Customer Reviews

TALYN

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I do not give spoilers in my reviews, so this will be pretty generic. This is, without being too over the top, probably the best book I have read all year long. The world you end up living and breathing in and the characters you are sure you know intimately. This is a hard book to read if you speed read. There is sooooo much detail. I normally read a book this size in about 2 days - this one took me about a week. This is a major compliment in and of itself. I didn't want to speed read. I wanted it to last and was sad when I was done. This is a book I will read again. Holly, you are the best.

Intriguing

Original

Utterly engrossing

Penetrating

Masterfully characterised

Realistic

.... Count the adjectives, sure, but they don't do justice to Talyn. Adjectives cannot tell you how powerfully Lisle's imagination creates the sense of being surrounded by the time and space and culture of this novel. Adjectives are impotent in describing how this novel digs its hooks into you as surely as any Feegash flesh-magery, and holds you helpless in its thrall as it unleashes terror after terror, twist after plot twist, revelation after startling revelation.

Talyn (her full name is longer, and much harder to spell) is a soldier in the Tonk Confederacy, a nation that has been at war with its neighbour, the Eastil Republic, for the better part of three centuries. It's a war that's fueled by the forces of habit and mischaracterisation of the enemy more than anything, and though as a reader, it is easy to see that the Tonks and the Eastils have a lot in common, Lisle to her credit does a superb job of keeping this realisation from her characters without dumbing them down in contrived ways. Talyn is committed to her enimity with the Eastils, and remains so for more than three-quarters of the book, in spite of her alliance with and love for an Eastil prisoner of war.

The alliance is one that is anything but welcome to both Gair, the Eastil prisoner, and Talyn. But they alone among all their kinsmen are free of the deadly magic that the outsider race called the Feegash have cunningly unleashed upon their shared land. Now, to save their kinsmen, their way of life, and everything they love, they must work together on a mission that rides on but a fool's hope, each trusting the honour of the other, the enemy.

Lisle unflinchingly puts her characters through hell and worse, over and over again, and still brings them out each time damaged, but shining brighter than before with the light of people whose honour has been tested and forged stronger. The Feegash villains are the embodiment of an insidious, convincing evil. Lisle's grasp of the intricacies of diplomacy and politics is once again evident in this latest work, and as usual, she shines as she deals with the plots and intrigues of war in her world.

But Lisle's true strength lies in her world-building. Talyn's despair at seeing her people's culture being thrown up in flames is our own, because by then, we are able to appreciate its beauty and rarity. In Lisle's commentary and descriptions of the differing Tonk and Eastil cultures, we gain a better understanding of our own world and our own societies... and in the end, that's what good fantasy should do.

I could not believe that every reviewer from the picky amazon.com readers could all agree on a 5-star book, but I have been proven wrong before.

This book deserves all five stars and more. It was a complete up-all-night-til-it-is-done book. It was original and very in-depth.

CHARACTERS:
All the characters are really well developed and go through an amazing change during the story. The main character is of course Talyn and you read about her through first-person. Her thoughts and philosophies are really interesting although at first they seem like brainwash. It was really interesting learning about a society (the Tonks) through someone so fiercely patriotic.
The other character, Gair, is in third-person, making it an interesting balance between the two. He represents the biggest flaw in the book because towards the end he gets a little too wussy until he makes up for it in the final scene.
There also is an alluded two other characters, the Tonks and the Eastils. They are the two warring societies that make up the continent Hyre. They are so richly explored through Talyn's and Gair's eyes that they have their own personalities so different from the rest of the world.

SETTING:
As I said before, their are two warring socities, the Tonks and the Eastils, that have been fighting for three hundred years. Here is where Lisa's originality shines through. Each nation has very extreme differences, but based on the thoughts of the two characters it ends up to be hard to hate either of them.

There were a few flaws that did start to wear me down towards the end. For one, the big paragraphs of summarization got a little tiredsome. And, although the title of the book is "Talyn", I wish Gair had a little bit of a bigger role with the magic. Other than that it really was an amazing book, and I would highly recommend it to fiction and fantasy readers alike.

(3.5 stars)

I have mixed feelings about Talyn. There are things I loved about it and things I really didn't love. Firstly, I loved the setting of the novel; it's a new world that has a fascinating society. Basically there are two cultures of people that occupy land as neighbors who have been warring for over 300 years. One is a free-state democracy type society and the other is a monarchy. The novel explores their issues about racism and elitism between the two factions. Talyn is part of the democracy; they are called Tonks. The book follows her journey through some great adventure and romance (although the romance was a lot more underplayed than I initially expected).

The magic system created in this world is also fantastic. It's hard to describe. There's the View which people can enter where they have to power to protect and destroy, and this is used by the warring factions to attack each other constantly, but they are so close that it's basically a stalemate. They just continue to fight and have even made countless rules and regulations over the centuries that govern this war to the point it is ingrained in their daily lives as harvesting and raising a family.

Lives change when a third race, the Feegash, enter the picture as diplomats and set up a peace treaty between the Tonks and the Eastils. But it doesn't end there (of course), and they find that there's more going on than they think.

As for the things I didn't like, well, the book was not consistent in its intrigue. I found that the beginning was awesome, then it lulled, then it got awesome again, and then instead of creating a great climax, the book for some reason went on for another 200 pages, and then ended in the big confrontation in the last 20 pages. I really found myself wondering why it was taking so long. Some good things happened in those 200 pages but they were so spread out and were events that I couldn't figure out why they HAD to be there that I felt it was just becoming too contrived. There would be build-up to action and then the author would throw in pages of self-reflection and speculation that I think extremely slowed down the actual plot. This, for me, is what knocked the book down from great to good.

