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What is it to fall out of love It is has been a long time since I ve done it and so I don t remember From what I recall, it was something unconscious for a long time Something in your turn of phrase, in the explanations that you seek out and find, the articles you share and how often you choose to go to bed early I remember it being full of protestations, a passion that was stronger than I felt and heavy with tears The music I remember is always on constant repeat and probably confused by memori [...]

I feel cheated I hate these wishy washy anti climactic Kay endings, and the wishy washy over virtuous flat characters, but that was not the only thing that disappointed me here.I must say that although I loved most of the first three quarters, I hated the ending.The book is supposedly based on the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty in China, and a lot of the background does indeed portray this.Sure, there was a Chinese general who underwent a fate like this, but since Kay changed and embroidered [...]

A sequel in terms of setting and history, if not character or plot, River of Stars sees Guy Gavriel Kay return to the Chinese inspired world of Under Heaven It s a book that can be enjoyed by new readers as a standalone volume, but one which holds added significance for readers already familiar with the first.As a fan of Kay s work, and someone who thoroughly enjoyed Shen Tai s journey through the dying days of the Tang Dynasty, I was quite curious to discover how Ren Daiyan s adventures in the [...]

With every Kay book I read I m tempted to say This is the best one yet River of Starsis no exception It may be only the fact that it is fresh in my memory, but I believe the author has reach a new height in his quest to conjure and breath life into ancient histories I have also noticed that the supernatural elements feature less and less with each new novel, as if the actual events that served as inspiration are enough in themselves to interest the modern reader and we don t need fairies and tro [...]

TornWhat do I say about this book The trends that I hoped were an aberration in Under Heaven seem to have increased and not waned I read the book, it was well enough written but there was no magic, no sense of intimacy, no prose that made me want to stay on a page indefinitely.Like Under Heaven , the scope of the canvas was enormous the dilemmas faced by the characters seemed less poignant and inevitable In addition, the distance placed between the reader and the characters was increased by the [...]

4.5 Stars Review also posted at The BiblioSanctumBecause I ve read and enjoyed Guy Gavriel Kay s Under Heaven, I became intrigued and very excited when I first found out about River of Stars Set in the same universe and timeline but approximately four centuries after the events of the first book, this isn t truly a sequel and can definitely be read as a standalone Still, in my humble opinion it wouldn t hurt to read Under Heaven first like I said, I thought it was a good book, but it also gives [...]

Kay has fallen into a bad habit of engaging in crude foreshadowing and irritating digressions In both Under Heaven and River of Stars he has stopped to tell us explicitly why the story is important It is as if he has lost the confidence to just let the story tell itself and let the reader decide why it s important.In River of Stars the characters lack the nuance that I came to love him for Few of them are a mix of good and bad Ren Daiyan is essentially a superhero, capable of amazing feats and i [...]

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorite authors, one of only two or three whose new books I pre order but his last few books have been disappointing Instead of presenting beautifully drawn characters moving in vivid times, he seems to be talking about the story he is telling The sense of personal engagement and risk, of being caught up in great times, so beautifully rendered in Lions of Al Rassan, The Sarantine Mosaic, and the Fionavar trilogy, is entirely missing here I was also disappointed by t [...]

rantingdragon review oRiver of Stars is the twelfth novel by Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay and is based loosely on twelfth century China during the Song Dynasty Like many of his works, Kay weaves historical names, places and events into a fictional tapestry that still retains the feel of historical work, while engaging the reader in the intensely character driven style that makes his works so engrossing.Nothing happens, and everything happensIt s been my experience with fantasy lately that an [...]

2.5I haven t read any Guy Gavriel Kay he s been on my interest list until his two China books Underwhelmed with them, when I had quite high expectations of Kay, I take into account a number of reviews from fans who feel he does not live up to himself in these, that they lack in character or have become self important I did not find the people in these books deeply drawn or engaging, and his portentous tone drove me up the wall Observations along the lines of Sometimes that happens , Some days ar [...]

A little slow to take off but definitely one of my favourite Kay books Thus concludes Katie s great GGK backlist read through.

I m normally a GGK fangirl I can read Tigana a hundred times and love it, swoon about his character and world building skills, his modification of historical events into amazing fantasy settings I can do all of this with almost everything he s written but I can t do it with River of Stars The character development is weaker than his standard, the political events painfully predictable even for someone not intimately familiar with Chinese history, and the novel on the whole becomes an exercise in [...]

River of Stars is a very ambitious book a very loose sequel to Under Heaven and based on the events of the 1120 s and after a shaky and somewhat boring beginning introducing a youth of destiny becomes very interesting in the exploration of the political machinations and the lives of a few upper class men and women who surrounded the pleasure loving emperor.Unfortunately from about half on the novel becomes extremely predictable as it follows the broad outlines of the actual historical events, wi [...]

See a master at work Even though I became really weary of all the This is how legends begin, The smallest of incidents can trigger huge events, In later years x would often remember what happened then, and like pontifications the characters and sheer sweep of this kept me reading skipping the stylistic curlicues after the first fifty or so and provided a satisfactory reading experience as his books are wont to do Here he recasts the end of the Northern Song Dynasty and the beginning of the South [...]

This is a weird review to write, in a way Because if I ran into this book by just about any other author, I d probably be falling all over myself right now However, this by Guy Gavriel Kay, and Under Heaven was just an astounding achievement of a book, and I don t think River of Stars is quite as good Don t get me wrong River of Stars is very, very good It is merely great instead of a masterpiece.Note The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in policy and enforcement You can [...]

