05/20/2005 Archived Entry: "Rayne and Arshwana"

discuss The Fionavar Tapestry - Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. After having read a whopping 2 books by the man, GGK is probably one of my favorite authors and the only fantasy writer I've read, except for the Hobbit. The Summer Tree was Arshwana's introduction to him. What follows is an extensive discussion we had over email of the book.

There are some spoilers here and there, though I generally tried to avoid giving anything away. In any case, such discussions are best appreciated by those who've read the book(s).

Bold statements are from me, unbold are from her.

My two biggest problems with the first book is that, first, the events all seem fated to happen. Everything that happens to the characters happens for a reason, there's no feeling of real danger since everyone just seems to be playing the part they're supposed to be playing. There's no chance, no randomness, no choice.

Secondly, the characters all seem TOO perfect, they're too good at doing what it is that they do. Something about that...it's not like I havent read and enjoyed tons of books about supremely talented people but I guess that these guys just dont feel real enough.

All the events do happen that way, but it doesn't bother me too much. I think of it as old lore, old stories, old predictions coming true. Things were fated to happen, though you don't know quite exactly why & how they happen. Now I've read the second book I can't really remember exactly what's in the first, but there are a few items that are considered random, like the Baelrath (and a few more in the 2nd book, all people actually). But even if they're random, they don't seem to do all that much damage (as yet) to the good side anyway...

So yes, I can see how the happenings and events seem rather canned. I read L'île mystérieuse by Jules Verne, and his events didn't seem canned at all -- but his characters and how good they were was just the same as in Fionavar! Cyrus, the engineer, was perfect. The group landed on a deserted island, he made pottery, he made nitroglycerine, he made glass. He made a substitute for gunpowder. Who the hell can make shit like that? (As a sidenote, I guess he studied his chemistry well -- chem was a big thing back in the late 1800s when Verne was writing, so I can see how Verne would be prizing science and placing it so high, and making Cyrus such a brilliant man who could accomplish all these amazing deeds.. but it still seemed so damned surreal.) Anyway, all the characters got along superbly, everything they did perfectly despite the elements, and even if the elements got in their way, they somehow got past them (eg by the appearance of captain Nemo to help them survive). Even in desperation they didn't seem desperate, no moment ever seemed bleak at all. You read the count of Monte Cristo, you have an idea of bleakness -- the count spends 14 years in jail, and while reading, you really feel those years, you really feel that desperation.

So yes, the same in Fionavar. The only really strong feeling of despair I got in Fionavar 1 was Jennifer's rape -- and yet, she's still fighting, she's not given up entirely, and she's found new fire in deciding to retaliate against Maugrim by giving birth to the child (obviously the denouement of these events take place in Fionavar 2, and I'll try to keep from giving anything away). So even then, she's not destroyed, she's not broken, she's in no real despair. Kim sometimes suffers pangs of anxiety about who she is and what she's doing, but that's it, they're pangs. She always does it right when it has to be done right.

Even when bad things happen, there's something to make them immediately better -- eg when the three stumbled into Pendaran and yet somehow still make it out alive and fine. Everything bad is balanced and outweighed by the good almost immediately, there is no sense of peril or danger throughout the book because of this. The things that ARE hanging during the book and that might actually cause great anxiety and worry are essentially ignored until they're ready to be dealt with & finished! Maybe that's why there's no feeling of danger -- the author never bothers to tell us much about characters worrying, or about whatever thoughts or preparation they might have versus whatever danger or occurrence.

And even when you think the characters are bloody dead, they come back to life! :P And even when they do die, you don't miss them and it was all "meant to be" and it's all SUPERBLY GOOD anyway! (Sorry, I have to mention this. :P) Even the grief seems so plastic & empty & passing.. maybe the sentences lack descriptive words, I don't know.

I'm going to insert a sidenote into another book again.. there's this French series in which the books are called Gabrielle, Adélaïde, and Florent. Gabrielle is Adelaide's mother. The first book is written mostly from her point of view, just like the second is written from Adelaide's point of view. iirc, Gabrielle dies in the second book -- I was entirely not surprised, not shocked, and not sad. The author basically ignored Gabrielle for most of the Adelaide book – without the reminder of who she was, and without events to incorporate her and show her humanity and importance, I didn't care at all whether she lived or died -- she was barely talked about. Similar happens in Fionavar 2 (sorry :P).

