Under Heaven | |||||||||
Guy Gavriel Kay | |||||||||
Viking Canada / HarperVoyager, 580 / 573 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Dominic Cilli
Under Heaven is a multi-layered tale that tells the story of Shen Tai. Tai is the second son of the
celebrated war leader General Shen Gao. General Gao fought and won a key battle against their ancient foes,
the Tagurians, near a remote mountain lake named Kaula Nor. Twenty years after the battle, Shen Tai's legendary
father dies. Tai journeys to Kaula Nor to mourn the passing of his father, as tradition demands, but also takes
on the impossible task of burying the bones of 40,000 dead soldiers that have remained there all those
years. One spring morning, he receives news that a Tagurian princess has heard of his efforts to bury the
dead and has gifted him 250 Sardian horses as a reward for his service and his honoring of the dead. The
Sardian horses are the world's finest and the gifting of such a number is enough to overwhelm an emperor and
instantly makes Tai a player in a political game setting off a chain of events that will see the
face of China's Tang dynasty changed forever.
I was quite struck and impressed with Under Heaven. The world Kay has created is vividly realized,
richly detailed and will capture your imagination right from the start. The imagery and detail the book
invokes is a thing of wonder. Kay transports us to a time and place we didn't even know we ever wanted to
visit and, in doing so, manages to give us a history lesson along the way. It may not be a history lesson
where all the names and dates are tucked neatly in a row, but it's a more personalized history that shows
us how men and women thought and behaved in eighth-century China. He pulls it off flawlessly.
Along with this superbly realized setting, Kay gives us a host of wonderful characters to wrap our hands
around and drive his narrative forward. When it's all said and done Under Heaven is primarily a
character-driven story and strong supporting characters are scattered throughout the novel. There are a good dozen I
can mention, but for brevity's sake I'll only say that I found most of the supporting characters intriguing
but the female characters, in particular, I found to be well done. Wei Song, a female Kanlin
warrior and Tai's bodyguard throughout the story is a well realized character and serves as a stark
counterpoint to the lives of the courtesans and princesses in ancient China. Two characters in particular,
Spring Rain and Wen Jian the Precious Consort, play integral parts in the story and give us a glimpse of
how women had to manage a precarious balancing act to maintain their veiled political power and influence
and while keeping themselves in favor with their masters.
FInally, the element of the novel that elevates Under Heaven into the sublime is quite
simply, the writing itself. While reading Under Heaven, I was immediately struck by its "feel." It had a
very lyrical and poetic quality to it. After doing a little homework, I found that Kay isn't a stranger to
poetry and has had a collection of poems published. It's been my experience throughout the years that
when I read an author that has poetry in their background, it seems remnants arise in their
fiction and almost always serve to accentuate the writing in a positive way. Under Heaven does nothing
to disprove this theory and only reinforces it. This prose is
elevated to levels most authors can only dream of. I'm certain that readers who take the time to
explore the book will sense it as well.
Overall, Under Heaven is a masterful blending of fact, fiction and fantasy and readers around the
world will be hard pressed to find better writing or a more seamless melding of the three elements. It will
stay with you for days. Under Heaven is a winner
in every sense of the word and it's easy to see why Guy Gavriel Kay's work is so celebrated. If
you read Under Heaven, be prepared for a real treat from a giant of the genre.
When asked to write a third-person tag line for his reviews, Dominic Cilli farmed the work out to an actual 3rd person, his friend Neal, who in turn turned it over to a second person who then asked his third cousin to help out and this person whom Dom doesn't even know then wrote in 8th person Omniscient mode "Dom's breadth of knowledge in literature runs the gamut and is certainly not bounded by the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. One thing I can say with certainty is that of all the people I don't know who've ever recommended books to read, Dom's recommendations are the best." |
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