daaflowers.blogg.se

However, he has had to do many terrible things for his lieges and is finding it harder to be true to himself.

Ammar is possibly the greatest mind of an age and second to the most powerful king (currently) in Al-Rassan. Next, we have Ammar – warrior, poet, and tactician. Through her work as a neutral healer, she finds herself welcome in almost every court and land and is constantly in demand from the multitude of kings in contention.

She is a doctor, and one of the best in all the land. If I were to pick a true “protagonist” it would have to be Jehane. Our leads are Jehane, Ammar, Rodrigo, and Alivar – four brilliant and talented individuals that shine brighter than stars on a moonless night. In the midst of all of this, our story follows four “advisors” to various kings and gives a poetic dissertation on loyalty and the difficulties of being a good person, and doing the right thing, in nebulous times. As you might guess, these conditions make for extremely turbulent, dangerous, and fluid times where power structures and the hierarchies of nations are changing constantly. On top of this, there is a panoply of warring religions in the region that are all vying for dominance in the form of religious genocide. Kings are everywhere, popping up one after another, and each claims to be the true heir and inheritor to the land around them. Regardless, the book tells the story of a country divided by kings (lions). I am not a historian, so my knowledge of this time period and the metaphors that Kay uses are not the best. Lions is ostensibly a historical fiction based on the civil wars, and eventual unification, of Spain. The Lions of Al-Rassan is a masterpiece that everyone should read and just barely loses out to Sailing to Sarantium as my favorite Kay book of all time. We at Quill consider Kay to be one of the best authors currently in the fantasy and science-fiction scene, and when we read one of his books it is less a question of “is it good”, and more a question of “how good is it?” To immediately answer that question, the answer is: really, really, good. It will come as no surprise that I loved today’s book, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay.