Kris’ Book Reviews

It’s not the first time when Guy Gavriel Kay takes the reader on a journey to an alternative world which, with few exceptions (two moons, somehow changed coastlines, slightly different gods) resembles ours. This time we are presented with a history of conflict between two religions (with a drop of third one) that happens on peninsula of Al-Rassan.

Magellan Maestro 3100 - review of the cheapest GPS navigator

This piece of land is divided between three small Jaddite kindgoms in the north and remains of Al-Rassan khalifat in the south. The main characters in this book are a cavalry commander from a Jaddit north, a Asharite warrior-poet from the south and a Kindath women that is a physician. The storyline of the book can be splited to two plots one of them is love story between Jehane (the Kindath) and the two warriors. The second plot presents the Jaddit-Asharine conflict.

That’s it for the plot but what about readability ? Well it’s not as good as in other Kays books. While reading this one I was constantly waiting for something interesting to happen and eventually I was disappointed. The characters are interesting but fail to involve the reader emotionally. It’s not like in Tigana or Sarantine Mozaic (Sailing to Sarantium (Sarantine Mosaic, Book 1), Lord of Emperors (Sarantine Mosaic, Book 2)), in those books I was really scared when characters were close to death. Also the ending isn’t very surprising. But although above mentioned disadvantages the book forced me to research the history early medieval Spain, and I encourage you to do the same, a very interesting read.

So would I recommend to read this book? If you like to read about religious conflicts or like medieval history then yes. On the other hand if you prefer to be entertained by this book then I would recommend to skip The Lions of Al-Rassan and read other Guy Gavriel Kays books first and after that you can go back to this one, at least to have a good knowledge of the world that connects Sarantine Mozaic, The Last Light of the Sun and The Lions of Al-Rassan.

Rating 6/10

Buy (or just check comments) for The Lions of al-Rassan

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 7:39 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.