A Brightness Long Ago
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4.5 • 60 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
International bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay's latest work is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy and offers an extraordinary cast of characters whose lives come together through destiny, love, and ambition.
In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man looks back on his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra's intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son of a tailor. He took service at the court of a ruling count—and soon learned why that man was known as the Beast.
Danio's fate changed the moment he saw and recognized Adria Ripoli as she entered the count's chambers one autumn night—intending to kill. Born to power, Adria had chosen, instead of a life of comfort, one of danger—and freedom. Which is how she encounters Danio in a perilous time and place.
Vivid figures share the unfolding story. Among them: a healer determined to defy her expected lot; a charming, frivolous son of immense wealth; a powerful religious leader more decadent than devout; and, affecting all these lives and many more, two larger-than-life mercenary commanders, lifelong adversaries, whose rivalry puts a world in the balance.
A Brightness Long Ago offers both compelling drama and deeply moving reflections on the nature of memory, the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune's wheel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kay returns to the rich world of Children of Earth and Sky in order to focus on Batiara, an analogue of early Renaissance Italy, in this lovely work of historical fantasy. Narrated primarily by Guidanio Cerra, a clever young scholar, the story centers on two powerful and magnetic warlords, Teobaldo Monticola of Remigio and Folco Cino of Acorsi, as they dance around each other in a series of elaborate machinations. Folco's plots including assassinating the ruler of a nearby city-state in a bid for power and fixing a famous horse race for financial gain are always countered in some way by Teobaldo, his foremost rival. Their long-standing hatred of each other not only alters the brutal and heavily stratified world around them but changes the lives of those drawn into their orbits: Folco's fiercely independent niece Adria, queer itinerant healer Jelena, feckless merchant noble Antenami Sardi, Guidanio himself, and many others. Though not quite as intricate as Kay's early work, this well-constructed tale still has all the thoughtfulness and poignancy his fans have come to love and expect.
Customer Reviews
Jarring, jagged, shards, full of hate
The first of this authors books that I found so filled with Hayton rage that it was a difficult read for me. I cannot recommend this book as I highly recommend all of the others published previously.