{"id":6272,"date":"2016-12-12T11:15:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T16:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/?p=6272"},"modified":"2021-05-30T11:55:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T15:55:24","slug":"sailing-to-sarantium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/6272","title":{"rendered":"Sailing to Sarantium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sailing to Sarantium<\/a><\/em> (1998) Guy Gavriel Kay<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Guy Gavriel Kay is an incredible writer. He doesn’t wrote epic fantasy in the sense of swords and sorcerey–in fact there is often no magic in his stories. He instead researches a subject an a time period and grounds his story in those elements, while writing of a time and place that never existed.<\/p>\n

Sailing to Sarantium<\/a><\/em> is about politics and moasicists and soldiers and chariot drivers while being at its core about people and truths.<\/p>\n

Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is also about how events and people impress and shape individuals who are in only the periphery of the story. How a single event can change not just the major players, but also those who are there about whom we in theory shouldn’t care.<\/p>\n

Strumosus buffeted him about the head and shoulders with a long-handled wooden spoon, breaking the spoon. The spoons broke easily, as it happened. Kyros had noticed that the cook seldom did much actual damage, for all the apparent force of his blows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love how that simple paragraph tells you a great deal about the cook, but I also love how we see events from the view of a young kitchen hand, and can imagine the results of those events will change the life of a single individual.<\/p>\n

To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune\u2014 or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But mostly I love the seeing the story and characters slowly unfold.<\/p>\n

If this was the world as the god\u2014 or gods\u2014 had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honor the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I will admit that this story may be harder to start–we get a lot of characters all at once, and events that shape the future, but as with all of Guy Gavriel Kay’s stories, the unfolding of events is a wonder and a delight.
\nRating: 8.5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by ROC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sailing to Sarantium (1998) Guy Gavriel Kay Guy Gavriel Kay is an incredible writer. He doesn’t wrote epic fantasy in the sense of swords and sorcerey–in fact there is often no magic in his stories. He instead researches a subject an a time period and grounds his story in those elements, while writing of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[191,27,2,41],"tags":[135],"class_list":["post-6272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8-5-10","category-alternate-history","category-fantasy","category-reread","tag-guy-gavriel-kay"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piQkW-1Da","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/27","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":0},"title":"The Sarantine Mosaic","author":"Michelle","date":"June 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"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.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alternate History"","block_context":{"text":"Alternate History","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy\/alternate-history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/31","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":1},"title":"The Lions of Al-Rassan","author":"Michelle","date":"June 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995) Guy Gavriel Kay This is a very good, albeit very depressing book. Set in the same world as Sailing to Sarantium, this book describes the battles between the followers of Jad versus the Asharites. If Sailing to Sarantium reminded me of Rome, this book reminded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alternate History"","block_context":{"text":"Alternate History","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy\/alternate-history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6280,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/6280","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":2},"title":"Lord of Emperors","author":"Michelle","date":"December 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Lord of Emperors (2000) Guy Gavriel Kay The sequel to Sailing to Sarantium. The second half of this story opens in Bassania, with the King of Kings suffering an arrow to the shoulder. Had any other patient been shown to them in this state, the physicians would all have spoken\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lord-of-emperors.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2416,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/2416","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":3},"title":"Under Heaven","author":"Michelle","date":"June 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Under Heaven (2010) Guy Gavriel Kay A new Guy Gavriel Kay book is like a small discovered treasure, something to be saved until a time when it can be enjoyed and savored. Some books I love because they are romps, others because they are long slow strolls through another place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "10\/10"","block_context":{"text":"10\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/10-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Under-Heaven.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/81","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":4},"title":"Tigana","author":"Michelle","date":"June 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Tigana (1990) Guy Gavriel Kay Why is it that every time I finish one of Guy Gavriel Kay's books, I ask myself, \"How could I have forgotten how good his books are?\" Even reading this book for a second time, I was still surprised at how good it was. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alternate History"","block_context":{"text":"Alternate History","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy\/alternate-history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/06\/Tigana.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":52,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/52","url_meta":{"origin":6272,"position":5},"title":"The Last Light of the Sun","author":"Michelle","date":"January 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Last Light of the Sun (2004) Guy Gavriel Kay Good luck finding this book. I came across it only because I was searching Amazon for another of his books, and realized that he had a new book out. Of course I've found a lot of books on Amazon recently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alternate History"","block_context":{"text":"Alternate History","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy\/alternate-history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/01\/last-light-of-the-sun.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}