Oh, here are the GGK’s books which I’ve found the most irritating! Here are almost all the flaws of his writing: too pathetic style, creepy sex, irritating protagonists and cardboard antagonists, stereotypical women characters, bitchy womanizers whom readers are supposed to like, and not efficiently used tropes from real cultures and myths. Do you think then that I consider Kay a bad writer? No. But here will be GGK at his worst, so — beware!
The plot is quite simple: Dave, Kimberly, Jennifer, Paul and Kevin are students from Toronto. They are drawn into the world of Fionavar by a mage called Loren Silvercloak. They are supposed to defeat Sauron Rakoth Maugrim. Dave gets lost on the plains of Native Americans Rohirrim Dalrei, but the others manage to arrive to the capital city of Brennin. There is an Old Sick King there, with his brilliant gold-haired son Diarmuid. We are constantly repeated how Brilliant and Charming he is, although he has all the traits of typical fuckboy and he is verbally harassing Jennifer. The elder son, the withdrawn Aileron is frustrated and left the city.
Some other characters are: tearful leader of Dalrei, princess Sharra from Cathal (her father’s main activity will be brawling in taprooms) and Jaelle the priestess who is embittered because she is The Terrible Feminist.
Here is the beginning. But the further, the more funny. What will we have there except tons of pathos and sugar? SPOILERS Sharra will get engaged to Diarmuid after a very turbulent relationship. Evil!Rakoth will rape Jennifer to have a demi-god child. Jennifer will turn out to be Guinevere, that Guinevere. Kevin will die in sacrifice-sex ritual, because sex has always moved him deeply (lol). Dave will knock up a goddess. Kim will be a seer, and once she will even have sex with Loren who is looking like a man roughly eighty years old. The child of Jennifer and Evil! Dark Lord won’t choose the Dark side. He and Diarmuid will die heroically — each in their own way — during typical Battle Good Vs. Evil. But 90% of characters will end happily, so don’t worry about them, dear reader. SPOILERS
Well, the true is that the biggest flaw of this trilogy are its characters. I don’t mind all the parallels to Middle-Earth (I suppose that if Kay hadn’t edited Silmarillion, they wouldn’t have been noticed so eagerly), Narnian-like plot device of wandering between the worlds and typical trope of Dark Lord. I don’t mind that the main commonfolk representative are our five characters from Earth. I don’t mind stereotypical portrait of Celtic-like Brennin with all these Irish Gaelic names, priestessess of Goddess and fertility rituals — and yet it isn’t Celtic enough and climatic enough for me. It is just a trivial vision using the most popular Celtic tropes taken from The Mists of Avalon. I don’t mind that cultures based on Native Americans (Dalrei) and Middle-Eastern (Cathal) are also stereotypical. Remember, Dalrei have shamans and pavillons, and in Cathal there are slaves and gardens! I don’t mind because these cliches at least aren’t racist in comparison to Eddings or C. S. Lewis. In Fionavar Tapestry people differ, but they are never described as ugly because of their skin colour, and they are not condemned to support the Evil One because of their ethnic origins (so much better in comparison with Narnia books or The Belgariad). Descriptions of Evil!Dwarves or urgachs and svart alfars depicted as random monsters are actually more disturbing (I suppose that this particular kind of racism we “owe” to Tolkien).
Anyway, Fionavar at least is colourful, even if quite generic. The characters are much more problematic to me. The main trouble is that the author often inclines how we should perceive particular characters. For example, we should love Diarmuid, and find Aileron too serious and too dull. Actually, I hate Diarmuid and I love Aileron. I don’t care what GGK would think about that. Diarmuid is just impulsive and shallow womanizer. If he was charming at least… But he isn’t. He is almost a rapist bastard. At first he harasses Jennifer. Then he seduces Sharra. Yes, seduces, because their sex couldn’t be find wholly consensual. Then, when Sharra rejects him in Brennin, he tries to break into her bedroom. He receives only cold shower from a bucket. Team Sharra! I don’t care that he is friendly towards Kevin and Paul. I don’t care that eventually he remains faithful to Sharra. I don’t care that he dies heroically at the end I suppose that his death was mainly to convince sceptical readers that he is Sooo Good and brave, and unselfish. And, besides, sometimes it is more easy to die heroically than to live with the weight of responsibility. That is why I prefer Aileron. He was always underestimated and I pity him as a human being and as unfavorite author’s character. He is just calm and responsible, and I would choose him over brilliant dandy guy like his brother.
