Reviews

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

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banjoetic's review

2.0

Holy bury your gays, Batman.

Maybe I would have liked this more if Guidanio was actually interesting, or if everything that happened in the book actually amounted to anything. A high profile assassination had little to no consequence in the end, and the book builds up to bring characters together in a certain point, only for all of them to just leave and fizzle out. Was at a solid 3 stars until that point, and then it all just went downhill. I'm just glad to be done with it.

imicklav's review

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adventurous emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

joejames's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

arachnophobia's review

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4.25

I loved how the characters were reflective and that they changed as time went on. It was cool to see how so many lives continued and intertwined. The writer had almost all men characters, his depictions of women were complex but very limited. At one point there was a part about a man horse racer who thought he wasn't sexist because he loved his mother...it was at that moment where I looked to see if the writer was a man lol

elenajohansen's review

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reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I loved it, and I'm glad I took my time with it (about three weeks, reading lighter stuff concurrently at times.) I wouldn't recommend this to readers entirely new to Kay's body of work, despite thinking it's an extremely beautiful and thoughtful example of it; I still think Tigana is his best novel, and the highest-value combination of approachable and rewarding to an unfamiliar audience. This novel is deliberately slow, and intensely reflective, and at times startlingly fourth-wall breaking.

The conceit is an aging narrator looking back to his small role in a web of political intrigue during his younger years. He is the protagonist, certainly, but not the hero, as I don't even think this book has a Hero figure in it. The cast of characters that builds outward from him is rich and varied despite the relatively limited scope (some Kay books have far more POV characters than this!) and depending on your taste, some of them could certainly be more interesting, ultimately, than the protagonist. But this is where Kay's atypical structural composition shines; the narrator is the central thread of this tapestry but nowhere near the strongest, brightest, or most important. He is the narrator, rather than any of the other characters, because he is the one best positioned by events to tell the whole story.

I look forward to reading this again down the road, perhaps after I've also reread the other novels set in this cohesive alternate world; for example, it was a nice touch to revisit, briefly, the shrine with the mosaic that was so important to the Sarantium duology. I only read it once, years ago, but that location was memorable enough to recall clearly all this time later, so I look forward to discovering other connections I've missed.

northwestbooksies's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

"The sailors say the rain misses the cloud even as it falls through light or dark into the sea. I miss her like that as I fall through my life, through time, the chaos of our time."