Guy Gavriel Kay

[[PX]IronFist]

This will probably be of more intrest to Bob than anyone but I am sure that anybody who reads fantasy might find this interesting.

Guy Gavriel Kay, a well known Canadian Fantasy writer and author of The Fionavar Tapestry visited the University of Waterloo recently to give a talk in a 2nd year English course called Forms of Fantasy. I went to the lecture because I have read some of his stuff and I thought it might be interesting.

He mostly talked about his book Tigana, which I haven't read but apparently the class had been studying. He touched on Fionavar breifly only to say that it was his first novel and his attmept at high fantasy in the vein of The Lord of the Rings. Tigana came after Fionavar and was quite different.

What was most interesting was his commentary on other Fantasy works. He sees alot of fantasy writers, like Eddings, and Jordan, as akin to writers like Tom Clancy and John Grisham. Their books are very plot oriented and this keeps the reader interested but the characters are almost 2 Dimensional Caricatures. He said that good fantasy brings in deep character development and exciting plot, and that's what he tries to do with his own work.

He also discussed bringing fantasy to film, and what he thinks about the two lord of the rings movies. He said he liked the first, but that the second was way off track. Central to Tolkien's theme was the idea of each characters internal struggle with evil, and he didn't think the movie captured this. He was very disappointed that the only reason that the Ent's decided to go to war was because the Hobbits showed Tree Beard that his own damn forest was being cut down to fuel the fires of Isenguard. These Ent's are the "Shepards of the Forest" and they didn't even know that it was being destroyed. He also thought that the character of Faramir was poorly drawn.

I don't know If I agree with everything he said but It was a very interesting talk. The only thing I regret was not bringing my own copy of Fionavar along for him to sign.

[Ghost [PX]]

I sincerely wish that I could have gotten him to sign my copy of the Fionavar tapestry... I loved those books and I've read another one or two of his that I enjoyed immensly.