The Lions Of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay

One of the patterns that the author has shown in his alternate universe is the way that he looks at hinges in history, where characters have to deal with the consequences of golden ages that turn sour, and where people are caught in the middle of historical trends that they have little chance to overturn even as they struggle to do precisely that.  This particular novel is historical in a sense, in that it is based on a telescoped view of Spanish history in the period after the fall of the Ummayyad Caliphate to the successful Reconquista.  What in reality took centuries is here viewed as being the work of a single generation of hard work.  Even if history is telescoped to serve the interests of narrative, this is a powerful story of people caught in one of the decisive turns of history, where a tolerant golden age turned into a much darker period, the sort of picture that has grim relevance for our own age where a decadent tolerance is replaced by civilizational conflict achieved with pogroms and acts of violence by grim people who want easy answers to difficult and complicated questions.  The fate of Al-Rassan, which lies in ruins by novel’s end, is not so different from our own fate.

This book is a sizable one at 500 pages and it begins with a Jewish doctor who inadvertently saves the life of a merchant from an atrocity from a Muslim ruler who seeks to put his vizir and his eldest son on the wrong foot.  Of course, he is soon put to death by that vizir who has poisoned him in disguise as a servant.  Meanwhile, a feud between two Spaniards leads to an attempted rape that goes awry and then exile for a crusading hero.  While Jews face pogroms due to Christian and Muslim violence, Christian crusaders sail for Syria (hint:  it doesn’t go well) and Muslims murder innocent Jews caught in the away as well.  The clash of civilizations between Christians and Muslims leaves a lot of damage in its wake, and we see the struggle of people to retain a sense of honor while seeking to protect friends and families, and people suffer and die because of the cruelty of others and of their times.  If the main characters are all cosmopolitan types, that is not true of everyone else, sadly.

And it is that poignancy of being able to visualize being in a situation not unlike those that the author discusses that gives this novel the deeper resonance it needs to move beyond just being an excellent piece of historical fiction to being a compelling and deeply melancholy look at people torn between complex sets of obligations and their own longings.  The author manages to create compelling and sympathetic characters from three faiths, from the Christian analogue to El Cid, in love with a beautiful but also very demanding wife and finding himself in exile because of his rivalry with a violent freebooter to a Muslim counselor who managed to kill both the last Caliph as well as the king who he had supported afterwards.  He too finds himself in exile because of that latter act.  And then there is a Jewish doctor who finds herself in love with both men.  There is a Jewish vizir to a tolerant Muslim taifa who sacrifices himself to save the city he has served loyally even at the cost of his own life, and the end of the book reveals a melancholy picture of service as well as as the inevitable fate of all men in death.