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Avaryan Rising #2
The Lady of Han-Gilen
Chronicles the adventures of the talented, headstrong, beautiful Elaine, the Lady of Han-Gilen, who yearn for the one man she cannot marry, the legendary Sun King, son of a god
311 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1987
7 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Judith Tarr
113 books425 followersAKA Caitlin Brennan, Kathleen Bryan.
Judith Tarr (born 1955) is an American author, best known for her fantasy books. She received her B.A. in Latin and English from Mount Holyoke College in 1976, and has an M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University. She taught Latin and writing at Wesleyan University from 1988-1992, and taught at the Clarion science-fiction-writing workshops in 1996 and 1999.
She raises and trains Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona. The romantic fantasies that she writes under the name Caitlin Brennan feature dancing horses modeled on those that she raises.
Judith Tarr (born 1955) is an American author, best known for her fantasy books. She received her B.A. in Latin and English from Mount Holyoke College in 1976, and has an M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University. She taught Latin and writing at Wesleyan University from 1988-1992, and taught at the Clarion science-fiction-writing workshops in 1996 and 1999.
She raises and trains Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona. The romantic fantasies that she writes under the name Caitlin Brennan feature dancing horses modeled on those that she raises.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 7, 2025
The format is fairly ordinary: an introductory section outlining the characters good and bad and the love interests, a bit of action and warfare, a romantic interlude – very much Mills and Boonish sauciness and snogging (Harlequin in North America), and then a race to a duel between mages and a final and very confusing happy ever after ending.
It was disappointing to see the well worn device of a feisty girl warrior – Elian - flattening her breasts and slapping her thighs to fool everyone that she is really a teenage boy. However, things lift up with the arrival of The Exile. It's so often the case that the villains have the best parts. However, it turns out that The Exile is far from being all villain, just as Mirain eventually shows his feet of clay. Elian is the chief disappointment. She is pulled contradictory ways: her ambition for female equality is, sadly, mainly in the direction of warfare, killing and conquest, while her flirty side loves Mirain, son of the Sun, Ziad-Ilarios, high prince of Asanion, and Vadin, one of Mirain's northern warlords practically simultaneously. The two different characters often do not sit together comfortably.
I could mention the strange fascination with sparkling white teeth. Everyone smiles like an American TV star. For a society on the cusp of moving from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age its dentistry and oral hygiene are things to be admired. Then there are Vadin's crowd, the northern barbarians of Ianon, dark-skinned, tall and kilted. They wear nothing under their kilts, you know, and proud of it. Truly, to borrow a phrase from Carry on up the Khyber, they are “devils in skirts.” Finally there is Elian's pregnancy. After going on about it for so long, at the closing scenes of the story she seems to forget all about it. I can't say I blame her. The plucky thing goes through an awful lot to drag her husk of a husband back from his induced oblivion. But no matter, all is rescued time and again by Judith Tarr's stylish prose and artful storytelling.
It was disappointing to see the well worn device of a feisty girl warrior – Elian - flattening her breasts and slapping her thighs to fool everyone that she is really a teenage boy. However, things lift up with the arrival of The Exile. It's so often the case that the villains have the best parts. However, it turns out that The Exile is far from being all villain, just as Mirain eventually shows his feet of clay. Elian is the chief disappointment. She is pulled contradictory ways: her ambition for female equality is, sadly, mainly in the direction of warfare, killing and conquest, while her flirty side loves Mirain, son of the Sun, Ziad-Ilarios, high prince of Asanion, and Vadin, one of Mirain's northern warlords practically simultaneously. The two different characters often do not sit together comfortably.
I could mention the strange fascination with sparkling white teeth. Everyone smiles like an American TV star. For a society on the cusp of moving from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age its dentistry and oral hygiene are things to be admired. Then there are Vadin's crowd, the northern barbarians of Ianon, dark-skinned, tall and kilted. They wear nothing under their kilts, you know, and proud of it. Truly, to borrow a phrase from Carry on up the Khyber, they are “devils in skirts.” Finally there is Elian's pregnancy. After going on about it for so long, at the closing scenes of the story she seems to forget all about it. I can't say I blame her. The plucky thing goes through an awful lot to drag her husk of a husband back from his induced oblivion. But no matter, all is rescued time and again by Judith Tarr's stylish prose and artful storytelling.