...
So what do you think is the *cause* of it all feeling that way? Obviously authors can craft their books how they want, and I think I've basically demonstrated that the characters being "perfect" and the events being canned are two separate features of books (L'ile had no feeling of prediction/destiny to it at all.) You're the one who's read other GGK books, you should be able to analyze what's different with the style & why it all feels that way. Because characters' faults ARE exposed, bad things DO happen, there is *some* doubt expressed, despite everything being destined in some form or other. (And the book, at least the second one, keeps saying how the Weaver is holding her (his?) breath over some future occurrences in the tapestry.)

I guess its not REALLY the characters' perfection that bothers me. They're just not very likeable, or even 3-dimentionsal; there are lots of perfect characters that i've read and enjoyed. And again, the whole "scripted" feeling of the plot just removes any attachment I could possibly have to these guys. Even from the beginning, with the 5 students being brought to Fionavar and Dave breaking the circle, as random as it seemed it was all supposed to happen. Its kinda funny, some of the characters even comment "it was destined to happen" over most major events, etc.

Well, I've only read 2 other GGK books (Tigana, and The Sarantine Mosaic), and yes, they are very much about super-talented people. But in the other books, everyone is more likeable, and their struggles are more real. I think one of the reasons why is that Fionavar has a completely faceless villain. Except for Jennifer's rape, we never see the villains except for the very few glimpses of Galadan, all we see is the heroes' side of the battle. Plus, I think that book 1 is a "gathering of heroes" book, we see all these good guys getting together, and they're each more powerful than the last, and to top it all of, they're all receiving magical gifts from the gods...its like...do the badguys even stand a chance? Even more so than the heroes, the villains are COMPLETELY 2 dimensional. They're evil for evil's sake so you KNOW that the good guys will win. In the other 2 books, GGK spends as much time with the bad guys as he does with the good guys and really makes things grey to a point where you sometimes like the villain.

Most fantasy books probably get this, but dont you find Fionavar to be similar to LOTR? (I've only read The Hobbit, so I suppose I'm talking about the movies). Certainly, a lot of the detail is different but you've got some ancient evil rising once again, outsiders who come in and save everyone, the lios alfar are suspiciously like elves even down to the whole sailing west thing.

And I know this is an issue for you, are you annoyed that all the women are basically paragons of unparalled beauty? I think at one point, GGK's gonna run out of ways of saying "and there was this princess, she was hot"...though he's yet to use that one....

sorry my comment's not as long as yours =P

It's really hard for me to say exactly what it is .. I'm not sure I've encountered "perfect" characters before that. Did the other books you read come out after Fionavar? Might explain why the characters are better in the other books?

Y'know, maybe it has to do with how the book was planned out, too. Maybe he just wrote out events then wrote linking text. That'd be funny. :P

I certainly think we could see more of the villain. I wondered if that wasn't what was missing, too. You never know what peril the guys are going to face until they actually face it, then any impending-doom feeling can't possibly be built up -- it's all constant action with no feeling of dread or anything. .....being halfway through book 3 right now, I really dont' see HOW Rakoth is going to take over Fionavar. I have no fear that the heroes will win.. Rakoth seems to have no army. They just fear him for no reason.

One thing I think GGK didn't expand enough upon is how Rakoth is OUTSIDE the Tapestry. What's this "outside" the Tapestry? The Weaver's (he? :P) outside the Tapestry since he's weaving it, I guess, but then, ... the gods are in it, but Rakoth isn't? neither are the other "random" characters in the story? ...Dunno, don't get it, don't see how it's significant. I guess what they're saying is that the things Rakoth does aren't *destined* to happen? (And yet, if they're not destined to happen, then how can the things the heroes do *against* Rakoth be destined to happen? Wouldn't it be a little like interlocking puzzle pieces? Forcibly Rakoth's doings would be destiny, too.)

I like it when they make me like the villain. That's what the real world is like.

Hra, LOTR.. well, I read it years ago, and my reading of the 2nd book was interrupted by about a year because it was bloody BORING. I have the trilogy at home, I could have lent it to you. With LOTR, things did not feel destined. Gandalf never seemed to be omniscient, never seemed to have any inkling as to what the future might hold. He just knew Sauron was rising and that everyone had to get together to beat him. Heck, he forgot his way through Moria, right? So you see how Gandalf's fallible and can't be everywhere at once, and you hear characters a few times saying "I wish Gandalf were here." So you get that feeling that characters are actually LACKING help, and that they make it through by themselves because they've got the power to (but just barely, often). You really get an impression of struggle and suffering in LOTR; in Fionavar I do not, at all. Hell, everyone still lives in Fionavar.

