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Talyn: A Novel of Korre |
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Author:
Holly Lisle
By Tor Fantasy
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $3.89
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Product Description
In a world where technology is magic, and war is the only way of life, Talyn is a soldier...
…raised from birth to fight for her people and her country. She long ago embraced her fate: to die in battle. So when a shocking peace sweeps her land, she's cast adrift, and easily seduced by an outsider's touch, his new magic -- but his passions are evil and run deep, and Talyn soon finds herself twisted by his touch.
Through him she discovers darkness within herself she’d never suspected—and the mistreatment of prisoners of war, the creeping blackness sneaking through her land, the insidious evil that no one even suspected their peacekeepers of bringing.
Now she must weigh her life against her honor if she is to help her people regain their freedom…
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 Starts Out Well, Then Starts Sagging, 2008-03-01
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.
Dark content with extreme sexual torture, 2007-12-25
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.
Holly Lisle Improves, 2007-09-18
I have enjoyed Holly Lisle's work before, but have not been all that impressed. This work shows a great improvement in her writing. 'Talyn' portrays a vividly imagined world and features a strong, mature female protagonist. She has put a lot of thought and craft into her world building, and it has paid off. I can't say I much like her created language's style, but she is consistent in its usage and it aids in identifying the culture.
I found 'Talyn' nearly impossible to put down, and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Clash of Cultures, 2006-10-28
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
Gut-wrenching, brilliant page-turner, 2006-04-19
When I first started to write this review, I began, "Talyn is a little slice of genius. . ." And then I stopped typing, as I realized what a disservice I was doing this book.
This book isn't a little slice of anything. There is nothing little about it, not its scope, not its themes, not its world or its characters, not the book itself.
Talyn is a thick, marbled slab of genius, carved raw and steaming from the heart of that place inside us that makes one a writer. It is marinated in the blood and pain, sweet wine and vinegar of living and loving, prepared flawlessly and served with all its rich complexity of contradictory flavors intact.
It is, in many ways, the culmination of what Holly's work has always been about:
--- brilliant world-building, dense and multilayered and detailed and so much deeper than just the first six inches below the soil
--- fully-fleshed, complex, often-conflicted characters who live and breathe and love and bleed and grow -- and use the fires of their pain to forge the metal of their ultimate victory
--- stories that matter, with a scope wide enough to reveal that the worth of one life may reach far beyond what one might imagine, and the smallest actions of the least of us can have far-reaching consequences that were never intended
In Talyn, Lisle has fully internalized the things she has always done well, braided the many and varied strands of her awesome storytelling prowess tightly together and woven of them a tapestry of lives that will draw you in, hold you entranced, shock you, frighten you, and ultimately inspire you.
Talyn will make you think; but above all, it will make you feel.
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765348739
ISBN: 076534873X
Label: Tor Fantasy
Manufacturer: Tor Fantasy
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Studio: Tor Fantasy |
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