Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So odd! All throughout the reading of this, I was reminded of the later-published Discovery of Witches by Harkness. Not the story or the characters or the incidentals, mind you, but the FEEL of it. And this one won the World Fantasy Award.

Could it have been a massive influence? Possibly.

Back to this book! It's a real departure from most of the Kay I've read, not steeping itself in historical memorabilia so much as building a bridge between the Celtic history of France and our modern day.

I'll be honest... I loved the feel of it. A lot. It has a genuine YA feel and it is thoroughly wholesome on top of that. Moreso, it had a nice horror feel to some of it as we got moved from the thoroughly grounded modern day things and get plopped into whole-cloth near-immortals and Celtic gods and legends that just rolled over my tongue so deliciously. The YA adventure wasn't half-bad, either! :)

This might be one of my favorite Kay novels. So far. And that isn't because of the award. It's just because it did what Kay's original trilogy that bridged worlds couldn't do for me. It made me care. :)

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