Well, considering what happens in Fionavar 3, I find the book's a little .. stale? You'll see, it's .. erh. :P I do agree the lios alfar just seem like Tolkien's elves though. It's weird -- if the lios are the Weaver's favourite children, why wouldn't they be ruling the world? The Weaver doesn't like power then? mmh. What LOTR also has over Fionavar is the feeling that everything in LOTR is *ancient.* It has been there centuries, millenia, forever. Fionavar, despite teh descriptions saying that "this was the first world.. before even the Giants were there, .." I have no real concept of how *long* ago this was. The words say it, I do not feel it.

I wonder, in part, if the style of writing of the book doesn't make a huge difference too. GGK writes A LOT of sentence fragments. When I started reading Fionavar 1, I almost wanted to drop it because of how horribly it was written. 'course, it's just a different style, as valid as any other, I guess. The thing with sentence fragments is that they're make the reader read very fast over the passage, perhaps faster than you really want them to?...

Well, my old mud friend turned-web-cartoonist had sent me a link to an article about web comics and how in web comics just about every girl/woman was beautiful. You can read a male character's descrip, it won't say anything about his looks, yet you read a female character's and there'll be something about her appearance. I disagree with your assessment of Fionavar.. MOST women are beautiful, yeah (Jaelle, Sharra, Jen), but then you hardly ever hear anything about Kim except that her hair's white (Ysanne, too, while she was alive.. weathered face, white hair). I paid attention to that when the book began, I was curious as to what GGK did with his female chars.

Did you find it hard to tell Kim & Jen apart in Fionavar 1? I had a heck of a time telling the girls apart at first (or any of the 5 friends, really). The names & identifying characteristics didn't really stick together (except Dave, I guess). So Kim-Jen confusion & Paul-Kevin confusion (or non-differentiation at least) was common/frequent until they actually got to Fionavar & bigger things started happening to them.

Fionavar was like..his first book? I don't really know, but they're old. The sarantine Mosaic is from 2000 or thereabouts.

I take it from what you said that "wrote out events" doesn't mean plotting right? Like..he just thought of some cool scenes and tried to tie everything together? I write like that sometimes, just to get certain turn-of-phrases in somehow. Is Fionavar a book of moments though? I dont really think so..certainly there are highs and lows but the highs and the lows are both interesting.

We never get a sense of how powerful Rakoth and his armies are. We know that the dwarfs are on his side, and the Svart Alfar, the wolves, and the crows. But yet, we don't know anything about these guys or how powerful they are. Meanwhile, we're shown that Aileron can single handedly defead a small army with nothing but a sword.

See, I didn't catch anything about Rakoth being outside of the tapestry so I'll take what you've said as truth. I suppose it could mean that the weaver has no plans for him..or perhaps has no control over him, but the books show that, clearly, there is a plan! That’s why the good guys will win!

Having just finished book 2, I can definately see what you were saying about bad things happening only to be defeated (cant think of a better word here) right after. There isn't any sense of hopelessness at all, I think those parts would be better served if he cut to other characters as things are going really really bad. But y'know, maybe I'm seeing them because you pointed it out.

I also have the LOTR trilogy, I intended to read them at one point, but after the movies and after so many people describing them as boring, I'm not entirely sure I want to. There's a lot of other stuff I could read, instead. When I meant that the books were similar it was more just like Rakoth = Sauron, Aileron = Aragorn, Metran = Sarumon, students = hobbits. Yes, there's plenty of differences but it feels like a lot of Fionavar is familiar. It's never boring though =)

As for the Lios being the Weaver's favorites, the Lios just seem like they're content sitting around their own kingdom and singing and then sailing off to the west when they hear the call to sail west. Besides, if you had a bunch of pets but prefered just one of them, doesn't mean that you'll make that pet the lord of the other pets. You'd just make sure he's well fed, cleaned, and comfortable right? Unless you DO intend to make it the lord of the pets, then I dunno.

I think sentence fragments are a wonderful writing tool. They emphasize. Writers have to use a lot of tricks to get us to read their books at a certain pace at certain places, I suppose. GGK does use a lot of fragments here though. "And Kim. She saw. And she knew. She knew it all." Shouldn't they make you read slower? All those periods, you're supposed to stop at periods, y'know.

Kim's probably the only girl who's beauty isn't continuously exalted, but I imagine she's probably pretty hot. I picture her to look like the pink power ranger. The original one. Ysanne's old, she can't be beautiful..though, she probably was!

I had trouble telling the characters apart at the beginning, yea. But I think I have that same problem no matter what book I'm reading. Sometimes I read the conversations without paying attention to who's saying what. That doesn't help.

hmm..I'm not sure if I have much more to say about these books without just plain out discussing events. So maybe we'll end this blog entry after your reply. Overall, did you like the book? I know it seems like we've done nothing but criticize and pick apart, but I'm enjoying 'em. It's not an amazing series but it is entertaining and very well thought out.

