Question about Tigana

[elvet]

I just finished this very engrossing book and thought it was marvelous. I loved the way that Kay created a 'grey' area around the persona of Brandin - yes he was a tyrant, but he was humanised through his relationship with Dianora. Anyhow, Brandin mentions a mythical land called Finevar, purportedly the last stop in a series of worlds your soul is reincarnated to. It's been a while since I've read the Fionavar Tapestry, but the similarity of the names must be meaningful. The trick is, I can't remember much about Fionavar from the first book. I know it was a parallel universe, but was it connected to a reincanation belief?

 

[Perpetual Man]

Well it's been a while since I read either Tigana (One of my all time favourite books) and Fionavar Tapestry, but I remember the mention of something similar in Tigana, and seem to recall that Fionavar is referred to as the centre of all alternative worlds, the first of them as well. And that it is called many different names as you move further out from the centre... if that makes sense.

As for reincarnation - I'm not sure whether it was all encompassing, but King Arthur was a main character in the Tapestry books, and his curse was to be reincarnated time and time again, on different worlds,so in that sense it was a little about reincarnation.

Stretching my memory a little more I think Kay refers to Fionavar again with an offhand comment and a different spelling in his follow up to Tigana, A Song for Arbonne

 

[Riselka]

What Tim James has said is the way I interpretted things, as well.

I've only just recently started reading GGK's books. So far the only ones I've read are The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, and Tigana. I have to say that I really enjoy his writing, Fionavar is, without a doubt, one of the best things I've ever read.

It's nice to know that there's a few fans of his here as I'm not sure just how well known his work is outside of Canada. (That's where I live.) I probably wouldn't know about his stuff either, but several of the people who contributed to The Old Forum at Jack Whyte's website made remarks about some of his books, and that's what got me intriqued enough to put them on my "to buy and read" list.

The books they tended to give the best reviews to were his Sarantine Mosaic duology, and Tigana.

 

[JBI]

There is also a referance to Fionevaire or something like that in A Song for Arboune, the language changed acording to what place he was writing in, finevar is his version for the Tigana world. He is an amazing story teller, and his plots have depth and meaning, however his use of the present tense is sometimes anoying.