When I finished reading The Lions of Al-Rassan I realised, to my surprise, that I had just read one of the most powerful and impactful fantasy stories ever written. Recently, I heard a panel with various wonderful fantasy authors, amongst them Aleron Kong, Jim Butcher, Brandon Sanderson, and Marie Brennan, in which they agreed wholeheartedly that magic was the heart of fantasy. They spoke of several nuances, and even though they did not mention the Lions of Al-Rassan and were mostly trying to be funny, they wisely hinted at the fact that fantasy, in all its glorious diversity, is truly about the magic, but not the spells. It’s about the fantastic in spirit and the wondrous at heart. It’s about how to bestow a sense of ultimate purpose on the reader, even as this life sometimes seems to offer the opposite. It’s not about hard or soft magic systems, simple or complex spells, deep explanations of the origins of wonder and the bizarre, or even the mystery of the arcane. It’s not about the creative makeup we put over the face of our stories, like pretty masks and it’s not about the differences between our world and those worlds we deem so distant.

    I believe, and I say this with the utmost humility, that literature is the only way to truly embark on expeditions of the conscience. It is an undertaking we are yet to equal and the one cultural trait (privilege, I must say) that we all share. There is danger in it. A journey into fiction may burden or lighten the soul. An odyssey across worlds will come at great sacrifice and yet bear great treasure. And herein lies the magic at the heart of it. It uses our imagination to express, exalt, brighten, and ennoble our human character, for there is nothing about it that is false. As an expedition, it is the most revitalising. As an accomplishment of the human will and its creativity, it stands at the zenith. Literature is not our world, but it is based on it, and like all mirrors, it may be flawed. What we find in the faults, I would like to think, may perhaps add to a more complete version of ourselves.

    All literature is wonder, and if Lions of Al-Rassan, with its hint of magic hidden in the beauty of a landscape instead of the spell at a foe’s fingertips, is fantasy, then everything is. And that’s a nice thought to have. I regard this book as one of the greatest fantasy epics, a great journey of understanding into the heart of literature and the spaces where genres blend. With books like this, fiction and fantasy are revealed faces of a single soul we all share. So if ever there was doubt in a reader’s mind as to where to start with fantasy, how to reach Tolkien and Martin and Hobb and Sanderson and Leguin and Gaiman, and all the others, I would say Guy Gavriel Kay and his Lions of Al-Rassan.