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"The bestselling author of the groundbreaking novels Under Heaven and River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay is back with a new novel, Children of Earth and Sky, set in a world inspired by the conflicts and dramas of Renaissance Europe. Against this tumultuous backdrop the lives of men and women unfold on the borderlands--where empires and faiths collide. From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request--and possibly to do more--and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman posing as a doctor's wife but sent by Seressa as a spy. The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he's been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif--to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming. As these lives entwine, their fates--and those of many others--will hang in the balance when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world..."--… (more)
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I feel this is almost a sequel [but not quite] to Kay's Sarantium duology, due to the importance of Empress Dowager Eudoxia, who has found refuge here after the devastation of her homeland. I felt the story could have been cut shorter in places. I felt there was repetition and sentences could have been combined or excised here and there. Also events at the court of Emperor Rodolfo, were confusing to me, all except the final decision made by Rodolfo, in fighting the Osmanlis.
Highly recommended. I thank Goodreads First-Reads for sending this to me in exchange for an honest review.
For me, though, his work is all about the first item…the characters. I’ve said before that even second rank Kay is better than most others out there but, judging solely within his oeuvre, where I rank each of his books largely depends upon whether I find those one or two people that make me love them. In that regard, this is one of his better ones. Perhaps it doesn’t displace my absolute favorites, such as The Last Light of the Sun, but it’s up there. There was a wealth of them I ended up caring about.
As for the unhistory part: the place names might be different but there’s no trouble in discerning Renaissance Venice, Dubrovnik, Constatinople, Prague and Senj. I would say that, unlike most of his stories, I think there was quite a bit to be gained from having read some of his other books. So much of this book had the conquest of Constanti…err, Sarantium…as a backdrop that Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors made it much richer. Perhaps The Lions of Al-Rassan in the same vein, though less urgent.
One of his better ones. If you’re at all inclined to this type of book, it’s definitely a recommend.
Children of Earth and Sky follows a number of characters, mostly fairly young. An artist from Seressa is sent east to Asharia, formerly Sarantium, to paint the Osmanli ruler. On the same ship, Seressa sends a disgraced woman to Dubrava as a spy. There paths cross with that of a gifted archer from Senjan on her first raid, who desperate wants to avenge her family's destruction in an Asharite raid. Her brother, kidnapped as a young child in the raid, has become an Osmanli warrior, eager to prove himself war. And a young merchant from Dubrava becomes entangled with all of them.
Kay's writing is deceptively simple, the style quite formal, but underneath there is a deep well of emotion. Very affecting and highly recommended.
If you ignore the fact that the planet of this story has
Although this book is almost 600 pages long it is such a compelling story that I read it in less time than I have taken to read some books half that long. Very satisfying.
There is an immediacy to Kay's writing I haven't encountered … anywhere. There's no other author who can make my stomach knot up at a word, or an isolated sentence. An inopportune word, or a word forgotten. A character's decision to take this turn instead of that. A moment's inattention. If a stair creaks in one chapter, it will be important before long. And then he says something like "Then the big, red-bearded one said, changing her life, changing many lives …" and something's about to hit a really big fan. Foreshadowing in Kay's world is a heart-sinking thing, leaving me on edge with a knot in my stomach, because it's not going to be pretty when it comes to pass. Not. At all.
And the humor in the writing – so much of it, so unexpected still, wry and dry and bawdy and crude. It would be so predictable for a book featuring such drama to be weighty, but GGK makes me laugh as ofen as he makes me anxious. He's one of the best.
Children of Earth and Sky> features, like Tigana, another brother and sister, long separated. There are in fact echoes of several of Kay's other books, and oblique references – showing that his work all inhabits the same universe.
...
Words of wisdom from GGK:
Doing the right thing doesn't always save you.
and
Legends, if you crossed their path, could get you killed.
This reader, however, found Kay's prodigious talent
Once again we deal with people who are dispossessed or used by governments without conscience, and with religion which blinds and yokes the populace.
There is nothing new here. It's Kay's same old story about beautiful underdogs making good, or trying to. If that's your thing, you will love this latest offering from Kay.
