Ysabel, by Guy Gavriel Kay
I learned about Guy Gavriel Kay‘s Ottawa reading of his new book the day before, by luck. I told Simon (who also read the book) and we met at the pub, just in time to have a beer and chat a bit before the reading would begin. Shortly after, Christian showed up and we had a nice discussion about conventions, comic books and, strangely enough, hockey. The excerpt that Guy Gavriel Kay read from the book was intriguing but, sadly, English not being my primary language and being more of a visual person, I did not enjoyed the reading as much as my friends did. I grabbed two copies of the book (one for me, one for a friend in Saguenay) and managed to have a little 5-minutes chat with the author as he was signing the books.
Guy Gavriel Kay is known best for his fantasy books where he would create a world based on a real culture. The Lions of Al-Rassan is inspired my medieval Spain, The Last Light of the Sun by the Viking culture, etc. The author here takes a step in another direction, setting Ysabel here and now, on Earth. The action takes place in Provence and tells the story of Ned, a teenager who gets involved in a big plot with ageless entities from the Roman empire and Celtic tribes. This is not a total departure from Guy Gavriel Kay’s obsession with history. Instead of taking the reader to another place and time, he brings history back to us. The result is different, but not at odd with the rest of his work.
The book is fast-paced and once I started reading the book, I could simply not put it down. The story is fascinating and built in a way where small bits of informations are slowly revealed to the reader. At the end of every chapter, I found myself turning the page and starting the next one because I wanted to know more; Because I couldn’t possibly stop reading there.
The story is set in the present day and Guy Gavriel Kay did a good job at using pop culture references: Apple’s iPod, Google, Nike, Google, The Lion King, Google, etc. Although not essential to the story, those little details really add to the « here and now » of the story. This is happening in this world, now.
Ysabel is the story of Ned who accompany his dad (a reputable photographer) to France for a book he is taking pictures for. Ned stumble upon a suspicious man who’s motive are not clear. The teenager and his new friend (a girl from New York he met in Aix-en-Provence) get involved in a mystic ritual which takes a bad twist for both of them.
The caracters in Ysabel are well defined, very human. The friendship/romantic tension between Ned and Kate puts a smile on my face. My main concern with the book is that Cadell and Phelan’s motivation are something difficult to grasp. I ended-up a few times wondering why they we doing this or that (other than the obvious answer: « to move the story forward. ») I guess being entities from the past (no spoiler here, this is pretty obvious from the beginning) we can’t totally understand what they are thinking.
This being said, there is something else that did felt odd to me as I was reading the ending (and this is a mini-spoiler so skip this paragraph if you plan on reading the book) ; It’s the tension between Ysabel/Melanie and Ned in the ending chapter. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I would have preferred a few hints earlier on.
So Ysabel is definitively a good read. It’s an amazing book, well written, and it tells a fascinating story. While being different from the other books Guy Gavriel Kay wrote recently, it’s still have this historical flavor that I love.
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Hey Alexandre, great review of Ysabel. Much better than mine. I guess it is not hard to tell which one of us is the professional writer.
You see, I should have made a review of Isabel too. But it would have looked much like yours since I can’t disagree with what you said.
I can’t say I didn’t liked this book since it has totally entangled me from the start ’till way after it’s end. The story’s well built, the characters are strong and the plot is, in overall, well made.
*SPOILERS!!!*
But what do you think about the idea of bringing back characters from Fionavar? I felt surprised at first, and even if it is well made, I still feel a little bit shocked. I guess that what makes it good is that they aren’t the center of the story afterall, don’t you think?
PS : I wrote in english ‘cuz you made an english post. Otherwise, I would have mailed a word in french. Héhéhé!
Simon: Thanks.
Hervé: Since I haven’t read Fionavar yet (it’s sitting on my bookshelf, don’t worry, I’ll get to it eventually) I can’t say how good or bad it’s done. But the secondary characters are well defined and fit in the story. I did not noticed anything too strange about them that would have made me wonder if they were from a different story, which, I guess, means it was done properly. There are missing details and questions unanswered which would probably find answers in Fionavar, but nothing critical enough to affect the present story.