Paid Post: Book Review--"Written on the Dark: Part 1"

Guy Gavriel Kay delivers yet another of his beautiful, exquisitely wrought tales of a world very like our own and yet, paradoxically, utterly strange.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the book follow.

I’m doing something a bit different for this week’s paid post. I’m going to review the first part of Guy Gavriel Kay’s new novel, Written on the Dark, with my review of the second and third parts coming in successive weeks. If you’ve ever read Kay, you know that his prose is so rich, and his world-building so intricate, that he deserves more sustained analysis than a simple book review would provide. So, with that, let’s get on with it, shall we?

I’ve been a fan of Kay’s for a very long time, ever since I picked up Sailing for Sarantium by chance back in 2007. It was the perfect blend of the speculative and the historical, and that book, along with its sequel, Lord of Emperors, remains one of my all-time favorite works of fantastic literature. Over the years Kay has returned again and again to this particularly fruitful and evocative world, and he does so once again in Written on the Dark. In this novel we meet Thierry Villar, a poet with a rapier-sharp wit who frequents the taverns of Orane, the major city of the nation of Ferrieres. One fateful winter night his entire life changes when he is enlisted by the provost, Robbin de Vaux, to aid in his investigation of the murder of the king’s brother. It’s not long before Thierry finds his life turned entirely upside-down.