Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay

(Reviewed by Jane Beaumont, Cape Town, South Africa.)

With The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, one of my all time favourites, I have done quite a lot of dipping into Kay’s works over the years. I have even, very briefly, met the man at a world conference in San Francisco and very imprerssive he was, too, but it has taken till now for me to re-experience the intoxication of Fionavar.

Sailing to Sarantium follows Kay’s usual pattern of taking a period, more correctly an "era" in history and giving it a little nudge. No quantum leaps into alternative non-carbon-based lifeforms, just a small sidestep, a slightly squinting retrospective into an age that never was but feels like it should have been.

Fionavar took another look at Arthurian legend but is nothing like any of the myriad other takes on this hardy perennial. Then Kay moved into other areas and eras, including a misty look back at mediaeval France in A Song for Arbonne -–but he never dragged me into any of his sidestepped worlds so wholeheartedly again – until now.

In Sailing to Sarantium – part one of two, goody goody – we are in a crypto Byzantine Empire, not too long after the fall of a crypto Roman Empire. Just as Byzantine has become synonymous with convoluted plot and counter plot in our world, so, in this world, has Sarantine. Our main protagonist, Caius Crispus or Crispin, is a mosaicist, summoned to Sarantium by the Emperor Valerius whose cunning and sophistication are only surpassed by those of his wife. She (are there overtones of the Empress Theodora here?) is an ex-dancer for one of the factions of charioteers whose fortunes in Sarantium’s Hippodrome are pretty much all that occupies the minds of the people of Sarantium.

Crispin’s appointed task is to create the ceiling mosaic on the vast dome of the great temple raised by Emperor Valerius – but there are many obstacles in his path.

The Byzantine, sorry Sarantine, machinations of various factions and courtiers are added to by religious schisms which have direct effects on what may safely be depicted by Crispin on the sanctuary dome. The same religious differences have also impacted on Crispin and his travelling companions in a more direct and dramatic way on their journey to Sarantium. In this section there are echoes of one of the most memorable parts of Fionavar – a theme in Kay’s works.

However, what made me read on till my wrists ached (yes, it’s a tome) was the fine character drawing which I had found missing in the intervening books. I really cared about these characters or was fascinated by them, or loathed them – at any rate I was engaged by them.

The creation of an alternate historio-geographic universe that is just a corridor away from what we remember as reality is, as usual, entirely credible to me (no great Byzantine scholar, mind you). Kay’s world is well-rounded in details from clothing to horse riding and, it would seem, the design and creation of mosaics.

At the end of volume one, Crispin has only just started designing the dome so we have the whole of volume two’s no doubt impeccable detail to look forward to and learn from.

I, for one, can hardly wait!