Customer Reviews

The Darkest Road (Fionavar Tapestry, Book 3)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In this third and final volume of the Fionavar Tapestry (started with The Summer Tree and The Wandering Fire), the various armies are slowly marching northwards to meet and confront Rakoth Maugrim the Unraveller, encountering numerous enemies sent to slow them down.

And Darien the andain, son of Jennifer and Rakoth, is therefore torn by the terrible choice he has to make between Light and Dark. Deperately searching for someone to love and understand him but feared by all because of who he is, abandoned by Finn his foster brother, ignored and rejected by his mother and her friends who don't want to interfere in his choice, he's flying in the shape of an owl to Starkadh, to bring the sacred blade Lökdal to his father, in hope of his welcome.

In the mountains, Matt Sören, resurrected by Lancelot's powers but no longer Loren Silvercloak the mage's source, goes back to Calor Diman where he belongs, to reclaim his throne as King of the Dwarfs from the hands of Kaen the traitor. He'll have to challenge him according to the rules of the Dwarfmoot.

I found this last volume much more entertaining than the previous one, even though I think Kay tried to include too many fantasy themes in one series and ended up with a messy plot that made it hard to believe. I was also a bit disappointed by how fast the story was resolved. Finally, not knowing Arthur's legend, I'm also sure I missed a lot of interesting references, but then I've only got myself to blame...

The Darkest Road is the conclusion to a bittersweet story that touches the heart in ways that long after the reader has savored the final words the "melody lingers on" and on. The entire three book series starting with "The Summer Tree", followed by "The Wandering Fire" tells a story of five friends from Toronto who are gathered together one evening on campus to attend a lecture by an outstanding speaker. Unbeknown to the audience the speaker is actually from another world and is a mage by name of Loren Silvercloak who is accompanied by his magical source Matt, a dwarf king. They have crossed the dimensions of time and are on a quest to find these five friends, several of whom have alternate histories in other lifetimes. They have essential roles in this parallel universe to aid the people of Fionavar who are locked in a struggle against the god Rakoth Maugrim called the Unraveller in a near hopeless battle between the forces of chaos vs order.

The story delves into the vilest recesses of evil perpetuated by Rakoth Maugrim who captures and nearly destroys the very beautiful and queenly Jennifer/Guinevere. Amidst this horror is another that consumes her friend Paul who is haunted by guilt over his belief that he caused the death of his lover Rachel in a car accident that transpired on a rainy night in Toronto. Paul establishes a quasi friendship over a game of chess with the king of Fionavar and learns the reasons behind the drought that is destroying the land. In his desolation of guilt and grief he volunteers to be the sacrifice on the Summer Tree in the Godwood in place of the aged king so that rain will come and and halt the devastation of drought caused by Rakoth's malevolence.

The sacrifice he makes transmutes Paul from mortal to that of an andain/god-man. He becomes a channel for Mornir the god of thunder. Kim, who is a doctor in Toronto is fated to become the seer of Fionavar and to wield the warstone in defense of the beleagured kingdom.

Dave, a truculent law student locked in an angry power struggle with his father and mad at the world in general had become separated from the others during the magical translation from Toronto to Finovar and has wandered into the lands of nomads called the Dalrei. He learns to love these people as he lives among them and becomes both a brother and a warrior helping them defend their herds of eltor from ravening wolves and other evil forces sent by Rakoth Maugrim to destroy the Dalrei. In the process of seemingly insurrmountable odds he finds inner peace and himself as a man. The sweet tempered, good hearted, fun loving, irreverent Kevin is the only one who finds he has no real purpose to serve Finovar until one special night, guided by mystical forces, he travels to the place of a goddess and chooses to sacrifice his life in order to be with her again for in his moment of death, he has discovered that they were beloved of each other in a past lifetime. His sacrifice brings another shift in the stuggle of Light in its battle to overcome the darkness and destruction wrought by the Unraveller.

There are many threads to this tapestry and Kay, as usual, weaves them together in ways that can render the reader breathless with wonder over his stunning mastery of his art as he brings this magnificent saga to a close. The celtic lore of Arthur Pendragon, Guinivere, Lancelot du Lac and the dog Cavall are irredescent threads that glisten like teardrops throughout the weave for they are so heartbreaking and yet beautiful. Kay's inclusion of these figures from arthurian legend in this story adds a new dimension to a mythos that has lingered in the hearts and history of the celts.

