Amazon.com Sailing
to Sarantium is a small story. Its hero, Crispin, is unassuming
as heroes go. He's a skilled mosaicist, an artist who makes pictures
with decorative tiles, and responds to a request from a distant
emperor to travel to the imperial capital and work on the new
sanctuary there. Hardly the makings of high adventure. But then
again, Guy Gavriel Kay could write about a peasant going to pick
up a pail of water and you'd probably hang on every word.
If you don't know Kay, you should.
His pedigree is impeccable, starting with a well-loved fantasy
debut, the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy (The Summer Tree, The Wandering
Fire, and The Darkest Road), and a compilation he did with Christopher
Tolkien called The Silmarillion. Sailing to Sarantium, the first half of the Sarantine Mosaic series, evokes
his other historical fantasy titles, such as A Song for Arbonne
and The Lions of Al-Rassan, and is a well-researched analog to
the Byzantine Empire and fifth-century Europe--with all its political
and religious machinations.
Despite its seemingly prosaic cast
and quest, Sailing
to Sarantium is a charmer, another Kay classic. As usual,
the character descriptions are subtle and precise--the mosaicist,
Crispin, is a shrewd, irascible, and intensely likable man who
is fiercely devoted to his art but troubled by guilt and loss.
Reluctantly surrendering to events, he agrees to travel to Sarantium
to work for the emperor. ("Sailing to Sarantium," we
learn, is an expression synonymous with embracing great change.)
As Crispin moves from roadside quarrels to palace intrigue, Kay
gracefully shifts perspective from character to character, moving
forward and backward in time and giving a rich sense of the world
through the eyes of soldiers, slaves, and senators.
