2010 book 164

Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven
Sorry for the radio silence--this book is very long, and I've been busy getting ready for/going to/hanging out at ALA! So what we have here is a historical epic set in an alternate version of ancient China; it's billed as a fantasy, but the fantastic elements mainly consist of ghosts and occasional shamanism. When a young man who's spent two years burying the dead of both sides of a long-ago battle is rewarded with 250 super-special horses, he gets caught up in imperial political intrigues and finds himself very involved in the future of his country. I especially liked the protagonist and his traveling companions (a young warrior woman and an aging poet), though found myself wishing this had been edited down a bit more. Digressions along the lines of "later, historians would say . . . " start cropping up halfway through and grow a little tiresome, and one section is narrated by a dancing girl who doesn't appear anywhere else in the book. Still, the main character and his siblings are fascinating, and the political intrigue is fairly compelling. A-/B+.