Written on the Dark - Guy Gavriel Kay

In the interest of full disclosure, I think Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the best genre writers practicing in the field today. It’s entirely possible, I think, that he hasn’t written a bad book. And, to be clear, I think he’s knocked it out of the park again. If you’re an existing Kay fan, you’re going to enjoy Written on the Dark immensely. If you’re not…well, you’re probably going to enjoy it, too. 

Kay is known for his alt-history work. Set in worlds that are perhaps one step removed from our own. Where the names are a little different, the faces are familiar but not quite the same, where the thrust of events nudges at the back of your mind, but the details, the intimate, the human, the emotional filigree of the experience, are all very different. And in themselves, these smaller stories can change, shift the rolling path of great events in another direction. Small things, things people do, can change the world. The way two people see each other, the way a chance meeting in the street can lead to a conversation that shifts paradigms…is something Kay portrays very well.  And I tell you what, Kay can write a world. He has a lush, lyrical prose style, which provides his setting with weight, and beauty, and a sense of capturing that beauty alongside the costs. Blood on a silvered blade.  And this is a world that you might have run across before, a world which feels quite similar to medieval France. High chivalry, armoured men on horses, and a desire to make the world beautiful, in poetry, in life. 

Indeed, the protagonist, Thierry, is a professional poet. Maybe professional is taking it a bit far, as he also has several less salubrious side-hustles. But he’s a smart man, and living in his head is no hardship. A fast talker and risk-taker, Thierry is also a thoughtful man, one who knows that words can shift mountains, assuming you can find the right words. That words can build legends, if you can find the right words. That words can shatter men, if you can find the right words. But that from time to time, the world is a dark and deadly place, and if the silvered tongue of chivalry and love can’t do the job, then a dagger at your belt wouldn’t be the worst thing to have. Kay has a penchant for male artist protagonists, and exploring the dichotomy within them of making art and craftsmanship in a more martial world, and this is no exception. But, to be fair, it’s a good bit. The tensions both within Thierry and within society are explored with a compassion and honesty and a sense of truth. And Thierry’s relationships, his struggles with his friends and his lovers and his social and political superiors, sit within a broader sense of events. Within a world on the cusp of change, where the right word in the right place can move a pebble into an avalanche. There's a sense of the epic here, intertwined with characters whose relationships keep that scale grounded, intimate, and human. 

I don’t want to spoil the story, but I will say that Kay never has a problem keeping my attention. This is one of those books whose first few pages grabbed onto my heart and mind, and refused to let go until I was done reading it, at some unconscionable hour of the morning. It’s a story with some romance, some heart, some rapid pivots and sharp twists. It’s a story that, I know it’s a cliche, is a page-turner, because it for sure kept me turning pages. 

Kay has always been a great writer, but I think he’s at the top of his game here, telling a tale that is at once a soaring piece of theatre, and an intensely personal story. It is, in short, really rather good, and I encourage everyone to go and pick it up immediately.

The Book That Held Her Heart - Mark Lawrence

Those of you who have been following along for a while know that I'm a big fan of Mark Lawrence. His fantasy work is always clever, always builds a richly detailed world that you can live in, and always, always, always comes with the kind of emotional honesty that leaves me feeling for the characters, and thinking about the story for weeks afterward. Not to give the game away, but The Book That Held Her Heart, the final volume of his Library trilogy, is all of those things. It promises big, and manages to deliver even more.

It's a lot of things, this saga. A love story, Livira and Evar, reaching out to each other across time and space and narrative construction. And a story with an idea, a question - is it better to build knowledge and pass it between generations, along with the attitudes and horrors that built it, biases and terrors moving between generations, pushing down on people until they're fossilised under the weight of the past - or to remove that knowledge and have people build something from nothing, making the same mistakes over and over and over again. There isn't a Big Answer for that Big Question, I think, but the book gives its characters the chance to explore the idea, to reach the edges of it, to try and unpick some of it, to perhaps build their own truths about what to do, much like the rest of us. 

In looking at the big idea, the book definitely deals with some smaller ones as well. It explores the notion of identity. In a space where people skip between worlds and eras, who they are isn't necessarily who they may become. And as the space between the pages of the Library grows more unstable, people can find themselves echoes of what they thought they were, or being someone else entirely - or fighting to exist at all. There's a sense, looking around at the characters, that theyre both re-evaluating themselves and falling into versions of themselves that they're still struggling to define. Arpix and Clovis, whose budding romance was such a joy in the previous book, continue trying to find their way around their own prejudices and world shattering events to find each other, to find what they need in each over. And Livira and Evar continue t try and find each other at all, without falling into the pages of their own fictions. The book looks on these romances positively, shows us that they're people who matter, that their choices and feelings and needs matter. They're also saving the world, of course, or a world, or something like a world, but they're doing it for each other, for their friends and loves and the connections that they've made. I'm a sucker for Arpix and Clovis, to be fair, the gentle librarian and the explosive warrior, coming to an understanding across times and species that says, you're people, and you're wonderful for it. But we do see some old favourites as well - the Librarian Yute, for example, finds himself travelling a world that might be ours, in the borders of the exchange between the library (or libraries). It is...not to spoil it, but he finds himself in a part of history where librarians are less than welcome. And in struggling to understand what that world is, trying to see what makes it tear itself apart and build itself up again, in understanding costs and conflicts and humanity, Yute is our eyes into our own strength, resilience and bravery. 

This is a book which isn't afraid to take chances, to flip the table and move the reader out of what they were expecting, and into something new. And it's a book with so many stories to tell. I must admit to enjoying them all - from Yute to Livira to Evar to Mayland and out into the world of siblings and friends and bit parts and people who are the heroes of their own story - and they all feel like they have self-realisation, have depth, have a reality of their own, looking back at you from the page. That they all have a story to tell. And they do. And that story, though I won't spoil it, is a thoughtful one. A kind one. Sometimes one that gives the reader a pang in the heart - good, or bad - and sometimes one that warms you from the inside out. It's a story that builds on what came before, and pushes it somewhere ne. It's a story that, at the last, will make you think and make you feel. 

It's good, is what I'm saying, and if you've come this far in the series, it's worth your time.