Sailing to Sarantium cover art

Sailing to Sarantium

Book One of the Sarantine Mosaic

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Sailing to Sarantium

By: Guy Gavriel Kay
Narrated by: Berny Clark
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About this listen

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. Epic Fantasy Historical Thriller & Suspense
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I really love Kay's books, his worlds are very well realised and feel familiar while still retaining their fantasy element, due to their strong ties to historical fiction. This one suffered slightly from his bad habit of "all the women are drop-dead gorgeous and all the men are irresistibly shaggable even when they're supposedly unattractive" but it wasn't so overwhelming that my eyes rolled out. There were plenty of quite emotional moments too. This is part one of a duology and of course ended on a cliffhanger but that's ok, I went straight in to the next one. The audiobook read by Berny Clark started out a bit off because he read the prologue in this weird sing-song voice which otherwise lacked inflection but past the prologue it got better. His female voices are *very* quiet which made it hard to hear sometimes while driving and he switched pronunciations of some words (like "Inici", one of the tribes) back and forth but mostly it was very good.

Fantasy that feels like historical fiction

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Guy Gavriel Kay is fast becoming my favourite author. Never has someone captured the wonder, the emotion, and the heartache so clearly. These books are immersive and beg to be read repeatedly.
One should not hesitate.

Brilliant!!!

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Beautifully written as usual. Kay combines the worlds of the mosaicist and the charioteer set against a backdrop of political intrigue and the old and new religions. 'Sailing to Sarantium'is a saying - off to conquer the world and make one's mark (kind of like that New York New York song- " if I can make it here I can make it anywhere"). There is a poetic feel to it. I'm onto the next one in the duology (Lord of Emperors). Might go back and read the book as I listened to the audio version on audible and Berny Clark let it down - mispronouncing words and doing some poor accents (okay just not amazing like the Simon V or Euan M).

There's such beauty in Kay's books!

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