April 30, 2019
Judith Tarr’s prose is a delight, but this particular installment in the Avaryan series is a rather trite romance at its heart, with a fickle-minded, headstrong princess alternately loving, hating, and trying to choose between two emperors-to-be. Too many pages assigned to the waffling thoughts of Elian and not enough to the political machinations of a few of the princes of the Hundred Realms and the sorcery of the Exile. Still, a good story overall and an important piece in the Avaryan series.
October 28, 2014
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature. We review SFF, horror, and comics for adults and kids, in print and audio daily. http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
The Lady of Han-Gilen is the second novel in Judith Tarr’s AVARYAN saga. In the first book, The Hall of the Mountain King, we met Mirain, supposedly the son of the sun god Avaryan and a human princess. Mirain appeared in Ianon, where his grandfather rules, became his heir, and fought for control of the kingdom. The story wasn’t particularly original, but I enjoyed Tarr’s style and Jonathan Davis’s audio performance.
This second installment, which can stand alone fairly well, takes place several years later and focuses on a new character: Princess Elian of Han-Gilen, foster sister of Mirain. Red-haired and independently-minded, Elian has left a trail of spurned suitors in her wake, but now she’s getting older and feeling the pressure to marry. When she finally meets a man who is good enough to match her in wits and martial skills, it’s time to finally make the choice she knew she’d someday have to make. Instead of marrying the perfect suitor, and probably being a happy wife, she decides to go find Mirain, the boy she promised herself to when she was a little girl. But he’s traveling around the continent, trying to peacefully unite neighboring kingdoms under the sun god’s rule. So, Elian disguises herself as a boy and sets out to find him. If she succeeds, will he be the same person he was when she knew him? Will he want to marry her?
In The Lady of Han-Gilen we learn some of Mirain’s backstory, we find out what happened to his mother (the king of Ianon’s daughter), and we learn about the sun god’s enemy and why Mirain wants to unite the kingdoms. (This, of course, is viewed by the other kings as Mirain’s lust for power.) We also become reacquainted with Mirain’s squire and we learn that Elian has some powers of her own which might be useful to Mirain’s kingdom.
The story started off well. Elian is easy to like, at first, when she’s knocking off the suitors who aren’t smart or strong enough for her. But once she finds Mirain and he doesn’t act like the rest of her suitors (apparently he has no idea how to woo a woman, which is surprising, because he knows how to charm everyone else), her confidence dwindles and this fiercely independent red-head devolves into a spineless ninny who can’t decide who she loves and what she should do. “I love Mirain! No, I hate Mirain! I love the other guy! Damn Mirain for not helping me make up my mind! Does he love me? Does the other guy love me? I love Mirain! I hate him!” This got boring fairly quickly, yet it went on for hours. Unfortunately, not even the immensely talented Jonathan Davis could make it interesting, though he tried valiantly, contributing lots of emotion and angst to Elian’s indecision. But, really, how much pleasure can you get out of one fickle girl’s waffling? There’s plenty of fist clenching, smoldering, and glaring that goes along with all this, but not enough to make me care. There’s more to the story than the romance, of course, but by the time important events started happening, I was annoyed and ready to be done. It was too little too late.
I mentioned in my review of the The Hall of the Mountain King that Judith Tarr’s style elevated that novel above most standard epic fantasies. That style is present here, too, and it’s often lovely, filled with old-fashioned sentence structures, interesting imagery and vivid metaphors. But with all of the repetitive emotional outbursts, it mostly feels heavy and overblown.
I’m so thankful to Audible Studios for bringing out so much middle-aged SFF in the last few years (this one’s from 1987) and recruiting excellent narrators like Jonathan Davis (one of my top five favorite narrators) to bring these stories to life. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do with The Lady of Han-Gilen, despite his best effort. It’s just boring.
The Lady of Han-Gilen is the second novel in Judith Tarr’s AVARYAN saga. In the first book, The Hall of the Mountain King, we met Mirain, supposedly the son of the sun god Avaryan and a human princess. Mirain appeared in Ianon, where his grandfather rules, became his heir, and fought for control of the kingdom. The story wasn’t particularly original, but I enjoyed Tarr’s style and Jonathan Davis’s audio performance.