He d been told that Xinan, the capital of glorious dynasties, had held two million people once, and that only a hundred thousand or so lived there now, scattered among rubble.Well, so much for the glory of the Ninth Dynasty we saw in Under Heaven Turns out civil war will do that to a society River of Stars picks up Under Heaven s world several hundred years later It isn t so much a direct sequel, given that all of the characters from Under Heaven are long dead by the time River of Stars begins, [...]

After reading and loving Under Heaven, I was a little afraid to read this one, for fear that it would not be as good And it s true, it took me a little longer to get into it, if for no other reason than that the fifteen year old bandit was not as likeable of a protagonist to me as the cultured and courageous if eccentric Shen Tai of the earlier novel However, after a few chapters I was pulled into the story and soon utterly enad It is rare for a book to move me to tears, and yet both of these no [...]

Excellent historical fiction set in ancient China, with only a light hint of fantasy in the form of mythological elements I love nearly all of GGK s books This may not be his best, but it s definitely up in the top 50% of his works.The story is not fast moving although it has action filled moments , rather it builds slowly, like a tapestry carefully growing on a loom weaving the tales of two people, and those they touch Ren Daiyan grows from an ambitious boy, to an outlaw, to a military man whos [...]

River of Stars is a follow on of sorts to Under Heaven, though it s a better book in almost every way A deeply moving historical fantasy, it recasts events from Northern Song Dynasty China, the fall of the city of Kaifeng, and the stories of the great general Yue Fei and poet Li Qingzhao Gripping from the first pages to the last, Kay has never written a better book Extraordinary.

Guy Gavriel Kay is an author whose writing I admire immensely, but whose work I ve only read sparsely To be exact, only twice, A Song for Arbonne and Tigana, the latter I ve only listened too and to me that is a completely different experience, so perhaps that one doesn t even count I did read rave reviews for Kay s previous release, Under Heaven, and the book is still on my humongous If I win the lottery, these are the books I ll buy list So when I was approached about reviewing it I was really [...]

A very interesting, and almost mythical read, I found myself enjoying the book from beginning to the end, and the ending was one that left me wanting .I found the book to be very interesting, the time period and how the author told the story was extremely well done While, it took me a while to get used to the authors writing style, I think it worked almost perfectly with the story and its characters The level of care the author took to create the detailed history of the setting, along with the c [...]

I m a huge Guy G Kay fan, so I can t really give an unbiased review I love his stuff I don t always know why I love them until a second reading Last Light of The Sun was like that for me It grew on me after thinking about it.As for River of Stars I have two non plot related thoughts on it The first is that it feels like a prediction Kay s choice of the fall of the Song Dynasty from a decadent civilization to anarchy is deliberate Our decadent civilization may be falling to internal and external [...]

It would be wrong to call Guy Gavriel Kay s new novel River of Stars a sequel to 2010 s Under Heaven As Mr Kay recently said in an interview I conducted with him If someone wrote a book about 16th century Italy think, Renaissance and another about Garibaldi in the 19th century, would we be discussing how they were similar or different, 400 years apart It s true yes, these novels share the setting of Kitai, a fantasy version of China that s, as the author likes to say, a quarter turn to the fanta [...]

I have been a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay s writing since the first book I read from him and he does not disappoints me.He has an uncanny ability to tell very moving tales of people caught in key moment of history the end of the Muslims presence in Spain in the Lions of Al Rassan, the end of a certain way of life in the middle ages in A Song for Arbonne.This book is another of those tales with the setting being 12th century imaginary China and the end of the Northern Song Dynasty following the Mongol [...]

There is nothing like a book by Guy Gavriel Kay He balances on a fine line between high fantasy and historical fiction, written with a poet s pen Every word is carefully placed, every sentence is delicately constructed Years of research go into each book Song Dynasty China was the jumping off point for this book , and years of writing as well, and it shows RIVER OF STARS is a brilliant book A powerful book A tender book The characters are painted with luminous brushstrokes I found myself crying [...]

Nikada nisam tako dugo itao jednu knjigu koju je Kay napisao Po eo sam jo pro le godine, a tek je sada zavr io trebalo mi je skoro pola godine Pa ak i uz to bio sam blizu tome da joj dam peticu, zadnja etvrtina knjige mi je bila odli na, no u kona nici to nije bilo dovoljno da prevagne.Dio razloga le i sigurno u mjestu radnje, ba kao i kod njegove pro le knjige, Kina jednostavno nije pogodila u sridu Bilo mi je nekako stra no daleko sve to o emu itam, mo da zato to o tom periodu znam ni malo, a [...]

Overall Assessment Worth ReadingCommentary River of Stars serves as an excellent example of a critic s dilemma The book is ambitious in its scope, breadth, and especially, stylistic conventions It is far complex, daring and interesting than most science fiction fantasy titles Yet, while acknowledging all this excellence, I must also acknowledge that it ultimately didn t work for me.For me, the core of the issue is Mr Kay s heavy use of extreme foreshadowing and the third person what I ll refer [...]

A stunningly beautiful book about love and duty and honour and war and decisions we make and the way they re remembered, and the rise and fall of dynasties and empires.Plus plots and intrigues that cut like a knife.

River of Stars by Guy Gavriel KayA beautifully created book Such simple language, easy flowing sentences, complex overall structure I was amazed that in so much of the book the author appears to break many of the rules of style I had been told to avoid Sentences with there is are was were Using this etc without antecedents Starting off with a description of the weather or season Overusing models Using weak verbs to be, seem, appear Talking to the reader in parentheticals Allowing the main charac [...]

To my knowledge, I ve only twice finished a book, closed it s back cover, and been struck with a visceral, short of breath, don t quite know what to do with myself emotional reaction, where I m somehow on the verge of crying and screaming and laughing all at the same time In my entire life, the only moment that compares is the one where I knew I had truly fallen in love The first of these literary moments was after I read To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams, when I was 19, the second was after [...]