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A review by kblincoln
Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
4.0
4.5 stars, actually.
What can you say after reading a Guy Gavriel Kay book? One basically exists in a timeless past where honor and promises cause men and women to give up all that they hold dear to play a long game for the sake of their countries. Countries that are alternate, historically compelling versions of the ones we see now.
But many Kay is getting a little less political in these later years. Children of Earth and Sky follows multiple players in an alternate Renaissance Europe (Ottoman Empire, Venice, etc) but instead of the main focus being on the political-- it's more on the paths the smaller players end up on because politics forced them onto the road. There's a fierce, female pirate, a merchant, a painter, a nun, and various others, but where I'm used to multiple POV in Kay's books, what I am not used to -- and which is used throughout this book-- is the detours into the futures of each character (even the slightly minor ones.)
There is a softness about this book, a desire to return to the pleasures of hearth and home, that I don't remember being so prevalent in Kay's books before. One of the main characters does not die, does not get a fiery defiance scene, but quietly, slowly, thoughtfully makes of his life something different than you'd think at the end.
But this is Kay, so there is political intrigue, and passion, and a kind of distancing wisdom about fundamental sadness and beauty of humanity. And saometimes the potential futures of the characters made me lose track of the main threads of the book, or diluted the impact of their emotional journeys, thus the minusing of the half star.
"You met riders on a road in Sauradia, in the wilderness of it, and everything altered in a moment, with the long flight of an arrow, with a question and an answer, with the hard needs of the heart coming home."
and
"Courage takes many forms. A truth not always understood. Sometimes it is a man managing to hold his head up, control his shaking hands, remain on his feet, when the desire to drop to the ground, head to a tiled floor is so strong. But the artist Pero Villani, at the edge of the chasm that was his death, changed the world in his time (and for a long time after) by telling truth on a morning of sun and cloud in Asharias."
So we read Kay, even this gentler, less strident Kay, to be reminded of how the world also contains these things: courage, beauty, forgiveness, remembering.
What can you say after reading a Guy Gavriel Kay book? One basically exists in a timeless past where honor and promises cause men and women to give up all that they hold dear to play a long game for the sake of their countries. Countries that are alternate, historically compelling versions of the ones we see now.
But many Kay is getting a little less political in these later years. Children of Earth and Sky follows multiple players in an alternate Renaissance Europe (Ottoman Empire, Venice, etc) but instead of the main focus being on the political-- it's more on the paths the smaller players end up on because politics forced them onto the road. There's a fierce, female pirate, a merchant, a painter, a nun, and various others, but where I'm used to multiple POV in Kay's books, what I am not used to -- and which is used throughout this book-- is the detours into the futures of each character (even the slightly minor ones.)
There is a softness about this book, a desire to return to the pleasures of hearth and home, that I don't remember being so prevalent in Kay's books before. One of the main characters does not die, does not get a fiery defiance scene, but quietly, slowly, thoughtfully makes of his life something different than you'd think at the end.
But this is Kay, so there is political intrigue, and passion, and a kind of distancing wisdom about fundamental sadness and beauty of humanity. And saometimes the potential futures of the characters made me lose track of the main threads of the book, or diluted the impact of their emotional journeys, thus the minusing of the half star.
"You met riders on a road in Sauradia, in the wilderness of it, and everything altered in a moment, with the long flight of an arrow, with a question and an answer, with the hard needs of the heart coming home."
and
"Courage takes many forms. A truth not always understood. Sometimes it is a man managing to hold his head up, control his shaking hands, remain on his feet, when the desire to drop to the ground, head to a tiled floor is so strong. But the artist Pero Villani, at the edge of the chasm that was his death, changed the world in his time (and for a long time after) by telling truth on a morning of sun and cloud in Asharias."
So we read Kay, even this gentler, less strident Kay, to be reminded of how the world also contains these things: courage, beauty, forgiveness, remembering.