Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay

fiction/fantasy, (c)1992, 512pp
rating: ****

This is another book from the "Unread Novels From My Parent's House" collection. Song for Arbonne takes place in a world that approximates medieval Europe. Arbonne (France) is a country that is dominated by a goddess cult, strong women, troubadors and the Court of Love. Directly to the north is Gorhaut (Germany), a war-like country where women are second-class citizens, and fighting and hunting are prized. Enter Blaise of Gorhaut, who leaves his own land and comes to Arbonne. He quickly becomes enmeshed in the politics of Arbonne, including the ongoing war between the Duke of Miraval and the Duke of Talair which was started 23 years prior over the infidelity of a woman. Throughout the book, Blaise has to come to terms with his upbringing and his mind is slowly opened to other ways of thinking by the friends that he makes in Arbonne. There is love, there is sex and there is war.

Overall, I liked the novel. It was very well written, linguistically, but I thought that the story was kind of loose. Much of the novel felt kind of contrived. At 512 pages, it's already a long book, but I thought that Kay should have either focused on the war between Miraval and Talair, or the war between Arbonne and Gorhaut, as opposed to trying to deal with them both. It's impossible for one or the other not to get short shrift. There were interesting characters introduced that never got particularly well fleshed out and the ending of the book was especially contrived. I would recommend this book if you like the genre, but I've heard some of his other novels are better.