I'm not entirely sure what I meant; I suppose one has to plot out events one wants to have occur in a book, right? :P There has to be some degree of planning. 'unno. :)

Not crows! Swans!
The crows are Thought and Memory, and they were there when Paul was on the tree.

Exactly. And even in book 3, though their might's impressive, they .. well, I won't say, but the armies of the Dark don't really get more frightening. It's kinda silly.

Rakoth is outside the Tapestry. If you didn't spot it in 1 or 2, you will in 3, they have a few passages about it, as well as Darien. (The "random elements.") 'unno, they seem to imply that Rakoth could somehow even challenge the Weaver? ..have no clue.

..and yeah.. that "sudden-defeat-of-the-enemy-gee-that-wasn't-actually-a-threat-of-any-kind" comes back in book 3. You may just be seeing it because I pointed it out.. it may be where some of your feelings come from though.

You should read LOTR, just to say you've read it. It's a classic, and it should be read. It may not be as boring at your age. I tried in HS and found it horrible. Well, YES, the characters fit in classic fantasy archetypes, but having read both, no, the series have very different feels to them.

I did think that too, about the Lios. I suppose Tolkien's elves are quite similar, as you say.

On the sentence fragments.. I used to think that, yes. I wrote a "dissertation" (that's what we call essays in French, yessiree) in OAC French, and with the intent of the reader reading the sentence quickly, I never put periods in (a bunch of commas, instead). Well, the prof read part of my dissertation in class, and instead took a whiny, longish tone to the whole thing rather than reading it quickly! So, no, actually... periods make things fast. It's like point form. Bam bam bam. The longer a sentence is, the more time you need to assimilate it.

Dude, I never watched power rangers, I have NO idea what face you're referring to. Well, since I love identifying with wisdom, I liked seeing Kim as looking kinda like me. I suppose if I'm hot, then Kim is too! :P It's funny though, eh. Just because a woman's beauty isn't mentioned, does this imply she's not beautiful? It'd be nice to hear from GGK himself what it was that Kim looked like. My bets are on her looking rather plain.

I do that too, actually, not pay attention to who says what.. but then, shouldn't the author have made the characters or conversation somewhat memorable or give a hint as to how to discriminate them? I mean, if nothing said somehow distinguishes who said it, the conversation isn't memorable and can't hook onto anything in our brains.

I don't know if it's really that well thought out. The series certainly isn't "all that".. I'm enjoying it enough, I think, to bother getting Fionavar 3 (or maybe it's just for hte purposes of discussion).. Mmh, I guess one thing that bothered me still is that women never get into the battle in any way -- I suppose it's biologically, physically natural, but it still bugs me. :) I liked Dragonlance in that Kitiara was still a formidable and powerful warrior even if she was a woman.. the women never stood back so much & were never weak. I suppose you can argue that Sharra's tomboyishness tries to combat that general women's weakness, but she seems like a mere exception among all the other women.

Bring on the events.. I should get going, having dinner with a friend tonight.

Here ends our conversation on The Summer Tree. There’ll be a part 2 sooner or later.

Replies: 8 comments

Here I was thinking you'd just take out the salient points.. now I feel guilty that your readers are subjected to my horribly long and rambly emails.

Posted by Arshwana @ 05/20/2005 07:55 AM EST

editing = too much work.

Besides, I think the only one who was gonna read this no matter what is Jeremy.

Posted by Rayne @ 05/20/2005 03:53 PM EST

If you HAD edited it, people MIGHT have read it.

Posted by Arshwana @ 05/20/2005 05:47 PM EST

haha, I read it.
I wanted to see what you had thought of the book/books. I recently read the third and read the others last fall.

Posted by sbdep @ 05/20/2005 10:05 PM EST

Tell us your thoughts, Stephen.

Posted by Rayne @ 05/20/2005 11:31 PM EST

I don't really have thoughts. Mostly because I haven't read it in a while and all three books kind of merge into one, so I don't know where the boundaries are. After all, I don't want to give any other spoilers for books you haven't read yet.

Anyways, I will look through this later and see what I can say in response to what you two have said. That might take a while though.

Posted by sbdep @ 05/21/2005 10:50 AM EST

Anyone know where rayne left off to? Haven't seen him online in AGES!

Posted by Anonymous @ 05/31/2005 04:58 PM EST

bmrh, trip to the east coast, back today, surprised he's not online, but maybe the trip really drained him.
1000km's yesterday.

Should be blog entry up sometime. :P

Posted by Arshwana @ 05/31/2005 06:47 PM EST