You Should Read Tigana

& you should be mad that no one told you about Guy Gavriel Kay

“No one except hardcore fantasy nerds know who Guy Gavriel Kay is.” 

At least, that’s what Brandon Sanderson said six months ago on his podcast, and as someone who had indeed never heard of (the) Guy, I was intrigued. Kay, according to Sanderson, is one of the five best living fantasy authors. 

And I’d never even heard of him!

I’ve been reading epic fantasy as long as I can remember—never heard the name. So what was I missing? 

I went to the library to find out. The only one of his books they had available was his novel Tigana, so I checked it out. I started it slowly—but two days before it was due back I got hooked. 

So I had to ask Santa Claus for a copy, and he obliged. 

Now, after finishing Tigana, I am legitimately upset that no one told me about Guy Gavriel Kay until last year. 

Now if you’re like me (or the version of me who lived in August 2023), and you haven’t heard of Tigana or Guy Gavriel Kay, consider this your wake-up call. 

Because Tigana was—without a doubt—the best piece of epic fantasy I’ve picked up in a long, long time. 

What’s the Deal With This Book? 

[Some (very light) spoilers ahead, but only for the sake of reviewing the book. My threshold is that I won’t share anything you wouldn’t see in a movie trailer were this book to become a major motion picture.]

Tigana takes place on the fictional Peninsula of the Palm, a mountainous and seafaring region that takes clear inspiration from Italy around the 15th century. The Palm, as it’s called, has always been divided among nine proud nations, each with their own sub-cultures, myths, identities, and rituals. At least, they had been divided, until two separate Tyrant-Sorcerers invaded and subjugated the peoples. Now, the two Tyrants have split the Palm between themselves, ruling the peninsula with force of arms and the threat of magic. A tense peace endures, but may snap at any moment. 

The book’s unique premise is in the name: the now-defunct nation of Tigana. During the conquest, one of the sorcerer-Tyrants cast a spell over the whole world as a piece of particular hatred towards Tigana; now, no one except those born in Tigana prior to the spell can ever hear or utter or read the name “Tigana.” Combined with the ransacking of their nation, it is an unstoppable, slow-moving cultural genocide. Tiganans remember their history and their name. But no one else can. The people of Tigana will literally die out, replaced by those who can never know they existed. The book then follows a small band of rebels who seek to free the Peninsula from the Tyrants and who hope to bring the name of Tigana back into the world. 

The book deals wonderfully with the themes of memory, loss, cultural pride, generational trauma, and the burdens that the past places upon the present. 

One of Tigana’s earliest covers. Despite dozens of covers across re-printings & tons of countries, most covers have aged terribly. Many look like garbage. This is perhaps the strongest. (by Mel Odom, for early US editions)

Why I Loved It

Tigana proved to be exactly the sort of book I love: a grand adventure with memorable and knowable characters, tumbling through a world rich in flavor and lore. 

The story was filled with moments of wonder and grandeur, punctuated with quiet, meaningful moments of humanity and love. 

Plot and Character

The story is generally more plot-driven than character-driven; meaning that the principal conflicts are external and worldly rather than internal and emotional. It’s a book about changing the world, not about individuals growing and changing their hearts. 

This is not to say the characters were shallow or irrelevant. Far from it!

The external conflict does not ever take away from characters’ memorable personalities, their characterizations, their conflicts, their wants and needs, their hopes and their wounds… But rather these are always blended in correct and natural proportion with the external conflict. 

For instance, each of the main rebel-protagonists has their own wounded pasts, their own faults and gifts, and their own frictions with the group. However, each one is in the group for one reason: to free the Palm and bring back the name of Tigana. The characters but themselves aside to accomplish that mission. 

The character-conflicts don’t take a back seat because Kay is less interested in them, they take a backseat because the characters are more concerned with their mission. 

In short, the characters act like real, living, mature adults. Broken yet hopeful. Competent yet imperfect. Delightfully surprising and also ever-believable. They are all looking for salvation from different hurts, but they are all united in trying to fill the Tigana-shaped hole in their hearts. It’s beautiful and bittersweet, all the way through. 

The characters—even including the evil antagonists—are all wonderful to get to know. It has been a long time since I’ve read a book and felt genuine sorrow for a character’s pains, or genuinely smiled to watch them succeed in small things. Tigana has that sort of magic within its pages. 

The plot itself is “standard” in that they are trying to overthrow evil sorcerers. But it’s wonderful in the way it unfolds. 

World-Building & Exposition

Meanwhile, Kay’s exposition of his world-building is perfectly done: he doesn’t spoon-feed you or hold your hand, but instead lets the reader learn about the Palm by living in it. Important circumstances are explained whenever needed, usually through the eyes or memory of the relevant characters; it is rarely noticeable when Kay is explaining something purely for the reader’s benefit, because all the expositing is done simultaneously with revelations about characters. 

You come away from these “exposition flashbacks” feeling more ingrained in the world, but also knowing the characters on page far more deeply than even they might know. At least it feels that way.

Writing Style

One thing I appreciate about the book is the omniscient narrator and the flexibility of Kay’s narrative distance. 

I could go on for a while about this, but the trend today is for first- or third-person limited voice, more specifically it’s what I call the “Third Person Video Game” view. This is where “the camera” of the narrator is always locked to a specific character—a “Point of View” character— in a sort of “over their shoulder” way, much like playing a Legend of Zelda game. We see what they see. We feel what they feel. If we read anyone’s thoughts, its theirs. 

Even if we jump POVs scene-to-scene or chapter-to-chapter, we still get only one character’s POV at a time. Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives, Martin’s Game of Thrones, and Jordan’s Wheel of Time series all use this “locked video-game camera.”¹ 

Not Kay. Blessedly. 

