As a writer, I have all sorts of little quirks and devices I like to use. All writers do. I make a lot of parenthetical asides (you may have noticed). I use ellipses… probably too much. (Occasionally I do both at once… Score!) Sometimes the end result is acceptable; other times I find that I’ve sacrificed substance on the altar of style. I’ve written plenty of pieces that, upon rereading, have inspired me to think that the writing would have been better served by the inclusion of a little more point and a little less Kate.

So, who am I to criticize a writer of Guy Gavriel Kay’s stature for doing what I do every day? Good question, and I’ll start by saying that of course Kay is a good writer – one of the better fantasy authors active today. But in any tale, when the storytelling becomes so self-conscious that the story itself is overwhelmed, something important is invariably lost. And in Under Heaven, in which Kay deliberately uses language and style to evoke the measured cadences of Tang Dynasty China, he’s too successful. Skilled in the use of language he certainly is, but the story itself can’t breathe.

Under Heaven is the story of one Shen Tai, a young man of the empire of Kitai (=China, duh) who was close to his late father, the celebrated General Shen Gao. Twenty years ago, Gao was a hero in the Kitan-Taguran wars, which left thousands dead, their ghosts tethered to the earth until they can be buried. Tai himself has witnessed unspeakable horrors over the course of an assignment among the nomadic Bogü. When Gao dies, Tai takes it upon himself to return to the site of his father’s last battle to bury the dead, both Kitan and Taguran, living in solitude and coming to terms with the ghosts of his own past. He can hear the ghosts of the unburied crying out at night; occasionally, a voice he has come to recognize will fall silent, suggesting that the unquiet spirit has been laid to rest at last.

Word of his deed spreads, and one day he receives word that the Taguran Empress, a woman of his own people whose marriage to the Emperor of Tagur was part of the treaty that ended the war, is rewarding his efforts with a gift of two hundred and fifty Sardian horses. Even one Sardian horse would have been a generous gift; several would have made Shen Tai wealthy indeed; two hundred fifty is extravagant beyond comprehension.Oh, and also someone is trying to kill Shen Tai, and he has a sneaking suspicion that that someone might actually be his ambitious older brother. All of a sudden, Shen Tai has a lot on his plate. He needs to collect his horses, try to reunite with his lost love Spring Rain (now a powerful man’s concubine), and above all stay alive in a maze of intrigue, while the world around him undergoes a sudden and dramatic shift.

So... interesting story. But the execution… well, okay, look. First of all, this is a very slowly-moving book. The pace is languorous; some might even say inert. Taken on its face, there’s a lot going on – horses, kidnappings, assassinations, and ultimately a body count in the millions – and Kay knows his way around an action scene; check out the Hippodrome sequences in Lord of Emperors for proof positive of this. But for all that plot, the book just doesn’t move, largely because of the sloooow pace and somewhat talky style Kay employs here.

Speaking of which: Okay, when you read a book by Guy Gavriel Kay, you generally know what’s coming. His authorial voice is among the stronger and more distinctive out there, and if you’re into the way he writes, that’s something to celebrate. But in Under Heaven, there comes a point, and early on, at which the language starts to draw so much attention to itself that the reader is pulled out of the story. Passages like:

Who can number, under the nine heavens, the jewel-bright observations to be extracted from moments such as these? Who will dare say he knows with certainty which single gem is to be held up to whatever light there is for us, in our journeying, and proclaimed as true?

Or

It is a truth about the nature of human beings that we seek – even demand – order and pattern in our lives, in the flash and flux of history and our own times.

-don’t evoke, as much as they announce, with neon lights and curlicues, “Asian! Asian! Look! Asian!”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that I think it’s inappropriate for someone like Kay to attempt, through his stylistic choices, to evoke this particular time and place; I’m not even saying he’s altogether unsuccessful. But a certain tension within the reading experience exists because you’re never able to (at least, I was never able to) become truly immersed in the story. You can’t forget for one minute that the author of these passages is not an ink-stained historian of the Tang, but a fairly well-known Canadian named Guy Kay. Why? Because Kay won’t let you.

Meaning that the reader is reminded, repeatedly and in so many words, how “subtle” and/or “complex” everything is, even when nothing particularly complex or subtle is going on. Meaning that female characters are frequently described as “scented,” as though they’re candles or something. Meaning that a significant romance is sprung full-blown upon the reader in the waning pages of the book, despite a complete absence of evidence that either character is looking upon the other in that light anywhere in the previous 500 pages. Meaning that we encounter echo upon echo of characters we’ve met in Kay’s previous novels: the grieving protagonist who has (we are told, but rarely if ever shown) a prodigiously bad temper; the empress who used to be a dancer; the grossly overweight senior government type who scares everyone to death; the feckless prince who ends up being so much more than he seems. (I’m genuinely curious as to what Kay is up to with this last trick. It all seems very meta; maybe that’s the point?) We’ve been down all of these roads before; the underrated Sarantine Mosaic is full of subtleties and complexities and nuances, and various scented women have populated Kay’s pages going all the way back to the Fionavar Tapestry. But that’s exactly the problem; Kay never achieves a workable balance between being Author of Tigana and Lord of Emperors and The Lions of al-Rassan and and and, and being the narrator of this particular and specific tale.

Nevertheless, I can’t not recommend this book. When Kay gets out of his own way, he’s a damn fine writer. Under Heaven contains passages of tremendous lyricism (as well as a few passages of overblown pseudo-philosophical musing, but that’s Kay for you), and if his vision is not quite as panoramic as it was in, say, the Sarantine Mosaic, we do at least get an interesting taste of life in several strata of Tang society. Although I never became all that interested in Shen Tai, several of the other characters spring vividly to life, notably Spring Rain, whose denouement is probably the most poignant and satisfying in the book. And speaking of endings, no one knows how to finish a book as well as Kay does. The final page is one place where he really is subtle – and highly effective; and the novel ends with an image of such beauty and power that it brought a lump to my throat.

Also, there are ninjas. That’s definitely worth noting.

Is Under Heaven worth your time? If you’re at all interested in Chinese history and culture, you should definitely pick it up. In fact, I’d probably pick it up anyway, because hey, it’s Kay. I only wish that he had trusted in his gifts as a writer, and in the reader’s attention span, a bit more, by showing us a little more and telling us a little less. (Seriously, if I had seen one more sentence referencing complexities or subtleties or silken, scented women, I was fully prepared to throw something, probably this book, out the window.) Kay has rocked my world before and I’m sure he will again, but this one? A jewel in the emperor’s crown, to be admired, but not to be loved.

  -- Kate Nagy