And yet, the weaves of past lives, past loves is believable in the sense that in in the vastness of potential realities all things are possible. Who really knows?

With this saga, Kay stretches the reader's mind to encompass notions of immortality, parallel universes, alternate realities and the timlessness of love that transcends all things. The depth to which a human will strive to embrace the reality of a grand passion or to resolve an unrequited love is the ultimate power of this story. I deeply respect this author's writing for he seems to understand life from a perspective unfettered by the limitations of others' beliefs. Indeed this is a spiral of parallel universes and of celtic lore, within another spiral of the mystical and magical god-men, gods and goddesses within another spiral of contemporary human time and place and it is unforgettable.

I remember the first time I read this series. It took me four days (it would have taken three, but there was a delay in getting the last two from a friend). I was moved more deeply than any other work in fantasy I had read. I remember staying up until 6 AM (I was in theater at the time) reading them, and weeping my way through the last third of the last book in the series.

Without doubt, Kay invokes all that is deep in us as people who have created mythos and myths to carry us. He evokes all that is strong in us, while showing that even the mythic have their weaknesses. While later works of Kay's may be more polished, this is the raw material that he still works from.

As with every reading, when I finished my recent re-read I was almost traumatised to leave the world that had been so well crafted. The end leaves all satisfied, but there is a bittersweet flavor to it, since the people he has created are no longer accessable to the reader.

This is the series I would want while stranded on a desert island. And I cannot think of anything more to say than that.

This is an uneven work.

The author has an exceptional gift for language - in his later, more mature works, he often attains the sublime - but here, in his earlier works, he struggles. It is as if he hasn't enough confidence in the mastery of his craft to trust to understatement and restraint. Instead, he strikes for bold effects, and ends up with melodrama.

Melodrama has its place and, when done well, can be quite effective. Consider Les Miserables or A Tale of Two Cities. But here, it is not done well. Perhaps I am alone in my weariness, but I am tired of Elves and Dwarves, Dragons and Trolls, and appendices to Arthurian myth. This story parallels the Lord of the Rings so obviously that it is rendered formulaic: the fellowship of protagonists with varying characters and strengths; the wizard who leads them; the dark antagonist in his invincible fortress who is the very embodiment of malice and desolation; the lonely quest by a tortured soul, carrying a great burden into the heart of danger. Even the mountain is here. And the Arthurian elements are, frankly, tired and distracting. It's all been done before and done better.

Then there are the characters. They can only be described as uni-dimensional. The antagonists are cartoon bad guys; the protagonists are stereotypical personality types; the secondary characters are introduced and have their respective moments, but are often dropped and forgotten with disjointed ease.

Take the case of a southern princess seduced by a northern prince. First she loves him. Then she hates him. Then she loves him again. I'll try not to give away too much of the plot, but what motivates such conflicting emotions and what happens to her in the end? We don't know. It's unconvincing and incomplete.

I don't want to leave the impression that I actively dislike the work. Some of it is quite good. Kay shows flashes of the brilliance that characterize his later works. His writing is regal and elegant. He may not have learned yet that less is better, but he shows a gift for presentation that often intrigues and occasionally compels.

This is a series only for hardcore fantasy buffs. It makes no attempt to transcend its genre. It adheres to the fantasy formula so conventionally, that its main appeal will be to those readers who read fantasy for the comfort of the formula. However, the overall skill and the occasional nugget saves it from failure and earns it a guarded recommendation.

I have mixed feelings about this book (and the entire trilogy). I've re-read it a few times over the years, and once I start re-reading, it's definitely quite addictive.

This doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws though, the most major one being that the entire series seems to be a modernised, 'how-I-would-have-written-the-LOTR-if-I-were-Tolkien'. Indeed, if you read the entire series with that as the caveat, it is quite an entertaining one.

The Darkest Road itself has quite a few weak points, the Arthurian thread being my major pet peeve. I found it extremely irritating with how Kay tells - not shows - over and over and *over* how terribly tragic the whole thing is - I get it already! I love the Arthurian myth cycle, and have read a good deal of material from there, and Kay doesn't even begin to do it justice. In effect all he has done is lift the names.

There are three moments in this book that stand out with crystal clarity for me though - I'd say these three are the ones that make the book worth reading. So, one star each. ;)

(Warning: spoilers.)

