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Thoughts on Tigana
FINISHED READING. Or "reading". I borrowed this one as an audiobook from the Seattle Public Library! Which means there might be some portions I missed a bit of, since I heard it while cycling and sometimes city noise might have distracted me a bit, and I didn't go back and do any close reading. Still, here's my thoughts on it!
I picked up Tigana, because I wanted to read something by Guy Gavriel Kay— he's known for his historically-based fantasy settings and being good at doing interesting fantasy politics/power-jockeying. Tigana has won an award and seemed fairly well regarded, and the library had it so I decided that sure, why not! Time to read Tigana. Time for some pseudo-Venice!
Unfortunately, it's definitely a work that has aged extremely poorly.
The primary, though far from only, culprit is Devin di Tigana. The narrative focuses on an ensemble cast, but one of our first narrators is Devin and he is a fairly consistent thread throughout the novel, though other characters come and go from the narrative. And, despite the fact that this is a novel that is primarily concerned with empire and memory, and of a people whose identity has been stolen from them by empire, we get. . . a dude that is clearly there to get to have a romantic adventure novel experience and be there for readers to self-insert into. So, that's pretty tonally jarring.
Second, this is a novel where one of the themes it wants to explore— according to the author, in the afterword included on the audiobook— is deviant sexuality in the people that have lost their footing in the world— something that should be meaningful has become corrupted. In some instances, this works really well— Dianora and her brother's relationship. In some instances, it's pretty cringe and aged poorly: see, duke's gay son, the empress and her lesbian lover. Great that we include these gay characters just so we can include them as part of this theme and then kill them off. This was published in 1990, so if it was just bad at the LGBT I'd forgive it, though. But.
Devin. In Devin's case, this theme gets to be weirdly lumped into wish-fulfillment for the male reader where Catriana fucks Devin so he doesn't pay attention to the plotting happening behind his back— and then he gets included in the plot anyway, and he got to have sex with a pretty girl! So while for Catriana we get to see it feeding into the theme of sex being rendered no longer a thing of meaningful connection, as she uses it as a tool, for Devin we get... wish-fulfillment. He later gets to also have kinky sex with a priestess and the empty debauchery again feeds into the theme, but it's also like. Trite. Tiresome. There is sex in this book that works and none of the Devin scenes do.
He's also introduced being a sexist prick and then Catriana has to apologise to him for it which is also like, unfortunate.
That said, Diagnora is a great character and she does carry the book. I feel like it would have just been a much better novel from her perspective, especially since her scenes get a lot of the court politics and inner workings of the empire. Sympathetic and in an impossible position, excellent pathos, the flashback scenes give her motivation excellently, her relationship with Brandin and her brother are both convincing, her maneuvering within the court and her maneuvering to get there were all fantastic. I do feel like most the ensemble was pulling their weight, Devin aside, though.
I picked up Tigana, because I wanted to read something by Guy Gavriel Kay— he's known for his historically-based fantasy settings and being good at doing interesting fantasy politics/power-jockeying. Tigana has won an award and seemed fairly well regarded, and the library had it so I decided that sure, why not! Time to read Tigana. Time for some pseudo-Venice!
Unfortunately, it's definitely a work that has aged extremely poorly.
The primary, though far from only, culprit is Devin di Tigana. The narrative focuses on an ensemble cast, but one of our first narrators is Devin and he is a fairly consistent thread throughout the novel, though other characters come and go from the narrative. And, despite the fact that this is a novel that is primarily concerned with empire and memory, and of a people whose identity has been stolen from them by empire, we get. . . a dude that is clearly there to get to have a romantic adventure novel experience and be there for readers to self-insert into. So, that's pretty tonally jarring.
Second, this is a novel where one of the themes it wants to explore— according to the author, in the afterword included on the audiobook— is deviant sexuality in the people that have lost their footing in the world— something that should be meaningful has become corrupted. In some instances, this works really well— Dianora and her brother's relationship. In some instances, it's pretty cringe and aged poorly: see, duke's gay son, the empress and her lesbian lover. Great that we include these gay characters just so we can include them as part of this theme and then kill them off. This was published in 1990, so if it was just bad at the LGBT I'd forgive it, though. But.
Devin. In Devin's case, this theme gets to be weirdly lumped into wish-fulfillment for the male reader where Catriana fucks Devin so he doesn't pay attention to the plotting happening behind his back— and then he gets included in the plot anyway, and he got to have sex with a pretty girl! So while for Catriana we get to see it feeding into the theme of sex being rendered no longer a thing of meaningful connection, as she uses it as a tool, for Devin we get... wish-fulfillment. He later gets to also have kinky sex with a priestess and the empty debauchery again feeds into the theme, but it's also like. Trite. Tiresome. There is sex in this book that works and none of the Devin scenes do.
He's also introduced being a sexist prick and then Catriana has to apologise to him for it which is also like, unfortunate.
That said, Diagnora is a great character and she does carry the book. I feel like it would have just been a much better novel from her perspective, especially since her scenes get a lot of the court politics and inner workings of the empire. Sympathetic and in an impossible position, excellent pathos, the flashback scenes give her motivation excellently, her relationship with Brandin and her brother are both convincing, her maneuvering within the court and her maneuvering to get there were all fantastic. I do feel like most the ensemble was pulling their weight, Devin aside, though.