This second installment, which can stand alone fairly well, takes place several years later and focuses on a new character: Princess Elian of Han-Gilen, foster sister of Mirain. Red-haired and independently-minded, Elian has left a trail of spurned suitors in her wake, but now she’s getting older and feeling the pressure to marry. When she finally meets a man who is good enough to match her in wits and martial skills, it’s time to finally make the choice she knew she’d someday have to make. Instead of marrying the perfect suitor, and probably being a happy wife, she decides to go find Mirain, the boy she promised herself to when she was a little girl. But he’s traveling around the continent, trying to peacefully unite neighboring kingdoms under the sun god’s rule. So, Elian disguises herself as a boy and sets out to find him. If she succeeds, will he be the same person he was when she knew him? Will he want to marry her?
In The Lady of Han-Gilen we learn some of Mirain’s backstory, we find out what happened to his mother (the king of Ianon’s daughter), and we learn about the sun god’s enemy and why Mirain wants to unite the kingdoms. (This, of course, is viewed by the other kings as Mirain’s lust for power.) We also become reacquainted with Mirain’s squire and we learn that Elian has some powers of her own which might be useful to Mirain’s kingdom.
The story started off well. Elian is easy to like, at first, when she’s knocking off the suitors who aren’t smart or strong enough for her. But once she finds Mirain and he doesn’t act like the rest of her suitors (apparently he has no idea how to woo a woman, which is surprising, because he knows how to charm everyone else), her confidence dwindles and this fiercely independent red-head devolves into a spineless ninny who can’t decide who she loves and what she should do. “I love Mirain! No, I hate Mirain! I love the other guy! Damn Mirain for not helping me make up my mind! Does he love me? Does the other guy love me? I love Mirain! I hate him!” This got boring fairly quickly, yet it went on for hours. Unfortunately, not even the immensely talented Jonathan Davis could make it interesting, though he tried valiantly, contributing lots of emotion and angst to Elian’s indecision. But, really, how much pleasure can you get out of one fickle girl’s waffling? There’s plenty of fist clenching, smoldering, and glaring that goes along with all this, but not enough to make me care. There’s more to the story than the romance, of course, but by the time important events started happening, I was annoyed and ready to be done. It was too little too late.
I mentioned in my review of the The Hall of the Mountain King that Judith Tarr’s style elevated that novel above most standard epic fantasies. That style is present here, too, and it’s often lovely, filled with old-fashioned sentence structures, interesting imagery and vivid metaphors. But with all of the repetitive emotional outbursts, it mostly feels heavy and overblown.
I’m so thankful to Audible Studios for bringing out so much middle-aged SFF in the last few years (this one’s from 1987) and recruiting excellent narrators like Jonathan Davis (one of my top five favorite narrators) to bring these stories to life. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do with The Lady of Han-Gilen, despite his best effort. It’s just boring.
February 21, 2023
This was not quite as good as the first and third book in the series, but still very good. I read this series decades ago, at least the first 3 books, and loved it but couldn't remember much about why. Now, I remember. Her character interactions are amazing.
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November 28, 2025Goodreads rating probably accurate, I'd chalk it up as not my cup of tea, esp the courtship phases of Elian. Also BECAUSE purple prose, I could not follow well. I won't read 3rd book, which moves at a glacial pace and is LONGER.
I'm team Elian.
I'm team Elian.
January 30, 2014
Elian is princess of a mighty kingdom, with many royal suitors. But she will not consent to marry any of them, and when she begins to fall in love with one, she flees. Her foster-brother has raised an army and begun creating an empire, and she goes to serve him. Even as she and Mirain (son of the Sun-god, a mortal man sent by his father to bring all to the light) conquer kingdoms, she battles with her tangled feelings of love, loyalty, and a fierce desire to be free above all other considerations.
I could have done with fewer reminders of how red Elian's hair is (it's so red guys, so very very red), but the way she's described fits with the overall style of the novel. These books are told in manner similar to old epics, complete with archaic sentence construction and reiterated descriptions. Sometimes this rankled as a little too old-fashioned and expected, but most of the time it worked very well in creating the sense that this tale is that of an oft-told legend. The only place the style really annoyed me was during descriptions of the magical battles: there, the elliptical, flowery style made the action difficult to follow.
