Tigana

Written by Guy Gavriel Kay

Narrated by Simon Vance

Acclaimed author Guy Gavriel Kay has been honored with the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (Ysabel) and the International Goliardos Award for his work in fantasy. Eight of the nine Palm provinces of the Peninsula have been overcome by warrior sorcerers Brandin and Alberico. But the sorcerers don't know that a small band of survivors is plotting their removal. With tensions mounting, the sorcerers become increasingly at odds as each decides where his own path-and that of the land-should truly lie. ". brilliant . rich in intrigue and subtlety . a gracefully plotted story. Highly recommended."-Library Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980090366

Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay was born and raised in Canada. He lives in Toronto, although he does most of his writing in Europe. His novels include ‘The Fionavar Tapestry’ trilogy (described by ‘Interzone’ as ‘the only fantasy work… that does not suffer by comparison with ‘The Lord of the Rings’), ‘Tigana’ and ‘A Song for Arbonne’.

Reviews for Tigana

[Dave Johnson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book seemed rather overlong. The story was good, but could have been told with less verbiage. It is a 30+ year old book, though, and protocols may have been somewhat different when it was written. The author’s note following the conclusion was very useful concerning the historical setting.

[Anastasia Lisieux · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An incredibly well crafted, thought provoking book with interesting characters, setting, plot, magic system, and interplay between all of these elements. I was hesitant at first, but the deeper you get into this story the more invested and in awe you become.

[Ambar Paranjape · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book. The author is a tour de force of writing and exposition.

[Anita Ticala · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An OK book that could have been great.
The narrator did the best he could, but there were plenty of episodes and characters that were too irritatingly written for his efforts to improve.

[benkaboo-51322 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Summary: Nice epic fantasy with lots of characters and subplots.

Things I liked: Last third of the book brought together many threads and characters and subplots in a way that had me turning each page with glee. It felt so intricate and well planned.

Things I thought could have been improved:

Female characters: The women in the book all seemed to have a reasonably puerile attitude to sex and relationships. I found this distracting and would have preferred for it to be left out altogether or be done better.

Highlight: The final battle the death of Brandin and the Fool

[tikimoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I hate it when you notice one thing and then can't divorce that judgment from the rest of the book.

For instance: all of the women are beautiful, all have a rather extended sex scene (maybe not Alais). That scene with Catriana in the beginning of the book tainted my view of her for the rest of the book, even though she never slept with anybody else. Which is part of her character, but I didn't like it. Catriana comes the closest to having a reason to exist in the book besides her romantic relation to a man.

I also still haven't resolved the slavery thing, I'll keep thinking on that for a while. I may also be too influenced by modern takes on slavery, since this book is almost 30 years old now.


GGK's prose is as lovely as always, and I still appreciate the moral ambiguity of all the characters and their motivations. You just want to revel in how tragic the characters are for a few hundred pages. It was more tragic than Lions of Al-Rassan, but one needs that sometimes.


Meaningless gripe: this book is still really expensive on Kindle, and my paperback copy is large (and it's long). Will not fit on a plane when you're strapped for space.

[tobinelliott · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Nope. I tried. I really tried to get through this, but I had to invoke my 10% rule. If you can't grab me in the first 10%, then the other 90% just isn't going to go well for either of us.

When I bought the book at an event where the author was speaking, several people mentioned it was one of their favourite books, one even stating she'd read it several times.

All I got was a whole lot of talking, a lot of leading up to events...only to have them quickly summarized afterward instead of going through them. And scads and scads of that long-winded fantasy narrative that drives me nuts.

It's too bad, because I read and loved Kay's Fionavar Tapestry.

But this? Nope.

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this one, but it is not my favorite GGK book. I did like the setting and the characters.

[jercox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good story, and an entertaining premise, interesting characters

Downside - the ending got tied up in a bow in ways that were wildly unlikely - even more than usual for a fantasy novel.

