River of Stars

I’m reading the new Guy Gavriel Kay novel River of Stars; he’s one of my favorite authors, I’ve read everything he’s written and I love it all – his characters and settings and storytelling are marvelous feasts of imagination. That said, my recent fantasy-mind has been so Game Of Thrones–centric that any other fantasy novel not filled with bleak devastation and terrible things happening to favorite characters seems…kinda fluffy. Where’s all the incest, rape, torture, and cruelty – what is this, Disneyland?? If there’s a suggestion of romantic attraction between two characters that’s not scourged by rape and dismemberment, it seems like a flighty Harlequin romance novel. So yeah, after the long, wonderful, terrible road of GoT books and movies, this is a good palate cleanser.