Sailing to Sarantium

Book One of the Sarantine Mosaic

De: Guy Gavriel Kay

Narrado por: Berny Clark

Crispin is a mosaicist, a layer of bright tiles. Still grieving for the family he lost to the plaque, he lives only for his arcane craft. But an imperial summons from Valerius the Trakesian to Sarantium, the most magnificent place in the world, is difficult to resist.

In a world half-wild and tangled with magic, a journey to Sarantium means a walk into destiny. Bearing with him a deadly secret and a Queen's seductive promise, guarded only by his own wits and a talisman from an alchemist's treasury, Crispin sets out for the fabled city. Along the way he will encounter a great beast from the mythic past, and in robbing the zubir of its prize, he wins a woman's devotion and a man's loyalty - and loses a gift he didn't know he had until it was gone.

Once in this city ruled by intrigue and violence, he must find his own source of power. Struggling to deal with the dangers and seductive lures of the men and woman around him, Crispin does discover it, in a most unusual place - high on the scaffolding of the greatest work of art ever imagined....

©1998 Guy Gavriel Kay (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

The Kay Series I Mostly Recommend To Newbies

All Kay's works are great. I so often preach his praises to my friends, family, and colleagues, and am confronted with "what should I read first." This Series is almost always my recommendation. Kay teaches world history in fantasy in many of his works to the extent that I know of a homeschooling program where his works are part of the curriculum. The voice actor is very good, but the editing has a major flaw of jumping from one character/setting to the next with ZERO pause in-between. It's is like this in both books, and caused me to have to skip back literally hundreds of times.

Guy Gavriel Kay never disappoints

Although this isn't one of my favorites, it remains an outstanding work of art. This author's beautiful prose is achieved by few others.

Mosaic

A mosaicist goes to the big city, the most magnificent city in the world, the capital of the neighboring country which is incidentally intent on invading his war-torn homeland. Here he discovers or should it be rediscovers life, with all its intrigues.
He says all he wants to do is practice his craft, his art, but he is pulled into so much more by the beautiful empress the former dancing girl, her sworn enemy the gorgeous noble woman and of course there is the Queen of his own about-to-be-invaded country. It is not a love triangle by any means, for these are powerful and inhumanly intelligent women, but let???s just say that Guy Gavriel Kay does not by any means shy away from describing them as lovely.
These books are more than the story of one man that goes to the city though, we are introduced and follow other people as well, and unlike many other books where the viewpoints shifts around from person to person we never really lose sight of what it is all about. For like any event in history it is all made out of different bits, many people with many different stories come together in a city in one place in time and together their stories and lives are placed next to each other like pieces of glass or stone a ceiling. It is only when we as the reader see it all from a distance that we see the mosaic it has become. Funny that.

Guy is Great

Guy Gavriel Kay can be hit or miss for me, mostly hit. This one was a hit for me. I thought the narration was top notch and I can't wait to listen to the next installment in the story.

Fiction and the Human Condition

Ultimately, what is the purpose of fiction? What makes a novel great and unique? Most readers seek entertainment, but we are surrounded by that, on TV, movies, computer games, When I was young, I read mainly for plot, but really the are only four or five plots. Everything else is variation, and plots are available on TV.

Later, I read for character and to understand what drives people. Fiction excels at this because the author often takes the reader inside the characters to show what motivates them.

However, some few writers reach deeper. Great literature shows the human condition. That is hard to define, but this book certainly defines it while remaining a very readable story. That is what makes a great classic novel, and Guy Kay has made this into a triumph.