[wishanem · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What is a memory worth? Which memory is most valuable: the memory of a nation, a lover, or a child who died?

This story explores acts of heroism and villainy which memories might inspire. The depth and variety of the characters was an unexpected gem. Some are clever and idealistic, with clear relatable goals and unwavering morals. Others are conflicted, uncertain, and self-doubting, obviously moving through their lives with more momentum than purpose.

The tone of this book was perfect for my tastes. It was sometimes harsh, but never grating or gratuitously nasty. This is not a world where the good guys win every fight with stylish quips and flashing white smiles. Neither is it a world where "heroes" are butchers with bloody broken teeth. Instead, this story reaches a balance between happiness and sadness. The standard tropes of Fantasy fiction are present, but it is the drama of realistic human relationships which carry the reader through the text. In fact I think the setting of a Fantasy variation on Pre-Renaissance Italy was fresh, but the culture was too generic for my tastes.

Perhaps most notably this is a book which feels like an epic series, and yet manages to wrap up very satisfyingly in a single volume.

[threadnsong · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Yes, another book by this great author, and one that again I mark as a favorite. And one that I took my time to read because I just love discovering what world Kay will create this time. A very early work of his, the plot is centered around a portion of the peninsula known as The Palm (modeled around Italy's boot). Nearly 20 years before the book there was a war in which one of the invader's sons was killed. It happened to be his favorite son, and the father happened to be a wizard. So he cursed the region of Tigana and set out to be the tyrant of the Western Palm, in constant stand-off with the wizard tyrant of the Eastern Palm.So, while this is considered "fantasy" the use of wizardry is minimal and only allowed to be used by the two tyrants. Instead, there are individuals who come together in a series of coincidences (Kay is brilliant at creating these) and they find common purpose: they wish to regain the name of Tigana for their land and renew its name in the minds of all the Palm's inhabitants. Because yeah, the name, too, is wiped from minds, not just from the earth.

[briandarvell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great standalone fantasy novel. Kay’s prose is extremely elegant and carries this wonderful story along. I found myself connected to the main characters and even the “bad-guys” had something you wanted to cheer them for. Would highly recommend.

[dreamweaversunited · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I am angry with this book. I'm angry because the concept of it is so amazing, and it deserved to be so much better written than this. I kept listening all the way to the end because I kept hoping the story would redeem itself, and it never did.

[narilka · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

DNF @ 50%I have been trying to read Tigana for about six months now and am finally throwing in the towel. This book just isn't for me. There's too much telling instead of showing and I find myself wanting to do almost anything else, including housework, rather than read this book. The pacing is very uneven, with the parts I found engaging being too few and too far apart. I also never connected with any of the characters and just don't feel any need to see what happens to them. I will say I found the ideas Kay has around memory very interesting. This is my first attempt at reading any of Kay's work and I'm not quite ready to give up on him yet. I have Lions of Al-Rassan in my TBR to try at some point.