If you're into SF, read the rest of the review on my blog.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Kay writes alternate/fantastical history. This novel is based on Renaissance Europe (Italy, Croatia, Constantinople). Like most Kay novels, there is political intrigue, changing alliances, a tricky balance of
Like most Kay novels, there is a good range of characters. Kay can write a lot of them - and their swirling interactions - well, which takes some talent. He focuses on a broad range of people, not just the ruling classes or the wealthy (although they are there too), which I appreciate. There are kings and emperors, courtiers and ambassadors and spies, councilors and religious leaders, ambitious princes and concubines, soldiers and farmers, merchants and sailors, wives, nuns, and prostitutes.
(Side note: Always the F-ing prostitutes. Kay writes strong female characters. He writes them well and they are not simpering ladies. In this novel, for example, we have a kick-ass archer who goes to war out of a burning sense of revenge, and ain't no one going to pull any hanky-panky she doesn't want on her. (Danica is awesome.) She's just one of several strong women in the story. However, in the worlds that Kay writes, there are always men using women for sex, and men have the power to treat women like chattel, and F that! I understand his novels are based on history and that's a historical truth but I don't like that women in general are so powerless in his worlds).
Like most Kay novels, there are several disparate story lines that move people around and then somehow they all end up intertwining. Often in unexpected ways. His writing is gorgeous - so many beautiful phrases. He is a master at dropping a hint and then coming back to it chapters later, which is both delicious and aggravating but pure and classic Kay.
A slightly spoilery inside note: those who were devastated by a certain cruel turn of events in Tigana (as I was) will find some vindication here.
Final note: I have read all of Kay's novels and it is only with this one that I realized that his versions of Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm (the Jaddite, Asharite, and Kindath religions respectively) also appeared in earlier novels (The Sarantine Mosaic series, The Lions of Al-Rassan and The Last Light of the Sun for sure, maybe others?) Mind blown. In fact, Children of the Earth and Sky has a few references to places and characters from the Sarantine Mosaic duology, so I wish I had read those more recently to get those references better. Call this one a very distant sequel.
My apologies for any misspelled names; I listened to the audio version. Pero Velarni is a painter in disgrace and he’s about to be tasked with traveling from the city-state of Seressa to the Grand Caliph of the Osmanli empire, where he is to paint the Caliph’s portrait and passively gather information, if he can. Along the way, he meets most our other main characters. There’s Danica (her dead grandfather Zadek still speaks to her) from the besieged city of Senjen. Marin Givo is a successful merchant from Dubrava. The Seressians have also tasked the disgraced lady Leonara to spy for them and she is traveling with her recently acquired husband, a physician named Yakavo Mucci. On the other side of the adventure serving the Osmanli empire is Damaz, a Jani warrior in training. The story switches often between these characters giving us a pretty good idea of the various politics and individual motivations.
Danica was my favorite character. Her city has been under attack off and on for many years and surrounding cities tend to view Senjens as pirates. However, things aren’t that simple since no cities are allowed to trade with Senjen, forcing them to steal basic supplies when they can. She’s great with a bow, carries knives, has a loyal hunting dog named Tiko, and has her grandfather constantly feeding her advice from the great beyond. She hunts for her long-lost brother Neven who she believes was taken by the Osmanli empire during one of their regular expansions. She’s young, but she had to grow up quick. She’s got her weapons skills but she’s practical too and realizes that a lone woman in the world is always going to be in a fight. It’s a good thing she has Tiko.
Pero was my second favorite character. He’s been forced into this task and he’s rather nervous about the whole thing. He is supposed to just go do the portrait painting and return with whatever passive info he was able to gather. He’s not supposed to try to be a spy because he’s totally untrained and not the right temperament for it. That’s not to say the Council or Seressa won’t be sending him with a man servant…. perhaps one that is trained in the arts of covertcy.
There’s plenty of action scenes tossed in among the inner contemplation and love interests. I can’t outright call this an adventure story because there’s too much quiet time. I can’t label it a romance because there’s also espionage, quests, and raiding. I wouldn’t want to call this novel high literature because it’s simply to enjoyable to burden it with such a tag. In short, it is simply a well-rounded story with plenty to love about it. And, indeed, I did love this story.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Audiobook Jukebox.
Narration: Simon Vance has never let me down in his narration and he does a beautiful job with this book as well. I especially liked his voice for the dead yet grumpy Zadek. He used various real-world accents which added to the flavor of the book.
