I would like to have been in the room when Guy Gavriel Kay pitched this story to his publishers: “It’s a historical fantasy novel based on the Byzantine Empire and the works of W.B. Yeats. The main character is an artist caught up in political schemes during a tumultuous time.”“Uh….The Byzantine Empire and poems? And the hero isn’t any kind of an archer or a sorcerer? Some kind of bad ass like we usually see in these books?”“No, he’s just a mosaicist. That’s a guy who glues bits of colored glass or tiles to walls or ceiling to create images.”“Uh….that’s great, Guy. Why don’t you go write that up and maybe we’ll take a look at it right after we get through this pile of manuscripts featuring groups of swordsman, thieves, elves and magicians on heroic quests as they battle orcs and goblins.” Set in the same world as The Lions of Al Rassan but several centuries earlier, Caius Crispus a/k/a Crispin is a talented mosaicist with a fiery temper who is still mourning the family he lost to plague. An Imperial Courier arrives bearing a summons from the emperor for his partner Martinian to come to the capital, Sarantium. Martinian claims that he’s too old to travel and insists that Crispin take his place instead. Crispin is reluctantly pushed into making the hazardous road journey, and soon finds himself being used as a pawn by powerful people.Wait a second. If he travels by land rather than sea than why is the book called Sailing to Sarantium? Kay explains it like this:"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--or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity."Ah, so that explains it… This is the first book of Kay’s two-part Sarantine Mosaic, and as with the other one I recently read by him, The Lions of Al Rassan, he does a masterful job of building an intricate world full of political and religious conflicts as well as enough day-in-the-life details to make it all feel authentic and realistic. Having his lead character be a smart artist with a tendency of speaking his mind and putting him into the middle of a palace intrigue plot when he’s in over his head made for some interesting scenes that are different that the usual kind of hack-n-slash stuff you’d expect to be driving a story like this. There is just enough action and violence to make it feel dangerous and not just a bunch of people standing around talking, and Crispin’s journey as a way to get over his grief is a nice personal hook.A couple of points kept this from getting to four stars. One of the things that set The Lions of Al Rassan apart from other fantasies was its lack of any kind of magic or supernatural elements other than one supporting character having some very limited telepathy and precognition. Here there is a full-blown alchemist who has created something that he gives to Crispin as a gift, and then there’s an encounter with a pagan entity. I was far more interested in Crispin navigating the political and religious mine fields of dealing with the Emperor’s court than any of these elements. (Obviously this was a personal preference, and I’m sure some readers will feel the exact opposite.)Also, there are several strong female characters in positions of power here, and that’s to the book’s credit. However, after the third or four time that Crispin finds himself in the presence of one of these women and finds himself flabbergasted by their intellect and beauty, the conversations took on a rinse-and-repeat flavor. Essentially they have so much in common that they start feeling like the same character and that’s too bad because the first couple of interactions really worked well.All in all I liked this but didn’t love it. I’d read it before but remembered little of the plot, and I can’t remember how it ends in the next book either so it obviously didn’t blow my mind. I’ll probably move on to Lord of Emperors again at some point, but I’m not in any great hurry.
