Where to begin? Guy Gavriel Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry is an awful fantasy trilogy, with almost every fault that a book in the genre can have. The story begins when five University of Toronto students from this world are transported to the magical Fionavar, "first of all the worlds." There they find themselves instrumental in defeating Rakoth Maugrim, an evil and immortal god who was chained to a mountain after a great war one thousand years ago.

Now to list the problems. First, if you can't already tell, the story thrives upon cliches. As if the Big Bad Guy who Reawakens isn't bad enough, Kay also introduces a race of stolid, stone-busting dwarves, straight from Tolkien, and a thinly disguised race of elves (whom Kay calls "lios alfar"). Then there is the tribe of skilled horsemen on the plains, and the orc-like creations of Rakoth. Of course it's not all unoriginal: the magic of Fionavar is interesting, as is its history. But the proportion of banalities to original ideas is too high to give the story as a whole any sense of freshness.

Second, too many significant events in the book have little to no foreshadowing. At one point, for instance, a ghost ship provides key aid to the characters--and yet it was barely mentioned before (if at all--I didn't go back to look). To take another example, at the end of the book a major foe suddenly appears in the sky--and it is only at that point that Kay hurriedly dishes out some exposition. Of course, a fantasy novel can't foreshadow every event--that would make the novel predictable and dull. But where surprising things happen, there should be at least some background in place so that the event doesn't seem like a ploy by the author.

Third, The Fionavar Tapestry's characters simply do not act realistically. When Dave, one of the Toronto students, becomes lost near the beginning of the book, the four other protagonists are surprisingly unconcerned. In fact, none of the five are even particularly fazed by the fact that they were transported into another world. Another example: at one point Diarmuid peremptorily executes a villager for showing disrespect to the High King. Kevin (another Toronto student) is horrified--and justifiably so. And then, after a really bad speech by Diarmuid, Kevin just gets over his horror. (A very similar thing happens with Shalhassan, who also casually kills those who displease him and yet is supposed to be a good guy.) I think the problem is twofold: first, the characters are almost all there in service of the plot, and so when plot and character conflict, plot wins out; and second, Kay seems to have had two or three primary traits listed for all of the characters, and so thought it was no problem if a character was incoherent outside those primary traits (which, by the way, he emphasizes again, and again, and again).

Fourth, the language of The Fionavar Tapestry is bloated, overblown, and sometimes laughably melodramatic. Kay was clearly trying to achieve an epic style with his writing, but he falls well short of the mark. Let me give you some choice examples: "It was true. Ivor knew that as soon as he heard the words, and he knew it as deeply as he had known any single thing in all his life." "There was a keen brightness in Dalreidan's face as he turned back to look at her. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'I doubted.'" Knew it as deeply as he had known any single thing in all his life?! A keen brightness?! And then there is the overuse of the word "infinite," as in, "he spoke with infinite compassion" ("infinite compassion" is a very common phrase), or "he cradled her in his arms with infinite gentleness," and so on. The writing is just awful--open any page and you can see it for yourself.

Fifth, lots of things about the trilogy are just plain silly. The tribe of horsemen I alluded to earlier all have names ending with "-or," and so when Dave lands among them, he becomes "Davor"--a silly name that only becomes sillier because it is always invoked with such gravity. ("Oh Davor! Thou art our only hope.") The whole tapestry imagery that supposedly pervades the book--e.g., the supreme deity is a Weaver, and when events occur they are "woven on the Tapestry"--feels tacked on and superfluous. Even more tacked on is the whole Camelot thread, with Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere appearing for no apparent reason--and leaving in an unintentionally hilarious scene that seems like it will end three times, before italicized words bring...them...back! More silly notions: lots and lots of casual sex occurs, with the result that long stretches of the book seem like an adolescent's dream of what a fantasy world would really be like. Everyone is handsome, or pretty, or noble, or gallant, with both deep and superficial character flaws few and far between (except for the Big Bad Guy, of course). Rakoth Maugrium just sits in his fortress for most of the book, which made no sense to me--if you were an evil god intent upon destroying all life, wouldn't you get started as quickly as you could, and send out more troops than the pitiful number that actually head out? During the carving contest between Matt and Kaen (two dwarves), one of the Toronto students suddenly becomes a statue expert and give an incredibly lengthy and bloated evaluation of the two statues. And, finally, as in bad B-films the world over, in the final confrontation against the Big Bad Guy the villain naturally tells our protagonists exactly how he can be defeated--even though so far there has been very little hint that such a thing was possible.

So, for the most part, I really disliked this book: it is an essentially juvenile fantasy gussied up as a mature trilogy, with too many ludicrous elements to really merit respect. And yet, I have to admit that the ending was well done (especially given what Kay had to work with), and Chapter 9 of the first book contains a particularly harrowing flashback that will be hard for me to forget. Those two positives aside, however, there is very little reason to read The Fionavar Tapestry.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu