Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #228893 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

The fionavar Tapestry - beyond your wildest dreams
I hunger for good fantasy and sci fi and when I get it I devour it. I feel sorry for those previous reviewers who didn't finish the book. I must admit I almost fell into that trap. When I first read this first book of the Fionavar Tapestry, the Summer Tree, I found the initial premis of 5 people being transported to another world a little... hard to swallow. My common sense just kept screaming at me - this would never happen!I also couldn't keep all the characters straight, they all seemed to be doing pointless things that made no sense. I felt very much like a child trying in vain to follow her perants conversation. I put it down in exasperation...
Then I went back to it when I ran out of books and that was the only unread book on my shelf and... oh my god... I'm so glad I did. It is without doubt THE BEST trilogy I have ever read.. and reread, and reread. (And believe me I have read quite a lot.)
That's the great thing about the Fionavar Tapestry, you can reread it time and again and still glean something more, a nuance, a twist that you missed before. Alot of the emotional stuff - especially regarding one of the main characters Paul, and his inability to grieve for his dead girlfriend - in the first book, is disjointed and doesn't gel, until you've read the whole trilogy, then gone back and reread it again. Suddenly a cosmic wow goes through your brain and the whole trilogy unlocks before you and the richness and vivacity of this tale and the pain and terrible tradgedy of its main characters takes on a whole new world of meaning, 'new avenues to sorrow' to quote Kay himself. If you thought Tigana was poiniant then I defy you to(re)read this trilogy and not be reduced to tears again and again. Especially when we meet Darrien, a soul so lost, so alone, so unsure, so 'ultimately poised bewteen light and dark', with the hardest, most important choice of all to make, of all the children in all the worlds... and all he wants is to be loved... A tradgic tapestry of a tale.

Kay impresses!
The Fionavar Tapestry, this brilliant fantasy work impressed me a lot at the time I read (and re-read)it. I still hold it in high regard and think it's a marvel of a trilogy.
The Darkest Road, the last book, brings forth the fight against all things evil, personified by Rakoth Maugrim. the fight is watched by the old gods, who cannot interfere, who will not take a stand. At least, not before one of their servants is killed by a demigod..
Arthur Pendragon , Lancelot and all characters from Fionavar have different parts to play in the struggles, but which part does maugrim's son play? Secretly brought up in a loving family, he runs away to find his father and it is soon clear that all attempts to change his mind are futile, even deadly, as his powers gets stronger every day.

The last battle is near and Maugrim as strong as ever..

I really enjoyed reading the trilogy of Fionavar, with it's multi layered lore, it's sad prophecies and the destinies of the characters involved. To bring out Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere was bold and inexplicable, but somehow works.
If you like Fantasy already,or want to try it, this is what you should try!
I thank Mr Kay for many wonderful hours spent with the books.

Good, complex but also slightly disappointing
The Fionavar Tapestry - the trilogy of which this book forms the last part - is clearly sub-Tolkien, and it's also in my opinion journeyman work. That sounds like a very bad beginning for a review - indeed it is - but this trilogy (and this book) is very far from poor work. It's close to the best fantasy available, and that, I think is why I'm inclined to judge it harshly. It just falls short of real greatness.

Why does it fall short? Well, for me there are a number of reasons.

Firstly, the homage to Tolkien is just too strong. It isn't surprising - Kay was the joint editor of the Silmarillion in preparing it for publication - but in my opinion it stunts these books.

Secondly, I find the 'Holiday from America' framing narrative just too corny. If you want to write a work of fantasy, fine, do so. If you want to introduce a group of characters who are foreign to the environment of the narrative (which is a useful device because it solves a lot of exposition problems) do so. But why, for heaven's sake, do they have to be dragged out of contemporary North America? It's presumably intended to add credibility to the story, but for me it does exactly the opposite.

Finally, what utterly sticks in my throat is that - as with Tolkien, as with so many other works of fantasy - the outcome for which our heroes strive, the ultimate triumph of 'good' over 'evil', is the restoration of an absolute, hereditary, pure-blood, patriarchal, male monarchy.

Yee-uch!

And yet despite all that it's good. Despite all that and less than perfectly rounded characters. The reason that it's good is Kay's extraordinary depth of knowledge of European (and North American) folklore, and his ability to borrow and integrate folklore elements from many traditions into a cohesive and compelling narrative. That, and the fact that he can write.

This is nothing like as good as Kay's later work, which for me is the finest fantasy available today. But it is still very good.