The true is that I just don’t like Diarmuid. I don’t like all these womanizers portrayed like progressive apostles of love. Because there is damned difference between polyamory or free love, and between typical patriarchal dudes fucking everything which moves except for other dudes. In free love or polyamory, every member of a relationship can choose how this relationship should be like. Womanizers have sex with many women even if their partners want monogamy. Because, you know, boys will be boys and so on. They are also not despised for their behaviour, while women leading similar sexual life are victims of slut-shaming. Ok, that is not much of it in “The Fionavar Tapestry” — Kay’s books aren’t like that — but, on the other hand, some problems aren’t noticed, either. For Kay it seems to be completely normal that serving maids in inns are literally prostitutes and have sex with the inn’s customers. No, it is neither funny, nor normal. It is the part of patriarchal system and does not differ much from raping a peasant woman or a servant girl. Because such women have sex not because of desire or love — they just need money, no matter how our Kevin and Diarmuid are precious and handsome. It is also quite improbable that these girls wanted to work as waitresses-prostitutes. As in our world, they were probably too poor or uneducated to gain a different job.
And this lead us to another problem and another character. Oh, Jaelle! She is supposed to be irritating and embittered, and guess why? Because she is a local feminist and she sees that the position of Brennin women is shitty. Flashbacks with Evil! Darkovan revolutionists so much — let’s overdraw every group/character which sees inequalities and fights against them! And again, I like a character which I wasn’t supposed to like. Because Jaelle is right, no matter that Kay doesn’t see he created a patriarchal society. Jennifer may talk that our world is patriarchal, too. It is, but Fionavar is more. Really, in Canada in the ’80s women at least were allowed to study, to take part in political life, to inherit equally with men — nothing of this can be said about Brennin women. The only influential ones are the priestesses.
From gender roles we may as well return to sexual questions. Because sex in these books is creepy. And characters become even more unbelievable because of that. And I warn you — in the next books, there won’t be much improvement in this question.
The problem is not casual sex. When, let’s say, Bradley describes in her later Darkover books sex between people who are neither lovers nor married couple, it makes sense. They have sex because they are friends/ they need consolation/ they want to overcome their fears about intimacy/ whatever. Anyway, it makes much more sense in comparison to The Fionavar Tapestry‘s encounters! At Bradley, something cames out of sex at least. People learn that they are good friends, that they are happy together or not, that they feel something towards another human being or not. Yes, for this I must praise her, even if I’ve found Darkover cycle so dubious.
In this trilogy often… People have sex and their relation doesn’t evolve at all. They just part, or they meet several months later and “By the way, I’m pregnant. How should I name your kid?”. Sex is so random here that it could be omitted as well. Liane and David, David and hunting goddess, Diarmuid and random lady-in-waiting, Kim and Loren… Who cares. Oh, wait. Kim and Loren are a bit problematic to me. Not because Loren is old. It is because that he is about… Sixty years Kim’s senior? It’s creepy, no matter that it is a mad feast time. Yeah, sexual feast/carnivals will become GGKʼs specialty. As well as useless encounters between random characters.
Another problem is the style. Pathos, pathos, pathos. Everything is dramatic and profound, everything should move the reader deeply. It doesn’t. Sometimes it is just boring, sometimes irritating. Subtle indications on the level of “THIS EVENT IS CRUCIAL AND IMPORTANT!” don’t help, either. Indicating how you should perceive a particular scene just makes me angry.
When there is no pathos, there are typical fantasy POVs instead. There is nothing outstanding in GGK’s writing, although I must admit that over the years, he’ll establish his specyfic, original style.
You see, these books are better than Shannara or Belgariad cycle. Only one positive characters, our Divine Diar, is particularly nasty. The world is colourful even if generic. The characters have their own drawbacks and problems, they are not heroes in the meaning of old myths. Many of them are quite believable.
But there are just better high fantasy books. More classical, like LoTR. More subversive, like the whole series about Thomas Covenant. And The Fionavar Tapestry is by no means the best work of Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s the worst one, but also the first one. I can console you that later, it will be only better.
Left Hand of Fiction 