[antao-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The land is never truly dead. It can always come back. Or what is the meaning of the cycle of seasons and years?" She wiped her tears away and looked at him. His expression in the darkness was much too sad for a moment such as this. She wished she knew a way to dispel that sorrow, and not only for tonight. He said, "That is mostly true, I suppose. Or true for the largest things. Smaller things can die. People, dreams, a home.”In “Tigana” by Guy Gavriel KayKay’s got a thing for adumbration. His middle name should be Guy Adumbration Kay and not Gavriel. He adumbrates. And then he adumbrates some more. And then more. And then more. And he hides information from me, in a really obvious way, and pulls the curtain away at the end! Abracadabra! See how cool I am, I have deceived you! The end of "Lions of al-Rassan" made me furious; it was such cheap melodrama. I really liked several of his early novels, but by Ged (not God; I want to see whether you're paying attention...), nothing after "A Song for Arbonne" is readable, and even that, I suspect, I cannot ever re-read. I tried to re-read "Tigana" a few years ago and was shocked at how terribly overwritten and melodramatic it was. Kay may have learned a lot from reading Tolkien, but I fear he didn't learn the right things. Like, if you're going to fool me, don't tell me you're doing so. Also, repetition is sometimes just repetitive: you have to do something more to give a phrase emotional weight. And what about the comma splices? There’s a thing called conjunctions ffs!!!To be fair, plenty of people love his work: for me, it's like driving down poorly-maintained concrete, full of potholes. Some of his stylistic tendencies can be aggravating, and so I have found my best approach to his work is to read them once, to never revisit them, and to never read too many too close together. My attempts to re-read usually leave me wondering why I enjoyed the book in the first place. Kay doesn't misdirect your attention skillfully. He hides the ball openly. I think it's cheap, and it shows a fundamental mistrust of the reader's intelligence. Same with the over-portentous language and all the adumbration. And he does this all the frigging time. Over and over again. Which is why I had to stop reading Kay, because life is too short to do such damage to my blood pressure. On to the new one that just came out: "A Brightness Log Ago".

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

During war between Ygrath and Tigana, the son of the King of Ygrath is killed. In retaliation--in grief--Brandin of Ygrath, king and sorcerer, destroyed Tigana. He destroyed it be erasing it entirely from the minds of everyone, everyone except the people of Tigana. Their punishment is to know that to everyone else it's as if they never existed.

Brandin took everything they were, every mark they made on the world, and he made it so no one knows. No one but them. It would have been one thing if the Tiganans themselves couldn't remember, because there would be no pain for them. But they can remember. They do remember. And no one else does.

To me, that is unbearable. It's still difficult for me to grasp the entirety of that horror. To speak the name of your people and have no one but you even be able to hear it. I cannot imagine.

And then there is Brandin and Dianora. The great and tragic love of this book. There's no other way it could have ended but the way it did, but how I wished for something else.

And the great spoiler. That one that made me sob.

*Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.*

[hatpin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was expecting to enjoy this, but it was just too much work for the payoff. Slogged through to the end to justify the time already invested.

[5eva5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Epic fantasy about a group of Tigana natives plotting to overthrow the sorcerer who has caused their beloved land to be forgotten. This is my first, but not last, book by Guy Gavriel Kay since I became really fond of his style during this read; his world-building really works for me in that he never comes outright and explains how things work, but just works it subtly into the story so that the reader feels part of the world. His language is also so lovely - he does know how to weave a beautiful sentence. Along with the great world-building, Kay also inhabits his world with intriguing, flawed characters who make mistakes but have big hearts and I have to admit to shedding a little tear now and again for them. Long, but thoroughly enjoyable read.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tigana was published in 1990 and at that time I had quite a distaste for fantasy. When this book was featured in the CBC list of 100 Novels that Make you Proud to Be Canadian I took note because I had, in the meantime, read several of Guy Gavriel Kay's books and enjoyed them. Then when I discovered that an audiobook narrated by one of my favourite narrators, Simon Vance, was available I knew I had to listen to it. Although the audiobook was over 25 hours in length I got through it in about 2 and a half weeks meaning I probably listened over an hour a day. I normally only manage to listen to a book for about fifteen or twenty minutes so that should give an indication of how much I liked it.The setting for this book is a world orbited by two moons and specifically on the Peninsula of the Palm. The Peninsula was conceived by Kay to be like medeival Italy and has nine separate kingdoms which warred with each other. This internecine conflict allowed two tyrants from off-shore, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior. Brandin and Alberico both practise sorcery which allowed their armies to overcome the local armies. During one of the skirmishes in Tigana Brandin's son was killed. Grief-stricken Brandin lays a spell that means no-one except people living in Tigana at that time will be able to hear the name of the kingdom. He renames the area Lower Corte and vows to remain in the Peninsula until everyone who could hear the name has died. Alberico and Brandin govern four states each with the state of Certando as a self-governing no man's land. Alberico is hoping to gain enough success that he can go back to Barbadior and take over as Emperor when the present incumbent dies. Twenty years after they took power a small band of mostly people from Trigana plot to take down both rulers so the whole Peninsula can unite as one country. One of the things I enjoyed about this book was the place women are given in the uprising. I particularly liked Catriana whose parents left Tigana before the fighting started leading Catriana to view them as cowards. To make up for them she takes risks many times throughout the book to further the plot, risking death. Her counterpart, Dianora, who vowed to kill Brandin to revenge her dead father is just not as believable. She manages to get into Brandin's harem and become one of his favourites but instead of killing him she falls in love with him. Would that really happen? And if Brandin is a sorcerer would he not know she was from Tigana and was plotting to kill him? That's the only flaw in the plot for me. Otherwise an excellent epic fantasy.

[janerawoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in a faux Italian Renaissance, a land of City-States. I liked so much Kay's world-building and amid violence, a tender love story between former enemies. The land of Tigana has been put under a spell; no one can remember its name--in fact it has been renamed. The Peninsula of the Palm has been conquered by two tyrants, Brandin and Alberico, who have divided the land between them. Plot of Sandreni family against the tyrant Alberico fails miserably. Members of a troupe of travelling musicians wants to oust BOTH tyrants. The daughter of a soldier killed in the war against Brandin wants to destroy him. Population of different distradas begin to unite against the enemies of the Palm and perform acts of sabotage and murder.The writing was some of Kay's best, exquisite and evocative of time and place. The star-crossed couple, Brandin and Dianora were so poignant and the opponents of the tyrannies were valiant. There was magic involved, but descriptions were muted.Highly recommended.

[behemothing-2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm stuck between 2 and 3 stars. There were some parts of the world I really like, the set up is a good one, and I will read other books by Kay. Yet I never really grabbed onto any of the characters, did not always sympathize with or even understand their goals, and wish the mechanisms of magic were clearer.

[aeromaxtran-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What do you do when the name of your homeland is lost?This is the central theme of Tigana. But there are a lot of things happening in the land of Palm and the narrative is from the POV of many persons this adds multiple layers to the story and we are left to guess a lot of other background stories that are only hinted at.
This is a great book and I loved it.

[sloopjonb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a cut - a very large cut - above your usual Extruded Fantasy Product. On the surface it is a story of heroes and villains, in which at the end the heroes all live and get to marry, and the villains die horrible deaths. Only one person we are made to care about actually dies.But. The heroes are all variously flawed, and the villains aren't just emissaries of evil. The world-building is good, the culture mostly very convincingly portrayed (I didn't buy the riselka, it didn't seem to fit, somehow) and the main characters are well-drawn and believable. The story itself is interesting and unusual (unusual for fantasy, anyway) and a definite page turner. Also, and perhaps unusually for the genre, certainly when it was published, it has some interesting things to say about memory, and about means and ends and how the former shape the latter, and the choices people make in pursuit of a cause (good or otherwise). The pain of being an occupied nation came across well. There is no violence pr0n, which was good to see, but the sex scenes were a bit wooden. This was the first book by GGK I have read, and I will read more.Flaws: too much detail in places, especially in Dianora's back story. (Also, it was a bit too coincidental that she was planning to go to Chiara, and then got carried off there anyway). Few of the secondary characters came across as three dimensional, and Alienor didn't strike me as necessary at all. Not enough standard fantasy tropes were subverted, for me, and there was the usual problem with magic as a deus (or should that be diabolos) ex machina. Half a star knocked off for all that.Game of Thrones fans will particularly enjoy this .. there's a lot here they will recognise.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Kay has gotten around to Medieval/Renaissance Italy in his tour of major Fantasy Settings. It's less compelling than the Spain and his Sarantium work. Good entertainment, but it sinks into body of work as opposed to startling achievement.

[thatpirategirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully-written fantasy with a very personal take on the old rebellion-against-tyrants plot. I found the main character, the young musician Devin, to be the least interesting. He never really overcomes his role as observer in a rebellion he's just become a part of. But the rest of the cast is interesting and morally complex -- at times the protagonists do unjust things for their cause, and the oppressive ruler is viewed sympathetically through the eyes of the woman who loves him despite her own conflicting loyalties. The presence of magic feels hidden but powerful, and I like how some strange events are never fully explained. Things are tied up a little too quickly at the end, and with a disappointing lack of emotional payoff for a few key storylines. But overall I enjoyed it, it felt like a more classic style of fantasy storytelling than I've seen recently, but without falling back on the same old tropes.

[stuart10er_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all time favorites. Enjoyed it as much the 2nd time as the first. There are few books that will still cause me to catch my breath in sections, especially ones that I am rereading, however after 10 years of sitting on my shelf it still had the power to take my breath away at least once.
Kay is a romantic writer. I don't mean that in the sense that there are a fair number of people wandering around with frilly bodices being ripped this way and that. I mean Romantic with a capital "R" as in larger-than-life people who are very earnest and feel things very deeply. The voice of each narrator sets the stage for how the reader will perceive the story. The narrator of Tigana, like Tolkien who was a very large and early influence on Kay as he was one of the contributors to The Silmarillion, is a very serious person on the whole who states things in a seriousness usually only attributed to a teen in the throes of their first love.
The story here is a very serious one. That is of a peninsula on a far planet where magic, while not quite common, is prevalent enough. This peninsula resembles a renaissance Italy where the Medici or the Borgia might reign except there is magic and two moons. There are nine provinces of the palm, which is the way that this peninsula is referred to, and as the prologue opens they are invaded from the West by one sorcerer king and from the East by another sorcerer. Each captures 4 of the provinces and achieves a stable detente with the other. In the process, the King of the west loses his son in the battle over one of the provinces. In his anger and sorrow, he casts a dreadful spell causing all who were not born there to forget the name of this province and to not even be able to hear it if it was spoken to them. A very dreadful form of historic revisionism that was inspired, so the author states in his postscript, by the Stalin/Maoist historical revisions of the last forty years.
Our earnest and serious heroes must try to find a way to pit the two tyrants against each other and thus destroy them both, which of course they do. But there are ancient legends told along the way, a few deaths by overly well intentioned people who sacrificed in a good cause or for whom the climax of the events was more than they could live with.
As a sometimes serious and earnest person, I enjoyed this book immensely again the second time. The surprise turns here and there still held some magic for me. However, I can see that an earnest younger man might find this novel to be almost more than he could absorb. Thus is the power of the epic carried forward. This work was the first full work of Kay's that I had read (other than the editing of Tolkien's writing). I had read quite a bit more of his work after this and found it to be improved. Still very earnest, but with more humor, which as Shakespeare knew was the perfect accoutrement for a romantic drama.

[trouthe-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An absolutely amazing book.

It's extremely rare to find a book about the rise and fall of kings that manages to remember that it's the people who drive the politics, and this did. More, it managed to make every single character to some degree sympathetic, no matter how utterly incompatible their goals or how appalling their actions.

I did wish for that fundamental incompatibility of goals to be delved into a bit more - in particular in Dianora's choice of (in)action, and Alessan's conflict with the wizard - but I recognize that my desires in this particular instance conflict with the themes of the story about memory and the creation of history, for the former, and conflict with the desired end of the story, for the latter. But when that's about the only thing I can complain about in a book, that's a book to be treasured.

[neithernora · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'll be writing up a full report later, but for now just know that there were a lot of things in this book that just weren't working for me. And, like, two that were. Maybe. Mostly, it suffers from Eighties Fantasy Syndrome.

[babybelle-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favourites

[pseudacris-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book from the story to the prose. Very engaging with a satisfying ending that wrapped up the story - essential for a stand alone epic. Kay is going to be a new favorite author of mine.