River of Stars

River of Stars (2013) Guy Gavriel Kay

First, this cover is gorgeous. The picture links to a large version of the cover and NOT the book at Amazon. The link to Amazon is the title text (if you’d like to help me earn bits of a penny.)

Like all his work, this is an immense, epic story, looking back upon a decisive time and the men and women who shaped that time and those events. It also has a distinctly Chinese tone, from the names, to the customs and folklore, to the way the story unfolds.

There are so many stories, she thinks, and mots of them end up lost.

But this, of course, is Guy Gavriel Kay, so although it feels like it could have been set in our past, our history, it wasn’t.

She is using the rabbit’s-hair brush for this letter: it makes the most precise characters. Sheep’s hair is more bold, but though she needs the letter to seem confident of its virtue, it is still a plea.

And as with Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing, there are so many lines that made me stop, because they expressed a truth so simply.

Sometimes things uprooted cannot be restored.

 

(T)he safe is not found ahead of the people leading them to the future, he comes along after, picking up treasures that have been lost or left behind.

 

Sometimes you set events in motion, like a river, and if it flooded, or grew engorged…

 

The world didn’t allow you clean, clear judgements very often.

So very many lines that are worth considering on their own.

However, let me be clear, I finished this book and my first thought was, “What? NO!”

I was reminded very much of the ending of “The Princess Bride.” The book, that is, not the movie.

‘And they lived happily ever after,’ my father said.

‘Wow,’ I said. He looked at me.

‘You’re not pleased?’

‘No, no, it’s just, it came so quick, the ending, it surprised me. I thought there’d be a little more, is all. I mean, was the pirate ship waiting or was that just a rumor like it said?’

‘Complain to Mr. Morgenstern. “And they lived happily ever after” is how it ends.’

The truth was, my father was fibbing. I spent my whole life thinking it ended that way, up until I did this abridgement. Then I glanced at the last page. This is how Morgenstern ends it.

***

BUTTERCUP LOOKED AT him. “Oh my Westley, so do I.”

From behind them suddenly, closer than they had imagined, they could hear the roar of Humperdinck: “Stop them! Cut them off!” They were, admittedly, startled, but there was no reason for worry: they were on the fastest horses in the kingdom, and the lead was already theirs.

However, this was before Inigo’s wound reopened, and Westley relapsed again, and Fezzik took the wrong turn, and Buttercup’s horse threw a shoe. And the night behind them was filled with the crescendoing sound of pursuit….

Goldman, William (2007-10-08). The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (Kindle Locations 4848-4859). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

The ending of River of Stars put me very much in the mind of that passage, so keep that in mind as you read. Though I did mention that the story unfolded in a way that very much felt Chinese.

Of course, I was also reminded of the discussion between Garak and Dr Bashir in The Wire on Cardassian literature. Sometimes cultural differences are most start when it comes to story telling, and a story that follows the norms of one culture can be somewhat alien to readers of another culture.

But don’t think I didn’t enjoy this story–I did. And to be honest, I saw the tone of the ending coming and wasn’t surprised. It’s just that perhaps I’ve been reading too much romance recently, and have come to expect certain things from my endings that I hadn’t previously.

Regardless, this is an amazing book, although I’ll admit that it took me awhile, and reading on the Kindle with “X-Ray” made it much much easier to keep track of the characters.
Rating: 9/10

Published by ROC

 
 

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