Instead Kay employs a limited omniscience that vacillates between being in someone’s head and being more objective for certain scenes.

Nor is it just voice. Kay changes narrative distance incredibly well, zooming in and out of the narrative. At times we’re right in it, at other times the narration is farther away, no less haunting for giving summary. A given scene may be very detailed or rather sparese, but always for good reason and to good effect.

All of this allows a much greater depth of characterization across the board. 

For example, there’s a moment in the latter stages of the book between a young woman and her father, neither of whom are anything other than minor characters. Throughout the story, there’s been the impression that the daughter is dissatisfied with her life, but is utterly devoted to her father; the father meanwhile, is equally devoted, but knows he cannot give his daughter what she seeks. In a matter of two pages, Kay explores their hearts, lays out the bittersweet tension of love and obligation that binds parent and child, shows how that unfolds over the course of several months, and then brings us finally to a quiet night under the stars on the deck of a seaborne ship. The daughter opens up for the first time. The father opens up too, for the first time. Nothing is resolved, but they understand each other, they love each other, and both mourn for one another’s grief. As a parent myself, it made me misty-eyed. 

All this from perhaps one or two thousand words, for two characters who have hardly been important up to that point. 

That kind of beauty is what makes epic fantasy epic, if you ask me. It’s not just the grand armies and the earth-shaking magic (Tigana has those too!). It’s all the little moments, of little people, that give meaning and purpose to the grander narrative unfolding. 

And I won’t dwell on this: but Kay simply has beautiful prose. It’s a joy to read. It’s up there with Pat Rothfuss (but Kay also uses this thing called “a plot”) and Tad Williams (but Kay also uses this thing called “pacing”). 

The ghostly city looming over the ruins, with the name of Tigana itself being the city that’s blowing away on the wind… Nevermind: this is the strongest cover, capturing Tigana’s blending of melancholy and pride. (by Alexnader Recihstein, for the Swedish edition).

Why You Might Not Love It

Now, that’s why I loved Tigana. But you might not. Here’s why:

Worldbuilding: This is the only G.G.Kay book I’ve read. Since hearing of him, I’ve also heard criticism that his worldbuilding takes too much from historical settings, and I get it. It’s abundantly true that Kay is taking inspiration from Renaissance Italy; he straight-up says so! That doesn’t bother me one bit. But it might bother you. 

And frankly, some of his names are poor. One of the evil Tyrants is named Alberico the Barbadian (not Barbarian, Barbadian, as in “from Barbadior, the homeland of the ferocious barbariansBarbadians”), and the other is Brandin of Ygrath. Brandin—like the kid in high school who thought he was cool because he smoked pot—of Ygrath—however the heck you’re supposed to pronounce that! 

(But the thing is, they are both such. good. villains. Brandin of Ygrath is proud and cruel and relentless, and yet I found myself liking him at certain points. Perhaps because Alberico is even more terrifying, and had one of the best villain-intros I’ve seen. As with all well-done characters, you just stop seeing the weird names and instead visualize the person.)

Not Much Magic: Some people want all kinds of magic in their fantasy stories. This book is overall a low-magic setting. Magic mostly remains theoretical, a looming threat of the two sorcerer-overlords. As time goes on you see more and more magic, as you might expect from heroes trying to fight against evil sorcerers. The rules of that magic are never fully explained either. There are some rules, explained properly and seamlessly when needed, but it’s definitely a “soft magic” system, if you ascribe to that terminology. 

Slow Start: Tigana takes a little while for the plot to reveal itself. The first chunk reads more like slice-of-life, with the world-altering stakes only revealing themselves later on. I almost bounced off of it, to be honest, despite loving Kay’s prose. 

But when the plot does happen, things happen quickly. There are all sorts of things and people that seem innocuous in that placid beginning which then turn out—all at once—to be Chekhov’s guns, littered all around the place. So if you feel it’s moving slow, just stick around a bit more; the roller coaster is just clinking up to the top before the drop.

A Few Diversions: in a few places it seems the plot veers into a side-quest or some sub-episode that feels unnecessary. Many of these are the kind of beautiful character-moments I spoke of before, but not all of them land, in my opinion. Kay usually has these moments circle back into the main plot in some way or another, but some connections are better than others. This being epic fantasy, I’m not expecting a tight, no-fat thriller, so I think most readers will tolerate these diversions or enjoy them far more than I did. 

Content Advisory: This is an epic fantasy book about rebels and dangerous tyrants. There is war, and killing, and blood. Kay doesn’t relish in these moments, but they happen, often intensely. There are references to torture. All that ought to be pretty clear from the premise though, so I won’t belabor the point.

No Series: If you’re looking for a start to a good series, this isn’t it. Tigana is a stand-alone book. I think it’s all the more excellent because of that, by the way. Brandon Sanderson said that Tigana proved to him the power of what a single fantasy novel could do. While I already believed in the power of stand-alones, I agree with his assessment. This book is good, and all the better for not asking you to read another twelve like it before you get to the end. It could be a huge three-part trilogy. But the same is true of the story in The Hobbit, and we can all see how that turned out! 

Conclusion

As I said at the top: Tigana is the best fantasy book I’ve read in a long while. It did a lot of things really well—characterization, escalation of conflict, worldbuilding blended into the narrative, and properly comprehensive treatment of its own premises. 

Tigana deserves to be a much more famous book than it apparently is. I hope this little review on this little, unknown corner of the internet, can somehow help that. 

Basically, it just hit the right notes for me. I hope it will for you too. Even if its not exactly to your tastes, I doubt you’ll regret picking this one up. 

Have you already read Tigana? I’d love to hear what you thought of it, and whether you agree with me. 

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1. At some point, I may do a whole piece about this “video game camera,” and why I’ve grown a bit tired of it. Much as I love Stormlight and revere Wheel of Time…