jethrien

Title: Under Heaven
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Historical semi-fantastic fiction (T'ang Dynasty analogue)
Thingummies: 5

Synopsis: Tai spent two years laying ghosts of dead soldiers to rest only to honor his father. But when he receives a completely outrageous gift of 250 fabulously valuable horses, he suddenly becomes a political power in his own right in a decadent empire a hairsbreadth from falling.

Thoughts: The richness of this book swept me away. Kay clearly did an enormous amount of in-depth research, and then used it to build his own fantastical world. His prose is gorgeous, his world-building immersive, and his characters deeply appealing.

I have to admit, I was quite pleased with myself for realizing the parallels to the fall of the T'ang dynasty before I was told. (The obese foreign general being swaddled like a baby by the Emporer's concubine for the amusement of the court tipped me off.) Apparently I've been doing a good job in my self-imposed history lessons. But you would not have to know anything at all about Chinese history to appreciate this book, and enough is a departure from the real story that scholars will not already know what will happen.

I think part of what I found so appealing is that there is an implicit assumption that the myths and superstitions of the time are true and both as relevant and as non-central as anything else that happens away from the capital. Angry ghosts and enchanting fox-women have as much influence on the court as foreign warlords and Silk Road traders--a part of life and occasionally the impetus for action, but generally not as important as political manuevering and poetry (which is itself political manuevering.)

Tai begins the novel not so much simple as deliberately naive. He learns to play the games with great reluctance but not without skill. He is not perfect, but he's a deeply likeable protagonist.

I very much appreciated how gracefully Kay employed his female characters. One of the difficulties, I think, of writing historical fiction is that many cultures truly have treated women more as valued animals than people. Authors either buy into the mindset and forget that despite their status, women still had minds and spirits of their own, or they make anyone likeable anachronistic in their attitudes. The women in this novel, for the most part, know their place in their world, and also know that if they are clever, they can use that position. Wen Jian, the emporer's concubine, pushes her influence as far as she dares. Spring Rain, Tai's old flame, finds herself much more constricted and gracefully acquieses--while making her own plans. Tai's sister chafes and rebels and finds rather more than she was looking for. The monk assassin who protects Tai is the least historically accurate, but she comes from a monastic tradition made up of whole cloth (and reasonably understandable in the world created).

Overall, the politics, the ancient history, the painstaking research weaves together into a fascinating, compelling, completely enthralling world. The ending is bittersweet, but I think entirely appropriate. And gorgeous to the last word.