A Song for Arbonne   by Guy Gavriel Kay

March 2006     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

Let me see... it was one and a half books ago that I finished this one, and since then, I haven't had a lot of time for typing. But this was -Lovely fantasy, which fully lived up to my expectations. And those expectations were nothing to be sneezed at; I have read the two greatest works by Kay sometime in the last decade. First, there was Tigana, which took me out of our world. Then there was the Fionavar Tapestry (trilogy,) which immersed me in the mythology, and drama of this other, parallel world. In that one especially, I loved the weaving together of various myths and legends into one continuous whole: We have the dwarves accounted for. And the King Arthur legend. And on and on.

So, when I picked up this other book by Kay to read, it was because I felt in need of a good dose of mind capturing fantasy. And it lived up to my hopes. But, it had some surprises for me: It was much more realistic, and could be imagined as a true story from our human past. What I specifically mean, is that Magic played no role in the story. (In both Tigana and the Fionavar Tapestry, there was a good deal of magic. As well as a number of magical or mythological creatures.) It felt as if, instead of the book being set on a different world, where everything was made up, it was set in the past of our own world, with only the geography, politics, and religions made up.

To a certain amount the cultures were made up for this story too, but only out of elements that truly existed in the European middle ages. So, I had a vague feeling that through the whole book, the countries were based on France, Italy, spain, (or perhaps more like Morocco,) and so on. All except the violent, war-like northerners; I couldn't think of who they represented. (Which might have been done on purpose: Kay had no wish to offend any one European culture.)

Anyhow, it was a great story. The characters were quite alive. I felt excitement and anxiety with with their triumphant and stressful moments. And the mystery, which was left open and unsolved until the end, was... like the truffle filling inside a chocolate. It was sheer delight to come to it at last, and through the enjoyment of all that had surrounded it, I'd been kept guessing about what it would finally be. But I never guessed it to be the way it turned out. It was actually very tempting to go leafing through the whole book again, to see what was to be said about this or that person, (now knowing what was to become of them, and who they really were.)

There was also a great, huge amount of interest about the central man's love life. He was badly emotionally injured, (before the book started,) and has been going through his life without feeling any love at all, and only pain, as far as intimate relations with women went. But he became intimate with a number of women during the course of the book. And there were others that cared for him. And I could just tell, that by the end of the book, he would have overcome his dark past, and found true love, and happiness again. But HOW? With WHOM? Her, or Her, or Her? Or his brother's wife? What, oh What is going to happen??? And there too, we get a surprise at the end which we wouldn't have thought of.

And on top of all those mysteries, there's one which is only mentioned in the post script, and left unsolved: A child that is born to one of the central female figures... whose father is never revealed to anyone in the book, or even to the readers. We all have our private suspicions about who the father is, but we are given no chance to test our hypothesise.

SO... It was a good book. And not too much like fantasy, in the way that it's a story which seems quite possible. And did you know, that Kay is a Canadian? I feel proud of sharing that trait with him.