1) Diarmuid's last battle with the urgach Uathach. This one was beautifully done - with Kay having the courage to kill off a very engaging, major character in a memorable, meaningful way.

It's a pity he seems to lose his nerve for doing such things in his later works - in the Lions of Al-Rassan, there's no contest really. It's so much more obvious that Ibn Khairan is going to live. Which on the one hand is great, because I found him much more engaging than Belmont... but on the other hand...

2) Kimberly's refusal to bind the crystal dragon - and the cost of that choice at the final battle.

Although here I have reservations because I find it hard to swallow that one tiny unicorn with an even smaller rider, blessed by a goddess or not, can take down a dragon. And Tabor doesn't even die.

3) The Lios Alfar as bait for Rakoth at the final battle.

This one was a brilliant stroke for me - I never could buy that Sauron would bother with an army of 7,000 at his gate, led by Isildur's heir or not, and a chance of the Ring.

Using the Lios as bait though, and counting on Rakoth's hatred of them to make him unable to restrain himself given the opportunity to wipe them out entirely... that rings far more true with me than Tolkien's, 'Oh look, my great grand-grand-grand-ad-infinitum-daddy cut off your finger a millennia ago, won't you come get me now, nyah!' approach.

All in all, if you've read the other 2 books and liked them, then read this one. It's not one of the books I'd recommend as superb fantasy, but it's definitely entertaining, especially if you found yourself unsatisfied with how Tolkien handled some things...

I'm going to be brief on this one, the review is for the whole trilogy. I hear often that this is one of the least liked of Kay's books, his starting trilogy, but I love this series. The heartfelt characters, the blend of Fantasy with various mythologies, the genuinely foul villains, the tremendous writing style. And this series has more one-to-one combat scenes than any other that I have read.

Finishes off the series relatively well, but the arthurian legend pieces could have been eliminated

This book while not as satisfying as the promise in the first two, is still an excellent story.Kay is gifted and his use of celtic and other legends to further his work is excellent!

I originally purchased the first volume of The Fionavar Tapestry in the early '90's, and eagerly awaited the following volumes. I am a heavy reader, 2-6 books per week, and this is one of the few tales that brought tears to my eyes in the last 50 or more years of reading. The man IS a storyteller and this tale is captvating!

I have been slightly disappointed in his other books, and I believe that he can do better. The Light of the Sun is slightly better than most of the others

In closing, I have read The Fionavar Tapestry at least 7 times in the time I have owned it and recommend it highly to others. Its a great story and is presented well.

I know that I'm swimming against the current here, but I must say that it took me several tries to finish 'The Darkest Road'. After having read Kay's brilliant and unforgettable book 'Tigana' with characters so rich that they permanently become part of your mind, I found the entire Fionavar trilogy to be somewhat shallow and disappointing. On the one hand, the overall direction of the plot is unsurprising and the characters and their soap-opera dialog are utterly predictable. And on the other hand, the story is filled out with a tiresome and endless succession of unpresaged 'wonders', magical surprises and ancient myths come to life. To me, this combination was difficult to bear throughout the trilogy, but especially in the ending, which is an especially concentrated mixture of predictability, soap-opera and 'deus ex machina' including an 'invincible' and horrible dragon that appears from nowhere, only to disappear from the story just as quickly. That this trilogy is often compared with Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings' should be no surprise because a great many of the plot elements and character types in the Fionavar trilogy are nearly identical to those in Tolkein's work. In my opinion, 'The Darkest Road' and its predecessors are more like juvenile literature. Kay's 'Tigana' is for the grown-ups. Go read THAT.

I loved The Summer Tree, once I got used to Kay's writing style, but I hated The Wandering Fire. The Darkest Road brought a nice conclusion to the series and mostly made up for the pain of the second book. Yes, there are still some problems with female characters who seemed strong in the first book being completely useless now that they have love interests, and the Arthurian plot is still filled with overwrought dreck, but unlike in the second book, these problems are mostly peripheral to the story being told.

There are some very moving moments in Kath Meigol and with the Dwarves. The climax was somewhat predictable, but not in a bad way, more in a way that rewarded you for seeing the foreshadowed hints. This book made me really care about the characters again, the way I did in the first book, and the plot was engaging almost the entire time. And, even though Kay isn't much of a romance writer, I was pleased to see my two favorite characters finally get together.