Review - The Last Light Of The Sun

[wilderthan]

I really, really liked The Last Light Of The Sun. Some things about it were predictable, but that's not a new thing for me when I read fantasy. Some of the things were predictable but I never figured out how they would come about. I really love the melding of different cultures in this, the Norse and the English and the British. One thing I have started to observe in Guy Gavriel Kay is that he can't really write romance -- at least, not in a way that satisfies me. In the Fionavar books, in Ysabel and in this book, there are characters that I can plainly see he wants to be together, but he seems to bring them together too suddenly and then... it doesn't quite work for me. The character-building and world-building is wonderful, and sometimes his relationship building is too (see: Paul and Kevin, in The Summer Tree, in my opinion). He's better at writing friendship than romance.

Halfway through reading this book -- fifty pages in, even -- I put it aside for a bit and ordered all the other books of Kay's I could get my hands on. His writing is lovely, and his storytelling just right for me.