I tried, oh how I tried to read this book in one sitting. But it was just too long and my eyes failed well before my mind was willing to let go.

Talyn is a novel rich with characters, feelings, drama, romance, action all set in a world so well developed you could step into it at any second.

Holly Lisle has always impressed me with the quality of her fiction. This book goes above and beyond anything I've ever read by her. By kicking it up a notch she has crafted the best example of her work next.

Pick up a copy - you will not be disappointed! In the meantime I'm eagerly looking forward to her next offering.

Talyn (2005) is a standalone fantasy novel. Korre is a world with seven continents, the Islands of the Fallen Sun, and numerous other islands. Hyre is the smallest continent, located between Velobrina and Tandinapalis.

Hyre is divided between the Eastil Republic to the east and the Confederacy of Hyre to the west. Eastil is a monarchic republic, with a variegated population descending from prison colonies. The Confederacy is a collection of city-states and nomadic tribes, all descending from the Tonks of Tandinapalis. These nations have been warring with each other for three hundred years.

In this novel, Talyn Wyran av Tiirsha dryn Sytaad is a Tonk and a Shielder in the army of Beyltaak, one of the seven major taaks in the Confederacy. She has been in the army since being drafted at the age of thirteen after Magics Intelligence detected the first signs of magical talent. As a Shielder, she intercepts and neutralizes magical attacks by enemy Senders.

Recently rumors of a ceasefire negotiated by Feegash Diplomats have circulated among the Beyltaak Magics. Feegash come from the mountain kingdom of Ba'sfeegash and are reputed to have the best mercenary troops in the world. Their Diplomats often act as mediators of international conflicts and have an excellent reputation for honesty and fair dealing.

Usually Talyn protects the Conventional troops from magical attacks, but she has gained a bit of important information during the last, massive attack. She had a passing encounter with an enemy Sender that suggested Eastil forces will be attacking an upcoming meeting of all the Taaklords in Injtaak. She passes this intelligence on to her commander and later her unit is assigned as backup for the Injtaak Shielders.

Captain Gair Farhallen is leading his nine man company of infiltrators to Injtaak to disrupt the Alltaak Hend. They have all been trained in the language, cultures and customs of the Confederacy. After a final briefing and pep-talk, each trooper heads into the city-state by different ways, trying to blend into the crowds coming for the meeting of the Taaklords.

Before the Taaklords begin to gather, Talyn and her team enter the View -- a magical place loosely equivalent to normal space -- and coordinates with the Injtaak Shielders. Her team divides the meeting area among themselves and start looking for the enemy. By brushing against their presence within the View, each Shielder can sense something of the mood of people in normal space. Talyn eventually spots one of the infiltrators on the roof of the building and announces her find. Other Shielders begin to detect the enemy and guide Conventionals to the suspects.

Gair starts the attack, but finds that some of his company, including his Communicator, have already been taken into custody by Confederacy troops. Although Gair and some of his men still manage to set the building aflame with Greton Fire, almost all of his troopers are eventually captured or killed. Moreover, Gair is not able to signal back to the Eastil troops massed and waiting at the border.

In this story, Gair later finds that none of the Taaklords were killed in the attack. A handful of Feegash Diplomats died in the fire, but all the Tonks -- except three scribes who tried to redirect the Feegash -- fled through the escape tunnels. Obviously Eastil intelligence missed a few facts about Injtaak.

Talyn later intervenes when Tonk bystanders are stoning the Eastil captives. Gair and his men are identified as Eastil soldiers by the Magics who arrest them, but none of his troopers are wearing uniforms or carrying identification. Then the Eastil authorities are so disrupted by the Feegash ceasefire activities that Gair and his men drop through the cracks. Beyltaak authorities make special provisions for their incarceration while awaiting notice of POW status, but later the Eastils are moved into the civilian prison and eventually stashed in a wet, smelly and cold dungeon cell.

Talyn has several encounters with Feegash Diplomats, including an embarrassing gift of a beautiful horse from an unknown and overgenerous benefactor. When the only remaining member of Gair's unit appears and requests her help, Talyn asks her acquaintance, the junior Feegash Diplomat Skirmig, to get the Eastils out of the prison. She provides space in her loft for their care and asks her healer to treat their wounds.

This story may be an allegory about the peoples of our world, particularly the United States of America. All of the peoples in this novel seem to symbolize some aspects of contemporary societies. The Eastils obviously represent the USA, with the English monarchical origins and the subsequent melting pot. The Confederacy shows some of the stubborn isolationism and resistance to the foreign influx found in the USA, yet it mostly seems to represent the resistance of various cultures throughout the world to Western Society and Globalization. Feegash may symbolize American arrogance and ignorance of other cultures.

Is America seen by the rest of the world as consolidating everybody into a single materialistic culture, where there are no good or evil, only more or less expedient behaviors? Have we no regard for other traditions and customs? On the other hand, will we build a wall around the country and keep everybody else out? What if the Indians had built such a wall and kept our ancestors out of the country? This story seems to have many ramifications beyond the entertaining tale itself.

Highly recommended for Lisle fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of interesting characters, high adventure and perseverance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

By no accounts was this book perfect, but I'm willing to forgive a book a lot more if it makes me laugh. Right from the start the main character, Talyn, has a fantastic sense of humor that would have kept me interested in a much worse book. Talyn is a character I think most people can empathize with. She's straightforward, proud, and vivacious. Right from the first chapter I cared a lot for her, and I was emotionally invested in what happened to her.

There are a lot of good technical points in this book's favor, but I like it so much because it made me laugh, over and over again.

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