May Books 18) Sailing to Sarantium

[nwhyte]

18) Sailing to Sarantium, by Guy Gavriel Kay

I've read two very bad novels about Justinian, Belisarius, and seventh-century Constantinople, one by Robert Graves and one by David Weber Eric Flint and David Drake. This is a damn good novel about them, one I had been meaning to get around to for ages. It is fortuitous (or maybe not completely) that I

Comments

[rozk]

I would be interested in your take on the Graves - I'd describe it as deeply mediocre rather than actually bad. Certainly it is disappointing after the Claudius books.

[nwhyte]

Ooooh, it was years ago that I read it - my memory is that I picked it up secondhand shortly after moving back to Belfast in 1991, and then just found my eyes glazing over when I tried to read it; too many proper names and battles, and unpleasant people. Struggled through to the end though. Far, far inferior to Claudius, and I think perhaps written by Graves as a contractual obligation.

[inulro]

Sailing to Sarantium is one of my all-time favourite books - I like all of Kay's stuff but this one just blew me away.

I didn't think Lord of Emperors was as wonderful. Still well worth reading though.

[sierra_le_oli]

Seconded. I think it was the ending that bugged me most.

But anyway, the mosaics in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice meant so much more to me thanks to those two books.

[pnh]

I think you mean David Drake and Eric Flint, not David Weber.

[nwhyte]

Er, yeah.

[bellinghman]

I do find Kay's use of actual history and actual places somewhat odd. Not necessarily wrong, but very unusual. It can also cause a certain derailment - I was reading Tigana (I think it was), and just enjoying the scenery, when up popped Les Antiques. The description was close enough for me to know exactly the place he was describing, and yet it was in a supposedly fictional place.

I'd hit the same road bump one time previously, when reading D H Lawrence's Kangaroo. In it is a description of an encounter with a Tasmanian Tiger - but the description was word for word identical with an actual factual account I'd read previously, and suddenly I found my suspended belief rudely dropped.

[mizkit]

When I bought SAILING, I did not realize it was the first of a duology. I was growing increasingly concerned and bewildered about how he was going to manage to wrap it all up when, about forty pages from the end, I realized abruptly that he *wasn't*, and this was part of a series. I was both incensed and deeply relieved. I think that that pair of books is my favorite of his after TIGANA, which is probably my favorite book of all time.

[nwhyte]

I liked both Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan a lot. Tigana perhaps is the better one, dealing with memory and magic very beautifully.

[mizkit]

LIONS was perfect up until the last chapter, at which point it is my ever so humble opinion that Kay *completely* blew it. If the other man had died, much as I love TIGANA, I think LIONS would've toppled it from its place of pride, but I feel quite vehemently that the wrong man died. Furthermore, my recollection/perception is that Kay as the writer tried to hide which one had died, making me feel even more passionately that he'd screwed up, knew it, and was trying to pull the wool over the readers' eyes.

This is apparently a topic upon which death matches can be held. :)

Someday I've got to re-read A SONG FOR ARBONNE, which is a lot of peoples' favorite, but it really didn't do anything for me. I've got to see if it really doesn't work for me or if I was just in a bad headspace when I read it. I don't think, though, that I'll ever re-read LIONS, which is too bad, because man. So. Very. Close. To perfect.