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I hated this book, but I'm an oddity; in fact, virtually every other human being seems to love it unconditionally. So if you stumble upon it, give it a try, chances are you'll find it awesome.

So.. what didn't I like about it?
Well, pretty much everything.
This book, in short, tells about the vengeful crusade of a group of refugees from the once-great city of Tigana, destroyed years before by the mage Brandin.
Cool, uh?
Nope.
For starters, nobody cares about the destruction of Tigana.
In fact, the protagonists want revenge simply because Brandin erased the name of the city from the memories of everyone.
Thousands of deaths? Who cares!! But don't you dare touch the name of our city!
This is a pitiful excuse to set the plot in motion but every time it's mentioned every character in the scene will start crying like a baby at the atrocity. When Devin, a famous singer, learns he's a descendant of a Tiganian (?) he immediately abandons his career to swear eternal vengeance against Brandin and spend the rest of his life despairing on "Oh how horrible" a fate his native country had.
Really?
Really????
He didn't even know it existed 5 minutes ago!
Not to mention that the war that destroyed Tigana has been over for decades.
Overreactions like this one are constant because Tigana strives SO hard to be emotional, ALWAYS.
Not a chapter will come to pass without someone crying and despairing over the silliest things or without a completely random scene of oppression at the expenses of an equally random previously-unseen character.
This, together with the incredibly contrived dialogues and a plot that relies entirely on happenstance, contributes to create a story that feels forced from start to finish.
The single most obnoxious thing that alone would have made me drop this book is the narration.
You will never, NEVER see anything happen. An action scene is approaching? Nope! There's always a fade out and then someone will tell you what happened in a couple paragraphs.
At least half of this book is made of digressions and internal monologues telling you things that should have been shown.
What's more? The use of sex as plot device is pitiully cheap, the prose is so flowery it made my eyes bleed, the pace is awfully slow, the characters are cardboard cutouts that will constantly try to be as annoying as humanly possible.
Brandin, the only vaguely interesting character, is a puppet made of cheesy cliches: he's a morally gray woe-stricken antagonist pitied by the female protagonist, and an all-powerful mage that can do ANYTHING... but won't... because... uh... you know.. the laws of magic and all that.
But rest assured he IS the most interesting character by far.

The few good details (such as the riselka, mysterious spirit that will sometimes appear to humans as an omen)are completely overshadowed by the bad ones.