I was frustrated with Elian a good deal, because she seems incapable of figuring out what or who she wants for most of the novel. She changes her mind about who she loves and what she wants to do so fast I nearly got whiplash. I think her fellow soldiers and family put up with her mood swings and changing priorities far too often. When she does know her own mind, though, she's nigh unstoppable, and I liked that. She truly is fierce and implacable--she'd tear herself apart struggling against bonds. The end was an interesting turn on her perpetual struggle for personal freedom, because
I could have done with fewer reminders of how red Elian's hair is (it's so red guys, so very very red), but the way she's described fits with the overall style of the novel. These books are told in manner similar to old epics, complete with archaic sentence construction and reiterated descriptions. Sometimes this rankled as a little too old-fashioned and expected, but most of the time it worked very well in creating the sense that this tale is that of an oft-told legend. The only place the style really annoyed me was during descriptions of the magical battles: there, the elliptical, flowery style made the action difficult to follow.
I was frustrated with Elian a good deal, because she seems incapable of figuring out what or who she wants for most of the novel. She changes her mind about who she loves and what she wants to do so fast I nearly got whiplash. I think her fellow soldiers and family put up with her mood swings and changing priorities far too often. When she does know her own mind, though, she's nigh unstoppable, and I liked that. She truly is fierce and implacable--she'd tear herself apart struggling against bonds. The end was an interesting turn on her perpetual struggle for personal freedom, because
October 19, 2014
The Lady of Han-Gilen is the second novel in Judith Tarr’s AVARYAN saga. In the first book, The Hall of the Mountain King, we met Mirain, supposedly the son of the sun god Avaryan and a human princess. Mirain appeared in Ianon, where his grandfather rules, became his heir, and fought for control of the kingdom. The story wasn’t particularly original, but I enjoyed Tarr’s style and Jonathan Davis’s audio performance.
This second installment, which can stand alone fairly well, takes place several years later and focuses on a new character: Princess Elian of Han-Gilen, foster sister of Mirain. Red-haired and independently-minded, Elian has left a trail of spurned suitors in her wake, but now she’s getting older and feeling the pressure to marry. When she finally meets a man who is good enough to match her in wits and ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
This second installment, which can stand alone fairly well, takes place several years later and focuses on a new character: Princess Elian of Han-Gilen, foster sister of Mirain. Red-haired and independently-minded, Elian has left a trail of spurned suitors in her wake, but now she’s getting older and feeling the pressure to marry. When she finally meets a man who is good enough to match her in wits and ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
April 27, 2014
Fantasy world, book two of a trilogy. Good vs. Evil, woman bucking against class, gender & her destiny, grand love story, magic & battles to boot. Maybe a little pride & prejudice thrown in for good measure.
October 21, 2024
Probably my favorite of the series. I love to see Elian upsetting the equilibrium of the king. Oh, how hard is it to be a legend in the making when your foster sister is the only solace from pain and the biggest pain in the ass you know.
March 31, 2011
better than part one, as friend promised
September 30, 2013
Wow, is Elian more passive than I'd remembered.
September 12, 2021
Retroactive Review (12 Sep 2021): Elian is kickass. I'm glad we got to see her after all the allusions to her in the last book.
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May 24, 2018I'm two-thirds through, and I just can't bring myself to finish this. I am deeply puzzled and unhappy about not liking this book - I think this is my seventh Judith Tarr (I polished off the Alamut novels, and the Hound and the Falcon novels last week), and the first that I haven't liked.
It's all the dithering that's boring. Elian is boring. I don't care about her. And also, I suppose there's quite a difference reading from the viewpoint of extraordinarily beautiful and talented men and that of extraordinarily beautiful and talented women. The story goes nowhere; there is no story.
It's all the dithering that's boring. Elian is boring. I don't care about her. And also, I suppose there's quite a difference reading from the viewpoint of extraordinarily beautiful and talented men and that of extraordinarily beautiful and talented women. The story goes nowhere; there is no story.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews