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blairconrad's review against another edition
4.0
Very good. It seemed like GGK's prose style has changed a little since [b:River of Stars|15808474|River of Stars (Under Heaven #2)|Guy Gavriel Kay|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356089847s/15808474.jpg|21451403], or my memory of it has faded a little bit. While he still had a beautiful turn of phrase in many places, and characters that mused upon their place in an ongoing story, there were many fewer sentences that I would've been able to pick out as his after reading them in isolation.
The story held my attention, with quite a lot of action and many sympathetic and interesting characters. I really enjoyed the setting and the politics of the area. I was on the verge of giving the book a five star rating until the end that I was dreading came about.
Still, a must-read for GGK fans, and I'd recommend to almost anyone.
The story held my attention, with quite a lot of action and many sympathetic and interesting characters. I really enjoyed the setting and the politics of the area. I was on the verge of giving the book a five star rating until the end that I was dreading came about.
Spoiler
Long-time readers will know what I'm talking about: the inevitable happy ending where everyone is paired (or tripled) up.Still, a must-read for GGK fans, and I'd recommend to almost anyone.
aleffert's review against another edition
4.0
It is an impressive feat to write a sequel set a thousand years later and have a totally plausible extrapolated setting. Of course, Kay cheats - he essentially writes historical fiction, but he changes the names, moves things around, joins up characters, adds fictional protagonists, all in service of highlighting, magnifying, emphasizing, creating parallels and contrasts. In lesser hands this could be a real loss of depth—the made for tv movie of history—but Kay takes history and turns it to poetry.
This isn't really a sequel either. It picks up reverberations from the Sarantine Mosaic books, but the main characters are long since dead. Their concerns however, are eternal. We saw Byzantium at its height, now we see Constantinople after its conquest. Before we saw the Byzantine empire expand. Now we see the Ottomans head west. Much of it is from the perspective of the westerners - in thinly fictionalized Venice, Dubrovnik, and Vienna. In all of these places and times we wonder what it means to be true to ourselves.
Of course since it's a Kay book, there's a young person on a journey, and artists and soldiers play prominent roles. Inevitably, all the disparate plots converge at artful moments.
One of his projects as a novelist is clearly the pivotal moments of a life, those moments when we must make a choice and we choose greatness, to struggle, to take the hard path. He even has one character wonder how he could encounter, essentially, evidence of the divine, and *not* do something different with his life.
If you read too much Kay, his books do run together a bit. Everyone is brilliant and witty and dangerous and beautiful. The foreshadowing gets a little repetivie. This one isn't as beautifully tragic as The Lions of Al-Rassan or The Sarantine Mosaic books. But these are small criticisms that add up over a body of work. This is a good book.
This isn't really a sequel either. It picks up reverberations from the Sarantine Mosaic books, but the main characters are long since dead. Their concerns however, are eternal. We saw Byzantium at its height, now we see Constantinople after its conquest. Before we saw the Byzantine empire expand. Now we see the Ottomans head west. Much of it is from the perspective of the westerners - in thinly fictionalized Venice, Dubrovnik, and Vienna. In all of these places and times we wonder what it means to be true to ourselves.
Of course since it's a Kay book, there's a young person on a journey, and artists and soldiers play prominent roles. Inevitably, all the disparate plots converge at artful moments.
One of his projects as a novelist is clearly the pivotal moments of a life, those moments when we must make a choice and we choose greatness, to struggle, to take the hard path. He even has one character wonder how he could encounter, essentially, evidence of the divine, and *not* do something different with his life.
If you read too much Kay, his books do run together a bit. Everyone is brilliant and witty and dangerous and beautiful. The foreshadowing gets a little repetivie. This one isn't as beautifully tragic as The Lions of Al-Rassan or The Sarantine Mosaic books. But these are small criticisms that add up over a body of work. This is a good book.
thejdizzler's review against another edition
4.0
Guy Gavriel Kay has sort of anti-grown on me. So many times are we reminded of what these characters are, in a melodramatic, echoey way, it becomes tiresome.
This felt rushed, with 6 hours left to listen I was expecting a setup for some kind of a sequel. A Saratine Mosaic duology set a thousand years after the first. But that didn't happen
And yet, I still enjoyed this book. There is something about Kay's writing that convey's real human emotion: sorrow, joy, ambition, jealousy, truth, lies, love, hate, that spoke to me. So that's why this book is 4 stars instead of the three it's problems deserve.
This felt rushed, with 6 hours left to listen I was expecting a setup for some kind of a sequel. A Saratine Mosaic duology set a thousand years after the first. But that didn't happen
And yet, I still enjoyed this book. There is something about Kay's writing that convey's real human emotion: sorrow, joy, ambition, jealousy, truth, lies, love, hate, that spoke to me. So that's why this book is 4 stars instead of the three it's problems deserve.
whichthreewords's review against another edition
3.0
A fun read, although his characters are fairly typecast and he does like foreshadowing with a capital F.
weltenkreuzer's review against another edition
5.0
Faszinierende Welt und ungewöhnliche aber großartige Erzählweise. Gleichzeitig nah an den Figuren und breit in der Welt.
branch_c's review against another edition
3.0
Of the two books I'd read previously by Kay, one of them, Ysabel, is much more the kind of thing I enjoy, while the other, Sailing to Sarantium, is much more Kay's usual style. This one falls into the latter category, and in fact takes place in the same historical pseudo-European world.
The story of the artist who travels toIstanbul sorry, Asharias, to paint the khalif I found to be fairly creative and intriguing. The skirmishes between the Ottomans Osmanlis and the Europeans of the borderlands are less interesting to me. The grim details of conquest, battle, slavery, death, and loss are just not enjoyable to read about, even when done in such a polished and even poetic way by a skilled writer such as this. And yes, I realize there's a valiant attempt to convey the dignity and small victories that men and women can achieve in spite of larger conflicts and chaos that overwhelm their world - it's not enough, in my opinion, to make this a satisfying novel. The nastiness of the leadership pursuing their violent ends and the utter insanity of war between adherents of made up religions (by which I mean Christianity and Islam as well as the versions depicted here) just leaves a bad taste for me.
In fact, it strikes me as a bit disingenuous to not simply say Venice and Rome, Croatia and Greece, Christians and Muslims - although this is a fictionalized version of that real history, the parallels are a bit too transparent here.
The supernatural aspect is subtle and nicely done, as far as it goes, but other than a single incident or maybe two, it comes across as an afterthought in favor of the more prominent focus on the struggles to survive in a region disturbed by conflict.
So, the book certainly succeeds in what it attempts to do, but the setting and much of the action are not things I enjoy reading about. Those who appreciate this genre more than I do will likely find this to be a solid example of it.
The story of the artist who travels to
In fact, it strikes me as a bit disingenuous to not simply say Venice and Rome, Croatia and Greece, Christians and Muslims - although this is a fictionalized version of that real history, the parallels are a bit too transparent here.
The supernatural aspect is subtle and nicely done, as far as it goes, but other than a single incident or maybe two, it comes across as an afterthought in favor of the more prominent focus on the struggles to survive in a region disturbed by conflict.
So, the book certainly succeeds in what it attempts to do, but the setting and much of the action are not things I enjoy reading about. Those who appreciate this genre more than I do will likely find this to be a solid example of it.
melledotca's review against another edition
3.0
Enjoyable enough, but his stuff is starting to feel a bit dated. Like a series you read as a teenager that wasn't quite... it when you went back years later.
Part of that is because his schtick of history twisted a bit into fantasy has since been picked up by a lot of other authors, even though Kay's been doing it for decades.
And the pretty solidly all 'round happy ending thing really isn't... fashionable (?) anymore. Not that everyone has to die (OHAI, George R.R. Martin), but more complicated and less warm and fuzzy has become more the norm and unrealistically happy has become almost eye-rolling. (I read an interesting piece that connected that change in certain genres at least being due to the ascendance of women writers, who tend to write less perky and toss hero notions out the window.)
Part of that is because his schtick of history twisted a bit into fantasy has since been picked up by a lot of other authors, even though Kay's been doing it for decades.
And the pretty solidly all 'round happy ending thing really isn't... fashionable (?) anymore. Not that everyone has to die (OHAI, George R.R. Martin), but more complicated and less warm and fuzzy has become more the norm and unrealistically happy has become almost eye-rolling. (I read an interesting piece that connected that change in certain genres at least being due to the ascendance of women writers, who tend to write less perky and toss hero notions out the window.)
gldnhaze's review against another edition
4.0
The last chapters didn't flow as smoothly as the rest of the story did so this is more of a 3.5 * book for me.
mrninjaviking's review against another edition
5.0
I won't lie. I'm a Kay fanboy. Every book I've read I've loved. I find his writing skills to be amazing. There is one interesting thing though. Ask me what each of his books are about, and I'll have a tough time explaining them. They all follow the lives of people. From kings and queens to peasants. And I find myself riveted, no matter what is happening. This book was no different in those regards.