Number 34 - A Brightness long ago - Guy Gavriel Kay

I read my first Guy Kay novel when I was maybe 13 years old. I fell in love with the man's writing then.  It was his first novel - The Summer Tree, book one of the Fionavar tapestry.  It's the only trilogy I have read three times in the intervening years.  I've also picked up every one of his following books pretty much as soon as they're published.

This is no exception.  This book was released last month so I had to go out an buy it and put it straight to the top of my TBR pile. My TBR pile is figurative.  I would need scaffolding and a kilometer tall house if it was one single pile. There are a select few authors who leap straight to the top. Kay and Malerman are chief on that list at the moment.

Although Kay's first novels were high fantasy, with elves and Orcs and magicians, the fantastic elements have reduced over the years. With the exception of Ysabel, from Lions of Al Rassan onwards, he's almost been writing historic novels, set in an alternate mediaeval earth. There are powers at work in these books, but they're subtle.  There are ghosts and occasional visions, but none of the world saving magic of earlier books. No dragons or mythical creatures. Just ordinary people, sometimes in positions of extraordinary authority and regarded as almost godlike by their followers, but he lets us into their private lives.  We learn their insecurities and foibles. We see how their power to change the world they live in changes them.

In A Brightness Long Ago we follow a varied cast of characters whose lives intersect in a tumultuous period which is based on renaissance Italy.  It ties in indirectly with several other of his books, set in the same world. There are no heroes or villains to speak of. All the leaders of the various cities exist in shades of grey.  The two mercenary leaders at the centre of the plot are deeply and equally flawed.  One is horribly scarred and one exceedingly handsome, but their behaviour is equally good/bad.

The plot flows at a languid pace.  There are moments of great tension, particularly two horse races which are fabulous examples of how to write cinematically.  You can almost hear the hooves and the cheering crowds in those scenes. You feel the anxiety of the riders. And you find yourself invested in the outcome of the races.

There are unexpected deaths. I was quite upset with two of them in particular, but that is the sign that you really have become involved in the story. His prose is as lucid as ever. deeply absorbing throughout, capable of excitement or grief at the drop of a knife.

The scope of this novel is immense. Even though we see it through the eyes of a a select number of characters we have a true sense of the politics and interrelationships between the various cities and rulers thereof.

Even if you haven't read any of his other novels set in this particular world, it doesn't really matter.  It's entirely self contained, although the importance to the world of the city of Sarantium is enhanced if you have read the earlier books. 

An easy 8/10