Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (Roc, 1999)
★★☆☆☆
On a peninsula occupied by two sorcerous tyrants, a group of survivors from Tigana—a province whose name has been magically blighted out of everyone else’s minds—fights to regain what has been taken.
Originally read in 2016 and rated five stars, with the comment:
I read this because all the Amazon reviews said “best book I’ve ever read.” And it WAS really good. Complex characters, tons of action right off the bat, lovely exploration of dark themes about memory and identity. Agree with another review about the contrasting antagonists—very humanized and well done. Beautiful, lyrical writing. Kind of drags in the middle though, and the ending didn’t blow my mind quite as much as expected. I really liked the treatment of Erlein—my palms were sweaty while reading about the encounter with him, and the depiction of the ensuing complex, raw emotions was just on point.
Five years later, I still believe Tigana accomplishes what it sets out to do. But I’m a sharper reader now, and take more issues with it.
Most of Tigana’s plot machinations happen offscreen, revealed only in the moment that they matter; this is a book that’s concerned with its characters, their plights, and what they will or won’t do in the name of freedom. In some cases, it succeeds: Erlein’s enslavement remains chilling; Tiganans we’ve just met falling on their knees in love and loyalty to their returned Prince still move me.
But Tigana’s protracted efforts to wring emotion out of the reader are often undermined by the passiveness and/or one-dimensionality of its characters. Devin’s motivations in particular are opaque in a way that makes it frustrating to spend so much time with his POV: one day he’s a traveling musician with only the faintest feelings of being disconnected from his family history; the next, having learned that he’s actually from Tigana, he gives himself heart and soul to the fight. (There’s a notion that his connection to a Struggle About Memory is that he’s blessed with a near-eidetic one, but it never coalesces into anything.) From there, he, and others, move through the story in a constant “eerie, dreamlike mood,” never really acting of themselves, but instead being acted upon by the hand of the plot.
“I honestly don’t know why I’m here. I’m in such a strange mood tonight.”
Something else that becomes extremely tiresome in this book is just how often characters are described as thinking about or otherwise motivated by sex. There’s a heaping dose of male gaze, to be sure, but in many cases it’s more insidious than even that. In Devin’s introductory chapters, for example, he is described as looking younger than his nineteen years, which makes him automatically attractive to everyone (yikes) and forces him to fend off propositions and predators. Before Devin’s own attraction to Catriana becomes a (ridiculous, terrible) plot point, he has Bad reactions to perceived slights from her, at one point tamping down an impulse to “whack the girl across the back of her head.” (Of course, she only insults him because deep down, she envies his singing ability.)
Any character, even random background extras, can be assumed—if not stated directly—to be sexually motivated, to subscribe to the trope that sexual partners are “conquests” to be won. Every female character is beautiful and furthers the plot only as she can seduce or otherwise facilitate men’s desires. In Senzio, a province known for its sexual debauchery, it’s even common for lovers to carry unconscious people around:
“We hid behind the main temple of Eanna for a time, and then I carried her here.”
“Carried her through the streets?” Alais asked. “No one noticed that?”
Erlein grinned at her, not unkindly. “It isn’t that unusual in Senzio, my dear.”
Alais flushed crimson, but Devin could see that she didn’t really mind.
(Thanks for telling us what Alais thinks, Devin!)
Considering that Tigana was originally published in 1990, and draws inspiration from Renaissance Italy, it’s not surprising that it goes in these directions, but it is disappointing: we can do better in fantasy worlds (and we have). Consider me also disappointed that a gay, masochistic character, who affects exaggerated gay stereotypes, is regarded by everyone as ~so perverse~ (although lesbian relationships also exist in this world and are unremarkable?).
As the author himself states in the afterword, BDSM, incest, and other “insurrections of night” are used in Tigana as demonstrations of “how people rebel when they can’t rebel, how we behave when the world has lost its bearings, how shattered self-respect can ripple through to the most intimate levels of our lives.” I’m not convinced the work is actually interested enough in those questions to do them justice: the scenes in question—even with the use of sexual deviancy as a tired shortcut—do nothing to further their characters’ arcs, and read as gratuitous and horny. In this way and others, Tigana, despite parading its moral ambiguity around, is rarely as clever as it thinks.
Other things:
Duke Sandre spends almost the entire book in blackface.
The entire Carlozzini storyline comes out of nowhere, with a huge infodump and an extremely forced romance (like all this book’s romances) between Elena and Baerd.
Dianora’s ending does a huge disservice to the character.
For a 30-year-old book, Tigana has not aged well. It’s hard to say that its redeeming qualities are worth the nearly 700 page slog, but for someone who can look past these problematic signposts of Old School Fantasy, it may be worth reading. Once.