Sailing to Sarantium
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In the first volume of the brilliant Sarantine Mosaic, master storyteller Guy Gavriel Kay crafts a mesmerizing story of an awe-inspiring city and the people drawn into its spell.
After losing his wife and daughters to the plague, a grieving artisan, Crispin, receives a summons from the emperor and reluctantly embarks on the long journey toward the imperial city of Sarantium—the golden heart of an empire. Despite its perils, the allure of Sarantium's glory draws travellers and pilgrims from across the continent. But before Crispin can reach the capital, he must pass through a land of pagan ritual and mysterious danger. Marked by a brush with the supernatural and bound by a promise made to another monarch, Crispin's arrival at the imperial court will not be a quiet one. Sailing to Sarantium is a gripping tale of one man's journey to rebuild his life amid the power and grandeur of a remarkable civilization.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heavy of character and light of plot, Kay's (The Lions of Al Rassan) new series opens with the heady scents of sex, horseflesh and power. In the Holy City of Sarantium, the wily, murderous new emperor, Valerius II, stiffs his soldiers of their pay in order to build a fabulous monument to immortalize his reign. To adorn his temple, he summons a renowned elder mosaicist, who entreats his brilliant, younger partner, Caius Crispus of Varena, to make the journey to Sarantium in his stead. Crispus, who lost his zest for life after his beloved wife and daughters died of the plague, makes the journey under protest. His besieged country's young queen forces him to carry a dangerous, private message to the emperor, the contents of which could cost him his life. En route to Sarantium, Crispus becomes involved with mystically souled mechanical birds created by the magician Zoticus; encounters an awe-inspiring pagan god; saves the life of a beautiful, enslaved prostitute; and demonstrates that decency brings out the best in hired workers. At his destination, he learns to trust his own instincts, especially where knife-wielding assassins and powerful women who use their sexuality as a weapon are concerned. Kay is at his best when describing the intertwining of art and religion or explicating the ancient craft of mosaic work. The slow pace of the novel and the sheer volume of its characters (if ever a book cried out for a listing of dramatis personae, this is it) are dismaying, however, and don't augur well for future installments in the series. Rights: Westwood Creative Artists.
