The Lions of al-Rassan Paperback – June 1, 2005

Guy Gavriel Kay is a fantasy author who has pulled off the trick of never having written a bad story. In fact, his only "B" effort is his early trilogy "The Fionavar Tapestry." All of his other works are A+.I just finished reading "The Lions of Al-Rassan," and I very highly recommend it. I thought that it couldn't possibly be as good as Kay's "Tigana," but it seems that I was wrong. On the other hand, it's been years since I've read "Tigana," and my memory of the story is hazy—other than remembering that it knocked my socks off but good.So did "The Lions of Al-Rassan."It's a deep story with lots of human sentiment, and multiple layers of meaning. The words are so well-laid on the page that you get the feeling that you are reading poetry, even though you'd have difficulty saying why.As a story, "The Lions of Al-Rassan" gets my highest praise. Like most of GG Kay's books, it scores high in world-building, character development, and narrative excellence. There's even a well-executed twist near the story's end.However, "The Lions of Al-Rassan" is also a clever kind of propaganda.The setting is an alternative Europe in which the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula endured for centuries longer than it did in our real world. Pushing the Jaddites (Christians) out, the Asharites (Muslims) built a country called Al-Rassan. Their conquering kings were said to be Lions.The third significant population group in the story is the Kindath (Jews). The story pushes the idea that the Kindath are just the best people in the whole world. The most moral. The most principled. The most generous. The most altruistic. The most inoffensive. They get hated by every other race in the world for no reason at all. You know how it goes: it's the whole self-serving B'nai B'rith schpiel.In "The Lions of Al-Rassan" there are no Deir Yassins, no Sabra-Shatilas, no MOSSADs, no Armenian Genocides. All of the military atrocities in the story are committed either by Jaddites or by Asharites—never by Kindath. The only Kindath prime minister (for one of the more liberal Asharite monarchs) is a kindly, self-sacrificing fellow who is quite the opposite of, say, Lazar Kaganovich.There are no Kindath equivalents of Arie Scher or George Schteinberg, pimping poor children. You won't find any Kindath versions of Michael Eisner or Robert Iger, controlling the flow of information among other races, choosing what to suppress and what to emphasize.There aren't any Kindath black market kidney-sellers, either. Nor any Kindath rabbis who launder money for organized crime gangs. And the Kindath of Al-Rassan certainly don't operate any nation-beggaring, usurious banking institutions.Kay uses the Kindath to represent the Jews, but it's a biased and sanitized representation. The poor, innocent Kindath are frequently someone else's victims; they are never portrayed as victimizing others. Asharite and Jaddite religious leaders are portrayed as being mendacious and full of spite; Kindath leaders are portrayed as being honest and full of love.There's even a reference, by a Kindath, to a blood-libel rumor about Kindath eating babies; it's told as dark humor, not intended to be taken seriously by the character who is doing the listening (or by the reader). It looks very much as if Kay used it to slip in the old canard that every blood-accusation is a blood-LIBEL—i.e., that none of them has ever been true.Furthermore, in the story you'll learn that all of the Aristotles, Bachs, Brownings and Michaelangelos were either Kindath or Asharites. No top-ranking philosopher or artist can be found among the Jaddites. And the only Jaddite characters to become worthwhile medical doctors learned all they knew from Kindath teachers. One of them even converts, late in the story, from Jaddism to Kindath.Kay's story is an exceptionally effective work of Jewish propaganda, precisely because it stands far above most modern fantasy stories in terms of technical quality. Go ahead and read it if you want to read a great story. At the end of it, you might decide that you admired the Kindath best of the three peoples.But remember this: The Kindath are FANTASY Jews. The REAL Jews aren't at all like the Kindath in "The Lions of Al-Rassan."

Had such an amazing time reading this. If you're considering it, go for it and don't wait! I think you'll find yourself very pleasantly surprised

The title of the book is really all you need to know about this novel.I say that because I spent nearly every moment of the 19 hours listening and reading not really understanding what the story was about.Picture the Iberian Peninsula under Moorish Rule of Al-Andalus, except it is called Al-Rassan. Picture fictitious characters modeled after real Islamic peoples that ruled and lived there at the time of the Reconquest. Picture noble and powerful people whose story has been overshadowed by the history of those whose land was taken and reclaimed through warfare.This is the main thrust of The Lions of Al-Rassan.I did not dislike the book. Kay is an incredible writer.I simply thought that books which read like a documentary were not well regarded in this day and age. So the style, rather than the content, is what I found uninteresting.I would have to say that Kay's novels ought to be held up as the standard for the Historical Fiction genre.

Guy Gavriel Kay has given us a true epic in a single volume in The Lions of Al-Rassan. It is athinly veiled retelling of El Cid and the Reconquista, albeit altered and compressed (the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula did take centuries, after all).Jehane bet Ishak is a Kindath (read: Jewish) physician living in Fezana. Fezana remains under Asharite (read: Muslim) rule but Asharites have grown weak, and Fezana pays tribute to the nearest Jaddite (read: Christian) kingdom. Alvar de Pellino is a young soldier who joins the company of the famed captain Rodrigo Belmonte (heavily based on the historical El Cid). Events early in the book will lead to Rodrigo’s exile and bring the four main characters together. Kay captures the complexity of Reconquista era Iberian politics, which could see a Jaddite mercenary fighting under an Asharite king one day and against him the next. The final major character is Ammar ibn Khairan, assassin of the last caliph and advisor to an Asharite king.The scope is epic and the plot complex. The peninsula is fractured into numerous states on both the Jaddite and Asharite sides. Events on the peninsula do not happen in a vacuum. A Crusade called far to the east will push the Jaddite kingdoms to embark on their own invasion south. Their actions will attract the attention of the Asharites across the strait to the south. Rodrigo and Ammar are men whose actions can topple kingdoms. This is very much a Great Man book.Kay imbues his epic tale, though, with a personal touch at the same time. We see Rodrigo and Ammar as men, not just as Great Men. And Jehane and Alvar bring a more grounded perspective to the narrative. He gets the least attention in the reviews I’ve read, but I found Alvar’s narrative arc to be the most intriguing and satisfying. Rodrigo and Ammar and Jehane know what their place in the world is and what they want it to be (not necessarily the same thing). Alvar spends the book figuring that out.I had many stylistic quibbles with the first Kay book I read, Children of Earth and Sky. I am happy to report that none of those quibbles apply to The Lions of Al-Rassan, which makes me wonder if Children of Earth and Sky is an outlier in the Kay oeuvre. I won’t wait four years to read my next Kay.

I don't think I book has ever made me "feel" so much. I have also never read a book where I cared for and understood every character better, I will glady read every book this man has ever written because of this one in the hope that I can experience again anew what I did reading this one.