book caught me completely by surprise, in the sense that I didn't realize Kay had a new novel coming out until I saw it in the bookstore last week. I've only read the first chapter (in store), and some of the attempts at hipness that you allude to caught my eye as well--it felt like Kay trying to write from a teenage point of view while trying to act like that's not, in fact what he's doing, if that makes sense. Anyway.

I was going to ask if this was a recovery from his (in my opinion) misstep of _Last Light of the Sun_, but it sounds like you haven't read that, so. I did see, even in the first chapter, that he is still up to his old heavily omniscient foreshadowing tricks, which seemed really cool in _Lions_ and _Sarantium_, et al., but which I suspect has started to wear a bit. And I don't know that I'm that thrilled to meet old Fionavar characters. But it's on reserve at the library, and I'll stil read it.

Mike Kozlowski

Mike Kozlowski wrote on February 14, 2007 at 8:08 PM:

So is this intended to be YA? It sounds like it from your description, but nothing else inclines me that way.

Kate

Kate wrote on February 14, 2007 at 8:50 PM:

Trent: no, I didn't read _Last Light_. I think I was really busy when it first came out, and by the time I could read it, opinion was so uniformly "meh" that I decided to just skip it.

I don't think the Fionavar characters are intrusive or overwhelming.

Kate

Kate wrote on February 14, 2007 at 8:51 PM:

Mike: it's not YA in the sense I think you mean. The subject matter and the execution are such that the decision whether to shelve it in YA or SF would have been purely a marketing decision.

Matthew

Matthew wrote on February 15, 2007 at 10:16 AM:

I haven't read Ysabel yet, though I probably will. I agree with your brief comment on the Fionavar Tapestry, in some ways it's one of my favorite series, I've probably reread it (or at least parts of it) 10 times or more, but it has major flaws. Some of the things that make it fun to read, the melodrama and epic nature of the story, also, in my opinion, keep it from being great.

Kate

Kate wrote on February 15, 2007 at 11:14 AM:

Matthew: yes, and some of that may not read well to me now, so I'm wavering on whether to start it. I may just browse through favorite parts.

Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander wrote on February 16, 2007 at 12:33 AM:

I wrote a review of Ysabel that's very similar to your take, kate - see here:

http://www.sfsite.com/02a/ys241.htm

I love Kay's work, but for me this was just a tad too... regressive. I know what he was TRYING to do, but for me that failed the moment he brought back the Fionavar characters... which were so utterly unnecessary, in my view, for this story to work, and added very little by their presence in the tale.

Kate

Kate wrote on February 16, 2007 at 6:32 PM:

Alma: Yeah, your second-to-last paragraph is similar to my reaction, only with spoilers. =>

(I think I meant to say, that however beautiful the Prologue is, it's entirely skippable and thus somewhat annoying to me.)

Kate

Kate wrote on February 17, 2007 at 9:19 AM:

Over on the LJ syndicated feed, which goes away after two weeks, intertext wrote (and then gave me permission to cross-post):

I think I liked it better than you (here's my review) but generally agree with the tone of your assessment. I definitely agree about the little careless mistakes - I didn't notice the ipod one but was annoyed by his saying that someone was taking shots with both a digital camera and an slr as if it were not possible for one camera to be both, which of course it is. And that's a really silly and obvious mistake, especially when the main character's father is supposed to be a professional photographer.