The Sarantine Mosaic

The Sarantine Mosaic: Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors Guy Gavriel Kay

On a note unrelated to the story, I do have to say that I greatly prefer the Canadian cover art to the American. That’s the problem with thorough websites. You get to find out what you’re missing.

I’ve had these books for several years (they were published in 1998), and hadn’t gotten around to reading them, for the very reasons I enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing so much: his books are deep, engrossing, and not something that I can just plow through in a couple of hours. These books are not light reading, but they are good reading.

As Guy Gavriel Kay says on his website and in the introduction to the books, Sarantium is based upon Byzantium, and he spent a great deal of time on research for the book, including learning about mosaics and chariot racing. I’ll assume that his research was fruitful, and that his descriptions were accurate, as I have no idea myself. I did find the descriptions of the chariot races more interesting than the descriptions of laying mosaic, but I do NOT feel that there is not too much of either. Both are integral to the story, and as I said, interesting to read about.

He heard the Glory of the Blues (he who had once been the Glory here, himself) screaming over the crashing din… Astorgus saw the lad jerk his head swiftly left and immediately, splendidly react, without an instant to think what he was doing. Astorgus stopped breathing, cut off prayer, watched.

The book follows the path of a mosaic maker, as he is called to the city of Sarantium to work on a mosaic in the great sanctuary. His travels and arrival in the city end up influencing the lives of others (as one would expect, otherwise there will be no story) are amazing, yet not unbelievable. There are very few fantastic events, even with them the story reads more like an historical novel than your typical fantasy, which is perfectly fine with me.

The story is wonderful, with many different characters, and an intricately woven plot. Although I do like the main character, I have to say that I particularly liked some of the secondary characters, especially Vargos the Incini, Rustem of Kerakek, and Scortius the charioteer, but even some of the lesser characters, such as the chef Strumosus, I wished I could meet in real life. (Not that I have any desire to live in such a time, I just particularly like the characters.)

If you plan on reading the books, I highly recommend getting your hands on both of them, as book one, Sailing to Sarantium, ends somewhat abruptly, and when I finished it I immediately ran to my bookshelf for the second book.

I did have one major complaint. Who ever edited the American (Harper) version of this book needs a swift kick in the shins. In the first book especially I noticed several times that there was no space between the period at the end of one sentence and the start of the next sentences. It was unpleasantly distracting, and I’m not sure why it happened repeatedly.

Besides that, the book was delightful to read, and I had a difficult time putting it down each night to go to sleep. The story twisted and turned, and never went precisely where I expected, which is something I love in a story. Sometimes when reading you know precisely where the story is going, but with Guy Gavriel Kay you may think that you know, but you always end up somewhere else.

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