Having kicked off my new Classic Children's/YA feature last week, I was keen to get other people involved as soon as possible. I was thrilled when awesome author Andy Robb, who writes the brilliant Geekhood books, offered to be my first guest poster on the feature! He's here to tell us about a fantasy trilogy which I'd never heard of before but which sounds fascinating.
The
Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay
Number
of books: Three;
it’s your good old classic fantasy trilogy, starting with The
Summer Tree, going through The Wandering Fire and winding up with The
Darkest Road. I read the trilogy one summer in 1986, when I was doing
a lot of train journeys from Devon to Yorkshire and back again.
Availability:
I checked on
the Waterstones website and they’re still out there. Which isn’t
bad for a bunch of books that were published in the ‘80’s.
The
Premise: Five
students from our world are transported to the world of Fionavar,
where they get involved in its past, present and future, in a big
way. Think Lord of the Rings on a slightly smaller scale, but adding
regular folk in the mix. Maybe like a more adult version of the
Narnia books.
Why
I Really Like It: This
was one of the first series of books that made you aware of the
fragility of life – because the characters were expendable; people
who you didn’t think would be going anywhere suddenly did, which
made the story a much-less comfortable ride that some of the fantasy
books I’d read at the time.
I
was a big fantasy-head at the time. After having read Lord of the
Rings, I went out hunting for more – probably trying to recreate
that ‘cherry-high’ you get when you fist discover a Big Book of
Great Importance. It did mean I read some right old tat – and then
I bumped into this one.
It’s
a weird blend of classic fantasy and grim fairy tale, bound-up with a
look at how encountering this sort of thing might have an effect on
ordinary people – but without all the self-loathing from the
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The people you meet in these books are
just like us; prick the surface and a whole lot comes bubbling out.
It
was a while after reading them that I found out something about the
author that made a whole lot of sense: Kay cut his teeth as an
editor, working alongside Christopher Tolkien to edit his father’s,
The Silmarillion. Once he’d written his own stuff, he commented in
an interview that “to be successful in fantasy, you have to take
the measure of Tolkien – work with his strengths and away from his
weaknesses.”
Best
Books: Nostalgically,
I’d have to say the first – but I lapped these up as they came
out. But the first, because it threw me into a world where nothing
was guaranteed. It was also one of the first books that really
shocked me into understanding parallels between external events and
internal development. Cool stuff.
Who
It Will Appeal To: Fantasy-heads.
If you’ve done LoTR and want something similarly filling, go for
this. If you haven’t done LoTR because it looks a bit daunting,
this is a great way to find your feet in the genre.
Others
by the Same Author: Tigana.
If you liked the Fionavar Tapestry, this is well worth a look –
especially as your lifeline to our world has been severed; it’s
unadulterated fantasy, which is a Good Thing, in my humble, Geeky
opinion.
Ooh! I love this idea for a feature!
ReplyDeleteAnd The Fionovar Tapestry sounds really good - "a grown up version of Narnia" sells it to me completely! :)