How could I sum up this book? The author repeats himself. The creepy sex is present as usual. The style is stable. However, the whole historical background and references seem more real, the setting is captivating, and the commonfolk — in comparison to A Song for Arbonne — present again. So, I would say it’s the best of GGK’s books reviewed here so far. But there will be better ones. And in this particular book, some disturbing or just ridiculous issues still could be found. OK, mainly ridiculous.
Whom do we have here?
Jehane bet Ishak — a Kindath (Jewish-like) doctor, actually a nice, clever and non-stereotypical character. She loves her profession and although she has had several boyfriends, she is finally a woman portrayed in the completely different way than Alienor or Arianne. Her job, her background and thoughts are important here, not her sexual life or her appearance. SPOILERS She ends up with slightly older BiDandy-Assassin-Poet-Diplomate Ammar, although I wished it had been Alvar. SPOILERS
Ammar ibn Khairan — A Dubious Bisexual from Al-Andalus Al-Rassan. He likes jewellery, he likes his enemies, SPOILERS but he remains loyal to his country. Then he migrates to lead a Quiet Life with Jehane. SPOILERS Actually I found him an irritating chap. However, I can’t say if it was because of his own personality and his pointless sex with the dead king’s courtesan, or of because he was made a very stereotypical bisexual person.
Alvar de Pellino— a Young and Inexperienced boy from Spanish king’s party. He falls in love with slightly older Jehane, but she has only sex with him. SPOILERS He ends as a Kindath-convert doctor living near Jehane in Italy Batiara. SPOILERS
Rodrigo Belmonte — a Chivalric and Handsome commander with Deadly Moustache. Has some hots for Jehane, but he remains faithful to his Beautiful Wife Miranda because of #KnightEthos. He has two sons, Diego and Fernando, the first being a clairvoyant one. SPOILERS Gets killed in a honorable duel by his good friend, Ammar. SPOILERS
King Ramiro of Valledo and his French Ferrieres wife Ines — an interesting couple in which he is cheating on with some invisible concubines, and she finds sex Sinful, and yet their amorous life is satysfying and rich. And they love each other truly altogether, literally cannot living without each other. SPOILERS At the end, they’ll win. SPOILERS
So here we are. This time, somehow I didn’t find some self-generic tropes and Author’s Appeal irritating. Ammar wasn’t as irritating as Bertran, and in comparison to Diarmuid, he was no douchebag. Another country based on Italy might be suspicious, but, well, I think that I’m the only person who really pays attention to GGK’s worldbuilding self-recurrence. Of course, there were at least two pointless and unnecessary, and a bit improbable sex scenes. The first is between Ammar and mourning Zabira. Why did she want it? To gain some influence over Ammar? To forget about dead Almalik? Who knows…
But the definite winner of this category would remain the carnival encounter between Alvar and some nameless Masqued Sensual Woman. It doesn’t lead to anything, the woman never reappers… It’s also worth to notice that it is exactly the fourth book of GGK with the motive of a feast/carnival with some random sex. Original sooo much. Or some kind of an obsession, idk.
There are things which are just funny, like Almalik’s remark on his son who looks like a leper because he has… A blinking eyelid. As we all know, a blinking eyelid is the most significant symptom of leprosy. My mum has something like that sometimes. How do you think, where should I send her? To Spinalonga or to Thomas Covenant? Not to mention that we won’t see any leper in the Jadiverse, although, one might think, it is quite popular association with the Middle Ages.
Or Rodrigo Belmonte. Believe me or not, in my country his rank was translated as a “commander” instead of a “captain”. Because, you know, on Cuba there was “El Comandante”, and Cuba or quasi-Spain, who cares. Spanish language here, Spanish language there, and Spanish is of course magical realism, and magical realism is Latin America, and Latin America is Cuba… And so on.
Or the names. There are hell bunch of interesting and specific Spanish names. But GGK, for example, names two brothers García and Gonzalez de Rada. These names are more popular as the surnames than the given names, but who cares?
