Books like The Darkest Road

SPOILERS AHEAD, SO MANY SPOILERSThe concluding volume of Fionavar Tapestry is a perfect fantasy novel. Happily stripped of the awkward, stilted ‘real world’ situations and dialogue that occasionally marred the preceding novels, The Darkest Road takes place entirely in Fionavar and is all the stronger because of it. The narrative is simple: the characters all engage in a series of final meetings, battles, and individual confrontations that were carefully set up in books 1 and 2. The world is saved, of course. And at such a high cost, of course. The writing is also straightforward. This is not a novel full of lush description; nevertheless, the carefully chosen words, the elegantly stripped-down prose, the overall precision and artistry of the writing should serve as a lesson to all would-be writers: sometimes lavish world-building is not necessary to create a world, or to create a work of art. Kay conveys everything he needs to convey in language that is as simple yet as poetic as a fable. The entire trilogy, rooted as it is in timeless myths, has all the resonance of genuine mythology, one that describes both the beginning and end of all such legends. Much like similar works of art (john crowley’s The Deep, for example), Kay boils down the tropes of fantasy literature until they are at their most iconic, and then breathes wonderful new life into them.Who takes the Darkest Road? So many of Fionavar Tapestry’s characters must walk paths that end in death and darkness.Finn takes a solitary path, riding with The Wild Hunt, slaughtering evil and good alike, becoming a thread of chaos in the tapestry. But in the end, he makes his choice, and chooses well, as all heroes must. All of the heroes in the series are faced with hard life choices, and all of them choose well in the end. It is a glorious thing, and it is a big part of what brings the trilogy to the level of myth. But the fate of brave, sweet Finn, turning from The Wild Hunt and then literally falling from the sky to his death – that is something even more. It felt like I was reading a fable’s first iteration, the story of a kind of Icarus, one who willingly chooses his tragic fate, in service of others.Diarmud takes a deadly path at the end, to his own end. There is not much I can say about this sequence, other than that I shed some tears at the end of it. A character so full of life, yet so blithely willing to sacrifice that life for others, in an instant. An amazing thing.Galadan’s whole existence is The Darkest Road. His transformation at the end, his ability to become something greater, something good, was carefully set up from the start of the tale. He is a man in love after all, and moved to his deeds because of that love’s rejection and the loneliness that followed. But despite the hints of what was to pass, when it did come to pass after all, it was still incredibly moving. Not all things from the dark are….all dark. Is there a more humanistic sentiment?And Darien takes the Darkest Road, of course. His path is the path of the title: a road without friends, without a moral compass, one that leads to the heart of evil and one that ends in a sad and tragically lonely death. But such a death! He saves the world with his courage and his grace. Kay does not allow Darien’s final end to be easy for the reader…there is no one there at the boy's side, to protect him, to embrace him as he dies, to thank him for his sacrifice, to hold him as any child should be held when they are afraid and all alone. It is one of the saddest, bravest, most beautiful deaths I’ve ever read in fantasy literature.Kay’s imagination is impressive, but even more impressive is his willingness to let tragedies be truly tragic, in the most real of ways. He does not try to balance the deaths out so that the reader is given a kind of easy comfort, a kind of well-they-may-have-lost-so & so but at least they have so & so. He does not make things easy. Some characters are not harmed and achieve a happy ending. Other characters are gone, forever. One set of parents sees both of their brave sons returned to them, and it is a joyous thing. Another set of parents have young sons who both die in the struggle, and in the end they are left alone with each other, and it is a terrible thing. A prince who is full of war, grim and unyielding, lives to rule; a prince that is full of light and a future full of love, is slain. A good seer’s soul remains forever exiled, outside of time. A student from our world remains dead, never to return to his own father. A child dies alone, with no one to tell him that he is loved. So many sad things. Such a beautiful tale, such a battle, and so hard-won, so resonant.