His forte is taking ordinary people and because of a summons by someone in power,
This one was way too long for me, considering the amount of story you get. There were times my wife and I cheered on the characters or we laughed out loud about something funny, but it wasn't enough to make us super excited about getting back to reading every night. He seemed to experiment with writing the same scene from multiple perspectives and while it was sometimes interesting, it seemed to make things drag. Also the long ending describing the futures of each of the characters was a cool idea, but dragged on too long also.
At this point I think I'm done with Kay, unless he writes another full-on fantasy novel, then I'll be there waiting for it to come out.
This is a story set in the same faux-Europe as the Sarantine Mosaic series, but after Sarantium fell to the Osman Khalifate.
A mixed cast of characters from various places around the Mediterranean meet on a voyage across land and sea, but this is very much
I am an incurable fan of Kay's work. His lyricism, and his deep, seemingly endless love for humanity in all its frailty and confusion, create stories that compel every bit as much as any grand epic adventure. Fantasy does not require wizards, inhuman races, and evil empires to engage readers, for Kay understands that humanity itself is the core of every great story.
And this story is anchored indelibly in the humanity of its characters.
Throughout the various journeys in Children of Earth and Sky, we see how great things and not so great are influenced by simple human choices, but random chance, by things that no one can really explain. The characters question themselves, the world, and each other, yet still move on with the simple acts of living.
This is a novel of war without war, of human conflict and love and confusion. There is no evil empire, there is no real villain, simply people of character and conviction following the courses they have chosen, or have had chosen for them, until their ends. And the ends are the same for us all. Live goes until it goes no more.
I am not sure how to recommend a book like this, given that the basic function of fantasy seems so often to be excitement through adventure. This is not exciting, so much as it is compelling. The action is brief and mostly undescribed. There is violent conflict. There is spiritual conflict as well, and also lack of conflict altogether at times.
If an epic fantasy is sailing a great ship from origin to destination, this is a gentle float down a river. The river has its own beginning and end, but we are simply there in the middle, watching flotsam and jetsam tossed by the current.
Until the ride is over, and everything goes on without us.
I enjoyed Children of Earth and Sky while at the same time wondering exactly what the point of the story was. Guy Gavriel Kay is a quality writer, so the near-600 pages felt quick and easy. Settings that echo the geography and history seem to be popular in
The things I liked were plentiful. I really enjoyed the main characters, particularly Danica, Marin, Drago and Leonora. They, along with Danica's long lost brother Damaz and the painter Pero Villani. I only wished we got more of their perspectives because they were all interesting. I particularly liked how Leonora and Danica became instant friends despite being such polar opposites: Danica is a tall teenage warrior, who simply wants to kill infidels in retaliation for kidnapping her brother a decade before, and Leonora is a young woman abandoned by her family, her child torn away from her and hired as a spy for a city-state.
I did find myself questioning what the point of the whole novel was. There's no great battle, no real plot or even a real resolution. Rather Children of Earth and Sky seems to be a slice of life, the politics of empires and city-states, following a short period in the lives of characters integral to a few different threads spread throughout the continent.
I also question the usefulness of the sheer number of perspectives included, at times giving the plot a quasi-Rashomon feel. Were they filler? A way to establish the disparity between the city-states? I would have greatly preferred more of the main characters than a few paragraphs of a random character's point of view of their own death.
Overall, I enjoyed the book a lot. It was interesting and compelling, and it definitely made me interested in reading more of Kay's books.
One obvious parallel is Dunnet's The Year of the Ram, set mainly in Trebizond in a similar time frame. Kay is not in a position to provide as close-grained an image of the life of the time and place as Dunnet is: he has to deal with the limitations as well as the advantages of a made-up world. But Dunnet can't alter the succession of events, and Niccolo remains a onlooker to a course of events he (by definition) can't really affect.
This is not quite at Kay's very best, but it is rewarding reading and throws some interesting perspectives on some of his earlier novels.
It feels like this book spans more space and has a wider scale than many of his other books. In some ways that creates a bit more distance from the characters but also increases the gravity of their moments.
By the end of the
Knowing how much of Kay's books rely on history, it definitely left me wanting to research more about it. Also, since it connects through history but not characters to some of his other books, it's made me want to go back through his Sarantium duo-logy, just to start!