TALYN [Paperback]

Holly Lisle (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Tor Books (2005)
• ASIN: B0018XY13A
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,231,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She is currently working on the second book in her Cadence Drake series.

Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer...which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:

"So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we'd tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children's Home, where we lived.

"My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.

"It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, "That's a bear footprint. From the size of it, it's a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear's still around."

"Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.


" 'I don't have the gun with me that will kill a bear,' he told me. 'I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I'm going to shoot him so he'll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.'

"The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I'm sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.

"We were not eaten by a bear that night...but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I'll ever forget.

"I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I'm putting on paper isn't at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn't make my cut."

Cheerfully,
Holly Lisle

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dark content with extreme sexual torture, December 25, 2007

By 

Anastasia (Staten Island, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Talyn: A Novel of Korre (Paperback)

I hesitate to recommend this novel. It is quite interesting, an absorbing read until about the middle - and I have to spoil you here - when a storyline of extreme sexual violence against women comes to the forefront. I felt it was unnecessary and jarring. The bad guys are bad, evil, sure, but can there be ways to depict that other than, "they like to get together with their friends and rape and torture their wives to death?" In nauseating detail.

That aspect for me overshadowed the other good parts of the story - the likeable main heroine, world-building, the romance, etc. At the middle of the book, I skipped to the very end, the final confrontation, and it didn't really redeem itself. I woke up the next morning feeling sick. This is my reader's cautionary warning. If you don't care for snuff, take care, especially given that it appears without a warning, in what is until then a lovely story.

NOTE: I'm aware that my opinion is emotion-laden and not very fair to the novel (I honestly don't like disturbing images or thoughts that might follow me through the rest of my day), so please read the Comments to this review for counterpoints.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts Out Well, Then Starts Sagging, March 1, 2008

By 

Becca Telor - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talyn: A Novel of Korre (Paperback)

This stats as a well-written novel. I found some of the characters engaging and the bad guy was fun to hate. I thought it was a great book and was devouring it until towards the end of the middle section.

I honestly think that the publishers must have rushed the author, because things stop making sense. Character's personalities change out of nowhere, and they start behaving completely differently. As far as the villain is concerned, logic goes out the window. I personally found the lead romance completely unconvincing, and the ending was so annoying I nearly threw up. I don't mind happy endings, but I do mind everything's perfect up-on-a-cloud-singing-and-dancing endings, especially when everything is resolved in the last five pages! As you can see, the ending left a sour taste in my mouth.

Also, there is some extreme sexual violence in this, so don't read it if you don't have a strong stomach.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent stand-alone fantasy, August 13, 2005

By 

Liz Burgess (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talyn: A Novel of Korre (Hardcover)

The alternating first- and third-person narration didn't bother me at all; it's not the first book I've read with that style. I think it makes for a more effective telling of this tale. The protagonists are well-drawn, interesting, and sympathetic. The villian is spooky and powerful. The supporting players are just right. Dark, deep, and just the right level of erotic, TALYN is my favorite fantasy so far this year.