The Fionavar Tapestry
novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Fionavar Tapestry is a book series of fantasy novels by Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay, published between 1984 and 1986. The novels are set in both contemporary Toronto and the secondary world of Fionavar.
Premise
Five University of Toronto senior law and medical students who are drawn into the 'first world of the Tapestry' by the mage Loren Silvercloak. Once there, each character discovers their own role and destiny in the framework of an ancient conflict.
Books in the series
Primary
The Summer Tree
The Wandering Fire
The Darkest Road
Secondary
Ysabel, while not part of The Fionavar Tapestry proper, features two of the same characters and often refers to the events of the trilogy.
Characters
The Five
University of Toronto students
Kevin Laine (Liadon) is described as witty, bright, outgoing, and spirited. He has fair-coloured hair, and is characterized to be often intensely and deeply affected by acts of love.
Paul Schafer (Pwyll Twiceborn) is described to be highly intelligent and withdrawn. At the beginning of the story, he is haunted by the death of his girlfriend in a car accident that he believes was his fault.
Dave Martyniuk (Davor) is a star basketball player who carries emotional scars from his Eastern European immigrant father's rough treatment of him as a child.
The public source identifies “The Fionavar Tapestry” as novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fionavar, Tapestry and novel.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q524957. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Fionavar Tapestry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.