And there are things which are disturbing, probably coming from the fact that GGK hasn’t realized some questions about sex. Because, you know, having sex with an equivalent of teacher/lecturer isn’t normal, no matter if you’re a man or a woman. Well, I would put it into the same category as the Prostitutes-Waitresses or the troubadours gaining opportunities from sex.
And, as usual, some social questions like women’s emancipation are summed up into: “Maybe one day it will be better.” Knowing that specific manner of GGK, it is less irritating than the reflections concluded in A Song for Arbonne, and in comparison to Fionavarian “Don’t complain, Jaelle, it is so and it has always been so” it’s a real revolution.
It may seem that The Lions of Al-Rassan is a book repeating almost all the flaws of the previous ones, and that the commonfolk issue is no better than in A Song for Arbonne, except for we have a female physician instead of a troubadouress. I don’t know, maybe I have a weakness for this book. Maybe I like it because of Jehane, who isn’t a stereotypical fantasy character, being a relatively low-born doctor instead of a female warrior, a witch, or an aristocrat. Or maybe I am glad that here, there are no more villains, at least, not the major ones. The Rada Brothers are the Cruel Servants of a Good King, and the eldest son of Almalik deceives his courtesans, and there are, of course, some radicals from the desert. But all they are complex and dubious characters in comparison to Ademar or Galbert, or DarkLord Rakoth Maugrim. And, besides, the most important thing is that the “main players” are grey characters, both in the politics and in the personal life. Almalik may seem cruel and not a nice guy altogether, but we’re suggested that this cruelty is specific for the Asharite (Muslim-like) rulers in Al-Rassan. And maybe it were his descriptions which made me realize something: this time, Guy Gavriel Kay wrote a truly historical novel, and so we shouldn’t perceive and judge depicted characters by our standards. You see, it is a historical novel in the way Kristin Lavransdatter is, or the War of the Roses books of Philippa Gregory try to be. It is a book written from the perspective of medieval mentality and medieval set of values, but by no means lacking of a subtle social retelling. So, for example, we have at last Altar Diplomacy instead of marrying a fisherman’s daughter, and a guy who slapped his sons, but who is no villain. You see, it isn’t justyfying of children’s abuse or loveless marriages: it just shows social conventions different than ours, and we must make up with them.
And The Lions of Al-Rassan make me realise that GGK is a specyfic type of a reteller. Unlike some authors, he doesn’t say: “Look, Olden Days were different than conservatives tell you!”. Because he doesn’t need to do so. He is aware that people have always had premarital and extramarital sex, and that non-heteronormative people didn’t appear out of blue in the 1960s’. He doesn’t show it as a Great Discovery, he shows it as the part of his universe’s reality, and he adjusts it to specific conditions of his setting. For example, Ammar is quite tolerated as a bisexual, because he is literally Almalik’s handyman. Or let’s take Ines. She finds sex sinful, but she enjoys it at once, although she doesn’t like admitting it to her unruly husband. It’s quite similar to Kristin Lavransdatter’s characters’ attitude, although that book was more focused on premarital and extramarital sex. You see, Kristin and Erlend feel that their trysts are sinful according to their religion, but they keep meeting because they are so infatuated with each other. And that is the point which ultraconservatives don’t see: people have sex neverthless of their religion or set of values, they have it even if they find it bad. Considering an intercourse between two adult, unrelated, willing and sometimes even married people evil is another theme, but this time I’m not going to examine puritan aspects of Abrahamic religions. Remember one thing: in Medieval times, people also enjoyed sex, and there was nothing strange in it. And GGK shows it.
Class issues are also retelled here, at least in comparison to A Song for Arbonne. We’ve got poor prostitutes feeling compassion towards Jehane’s mother. They are all outcasts — they as the sex workers and she as a Kindath, a member of a religious minority. We have also a country Asharite boy whose mother was killed and raped by the soldiers of the Rada brothers. This time, the stories of war atrocities are more vivid, more real — because they are committed not by the Evil Ones, but by the one of the sides in an equal struggle.
But the main theme — connected with all the other themes — is religion. There is the whole range of shades and beliefs here. Jehane isn’t especially “believing”, but she is proud of her Kindath ancestors and heritage. Ramiro is quite casual in religious matters, and he uses the religion as a war-pretext very deftly. Ines is truly devoted to Jad, but she is no fanatic or racist as for her milieu — she is terrified at the news of destroying a Kindath city in Batiara under the guise of a crusade. Ammar, on the other hand, remains quite detached from religion, feeling that on the desert, his ancestors might have been closer to their beliefs.
Religion is show also as a destructive power here, an excellent tool for fanatics and politicians. Sounds familiar? And here, it is more believable than in A Song for Arbonne. This time, religious, ethnic and social unrests are no metaphors, what is more, they are blended together. In Fezana, once under the rules of Almalik, the Kindaths started to be persecuted because of unstable political situation, the war between Esperañan Jaddites and Al-Rassanian Asharites. The people find a scapegoat, a group to blame just becouse of its otherness and minority. And the “authorities” don’t care, because they know that otherwise, the folk’s rage would turn on them. Sounds familiar again? Today, we may connect antisemitism with the twentieth century’s history above all, but GGK shows us another aspects of this kind of racism in his parallel universe. In Middle Ages, antisemitism was common, too and some conspiracy theories about Jews come from these times, like that “They eat Christian kids!1!1!”. And, of course, there were hell bunch of slaughters by the way of crusades or of the Black Death epidemy. So, I would say that The Lions of Al-Rassan are above all the parallel of medieval antisemitism, not of the modern one.
And the religious divisions in Jadiverse are the alegory of religious divisions between Abrahamic religions. But here, the beliefs are based on celestial bodies. The Asharites worshipp the stars, the Kindaths worshipp two moons as two sisters, and Jad is literally a solar god. Of course, it lacks of some of our nuances. For example, the Kindath’s religion isn’t shown as the eldest one in parallel to Judaism, and the three systems aren’t so entwined as in the case of Muslim, Judaism and Christianity. But simplifying some historical parallels is typical for fantasy, so I don’t mind. However, I must warn you that it isn’t the retelling of the life of Isabel of Castilla or of the last years of Reconquista. The local Spaniards here are more tolerant, Ines and Ramiro don’t expel any Kindaths and Asharites, and the setting is more based on the eleventh than on the fifteenth century, on legendary times of El Cid. I hope it was rather deliberate decision of the author than setting mitigation still quite typical for the fantasy genre. Still, the book has some cruel fragments, but above all remains optimistic about human nature, even too optimistic, assuming, for example, how easily Jehane is accepted as a female doctor. I’ve mentioned before that omitting discrimination is naive, not progressive, but, well, The Lions of Al-Rassan are more realistic than the previous GGK’s books.
And for the setting… As in Tigana‘s case, it is the main attitude of the book. It is even more admirable assuming that GGK couldn’t use all the typical tropes which we connect with Spain now: flamenco culture, frilly dresses, corrida, the cuisine based on pepper. Instead, we got entwined Moorish-like and Christian-like influences in the architecture and customs, ranchers, horses and divided kingdoms; all which could be obtained from Medieval Spain associations. And, what is more, it is the quasi-Spain before the times of lipienza de sangre, full of various religions and ethnic groups (it lacks only almost-matriarchal Basques☹️). It is the recalling of the world no longer existent – the rich and sophisticated world of Al-Andalus. And Al-Rassan is even more vivid and captivating than the divided kingdoms of Esperaña, because soon it would be gone, which Ammar is stating with sadness at the end of the book. Actually, I respect Guy Gavriel Kay for portraying Al-Rassan with no modern parallels and associations which would provoke some racist and xenophobic comments. His book just remind us in a subtle and unobtrusive way that Medieval Europe wasn’t ethnically and religiously homogeneous, and that the people, despite of different beliefs and customs, still loved and doubted as we do now.
Left Hand of Fiction 