Tigana
A conquered nation's name has been magically erased from memory, and only those born there can still remember it. Kay's novel about cultural erasure, resistance, and the cost of liberation is the most politically serious epic fantasy of its generation.
Eight hundred pages, and the middle third drags. Devin, the ostensible lead, is passive and largely along for the ride, one reader calling him “utterly useless to the plot.” The prose goes purple at its worst, “flowery prose that made my eyes bleed,” emotional beats told and retold rather than earned. The women are thin next to the men, largely defined by romantic interest, with “everyone crushing over Devin” the way one reviewer flags nearly every woman written as attracted to the same man. The Dianora and Brandin relationship reads to some as a survivor romanticising her captor. And the sex scenes arrive tonally jarring against an otherwise stately register.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
