Children of Earth and Sky

Starred review from April 4, 2016
World Fantasy Award–winner Kay (River of Stars) returns to the alternate Renaissance-era Europe of A Song for Arbonne in this engrossing fantasy of plotting nations, colliding religions, and shifting alliances. The stage is enormous. The wealthy city-state Seressa relies on spies to watch neighboring allies and enemies. The ruler of Seressa longs to destroy the Senjani pirates who interfere with trade. But the Senjani serve Rodolfo of Obravic, Holy Emperor of the god Jad, who’s fighting the Asharites in the east, where the ambitious Grand Khalif also bears watching. Three Seressan agents are mustered: ambassador Orso Faleri, embedded in Rodolfo’s court; Leonora Valeri, a noble’s disowned daughter posing as a doctor’s wife bound for Dubrava, a nation that pays tribute to the Khalif; and young artist Pero Villani, ordered to observe the Khalif’s court while painting his portrait. Add vengeful Senjan warrior Danica Gradek, irreverent Dubrava merchant Marin Djivo, and the Khalif’s plot to take a strategically located border fortress, and Kay has enough schemes for a 10-book series. He wields plots and all-too-human characters brilliantly, in a world where nothing is as valuable as information. This big, powerful fantasy offers an intricately detailed setting, marvelously believable characters, and an international stew of cultural and religious conflict writ larger than large. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group.

March 1, 2016
Kay (River of Stars, 2013, etc.) makes another incursion into a world but a quarter-turn from our own past in a historical fantasy connected by a thin thread of continuity to his Lions of Al-Rassan. Similarly, only a thin thread of the fantastic is apparent as we follow a large cast of five interconnected main characters (and a host of minor ones) through love, loss, holy war, assassination attempts, and political machinations. Danica is a warrior driven by revenge...and the memory of her brother, Neven, taken as a child by enemy soldiers; Leonora, a disgraced woman-turned-spy, is courted by Pero, an ambitious artist with his own intrigues, while Marin, an enterprising merchant, plays guide to them all on a fraught journey east through the political and physical hazards of a renamed, but thoroughly identifiable, Mediterranean of the 16th century. (Indeed, Kay's homages to the history, and his very light touch with the fantasy, begs the question of why the fantastic was needed at all.) This sprawling saga covers much geographical ground, and more than a few battles, as Jaddite (Christian) and Osmanli (Ottoman) forces clash in a war that complicates the lives of our heroes in dramatic fashion. Yet Kay is prone to drawing back from the crux of climactic moments to instead muse on how small individual lives are in this grand tapestry; the plot seems to exist largely to enable such high-flown ruminations. As a result, the emotional impact of Danica's quest, as well as those of the other subplots (which hinge more than once on happy coincidences), is eternally somewhat muted. The historical setting is lush, well-researched, and well-painted, but Kay runs a risk of readers finding the history to be his strongest character.

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Starred review from April 15, 2016

The fortified town of Senjan sends pirate raiding parties against those of the Asharite faith at every opportunity. Considered by some to be a brave defender of the Jaddite religion and by others as a thorn in the side of global trade, this coastal community is just one of the fulcrums on which politics turn in Kay's latest historical fantasy. There are also the schemes of the wealthy merchants in Seressa, the carefully husbanded neutrality of Dubrava, and a brother and sister standing on either side of a religious war. In a departure from the author's recent expertly crafted fantasies set in a version of ancient China (Under Heaven; River of Stars), this title, as with many of Kay's other books (Sailing to Sarantium; The Lions of Al-Rassan) takes place in a universe inspired by European Renaissance history. A bonus for longtime readers are the many references in this work to the places from those previous novels, especially Sarantium, fallen 25 years at the start of this story. VERDICT Kay triumphs at creating complex political landscapes and then populating them with characters who make the stakes important and the struggles real. Another magnificent history-that-never-was from a master.--MM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2016
Epic-historical-fantasy aficionados, rejoice! Award-winning novelist Kay has crafted a richly detailed story of Machiavellian intrigue, encompassing world-changing political and religious power struggles. Set across an almost familiar Renaissance landscape, the time is 900 years after the events in Kay's Sarantine Mosaic duology (19992000). The great city of Sarantium (Constantinople), now called Asharis, has fallen to the fierce Osmanlis (Ottomans), who seek to expand their empire into the lands of the Jaddites (Christians). At the center of events is a powerful merchant city-state, the Republic of Seressa (Venice), and their widespread machinations designed to insure that the business of trade and attendant accumulation of wealth continue as usual. The story follows multiple narrative threads with individuals from all levels of society, including a revenge-seeking female pirate with the power to communicate with the dead. As each common or aristocratic player struggles to find a place in the world they inhabit, their adventures are deftly melded together, building to a dangerous and violent conflict that may destroy some, if not all, of their lives. This intricately plotted literary novel will appeal to Kay's many fans as well as readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction with just a touch of fantasy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)