The new emperor in Sarantium has a lot to atone for, so he’s building a grand chapel to his god and calling the most famous artisans in the surrounding regions to come work for him. Crispin, a mosaicist from a neighboring country, is one of these. Unhappy since his wife and children died, Crispin doesn’t think he has much to live for anymore, and he doesn’t want to go to Sarantium. But when his young queen, who sits her throne precariously, asks Crispin to carry a secret proposal to the already-married emperor of Sarantium, Crispin is duty-bound. Now he is “sailing to Sarantium,” which means that he’s leaving everything behind to start a promising new life. Along the way, he befriends an alchemist with strange powers, a young woman who’s about to be sacrificed to a god, and a foul-mouthed army officer who loves to watch the chariot races. When Crispin gets to Sarantium, he finds that decorating the biggest dome in the world isn’t the hardest part of his job — it’s navigating Sarantium court politics.Sailing to Sarantium, the first book in Guy Gavriel Kay’s duology THE SARANTINE MOSAIC, is a historical fantasy loosely based on the Byzantine Empire. It’s a well-written slow-moving character-driven novel that’s full of the violence, sex, political intrigue, passion, and beauty we expect from Kay. If you’re a fan, you’re bound to enjoy this story. I particularly admired the focus on the art of mosaic — both the technique and the way Crispin and his fellow artisans love beauty and are attuned to the play of light, shadow, and color in their environment. I also loved the alchemist’s craft of creating birds of leather and metal and instilling them with personalities (there’s more to it, and it’s cool, but it’d be spoilery to explain further). This was not only a beautiful idea, but it added a nice touch of humor. I also loved the chariot races.There are several likeable characters in Sailing to Sarantium but they spend more time thinking than doing and they’re really hard to believe in. Like most (maybe all) of Kay’s lead males, Crispin is brilliant, strong, brave, blunt and uncompromising (even when he knows he might be killed for it). The women are even more unbelievable. We’re told that they’re powerful, clever and dangerous, but mostly they go around looking beautiful and haughty, teasing men and speaking in arch tones, and using sex as a weapon. Almost every woman we meet in Sailing to Sarantium, other than Crispin’s mother, tries to seduce Crispin as soon as she meets him, though I’m not sure why.The political intrigue is a bit over the top, too. As soon as Crispin arrives in Sarantium, he’s somehow unwittingly in the middle of all the maneuvering, with all the important people wanting to talk to him privately, seduce him, or murder him. We are repeatedly told how clever, subtle, and nuanced all these people are, but I’m not convinced. It’s not clear why they are scheming. Most of the interesting intrigue seems to have happened in the past and we never feel the immediate significance of it all, which just makes it feel overdramatized.Overall, Sailing to Sarantium is a pleasant story if you’re willing to believe in the characters and the significance of the plot. This was hard for me, but I like Crispin and some of the other characters (e.g., the army officer, the famous chef and his apprentice, and the charioteer) and I’m interested in the mosaic and the birds, so I’m going to move on to the second SARANTINE MOSAIC novel, Lord of Emperors, and hope for a bigger pay-off.I’m listening to Berny Clark narrate Audible Frontier’s recent production of THE SARANTINE MOSAIC. He has an agreeable voice and his dialogue is truly excellent, but some of his narration is slow and lacks inflection. I actually didn’t mind this because I thought it served to tone down the drama, but readers who’ve enjoyed other audio productions of Guy Gavriel Kay’s work, which have had more dynamic readers, may feel differently. I suggest listening to a sample.http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
What do You think about Sailing To Sarantium (2002)?
Kay is such a phenomenal writer that trying to write something myself about his work seems foolish, but his books deserve this.Sailing to Sarantium is Kay hitting his stride as master of the faux-historical fantasy. He is an inventor of almost worlds that allow us to base ourselves in our own history, while creating something new for us to explore. His Sarantium is our Rome, and his tale of emperors and queens and assassinations and intrigue is really an exploration of the deep affect of religion on human society, art, and politics. He does so with a masterful ability to immerse the reader in a world of contradictory belief systems, while maintaining a sense of the objective without distance or condescension. Like all his later work, it is dense with characters and atmosphere, brought to life with a lushness of language that brings vibrant Sarantium to life without feeling over done. Kay employs a tactic of introducing major shifts in scene, or events outside the view of the main charcters, by showing them through the eyes of secondary characters who we'll not see again in the book. While this demands the reader have some patience as you figure out who this new person is and why their perspective is important, it serves the immensely powerful functions of painting the wider perspective the reader needs of plot events, but it also creates a depth of culture seeing the slices of life that would never be part of the novel, otherwise. I'm always impressed with world building in fiction, even if the author is trying to build something in our own world and not some fantastical place, often moreso than the characters themselves, often enough. Kay does this better than anyone, while actually making me appreciate the personalities he creates. At the end of the book, he continues to amaze, in that he manages to artfully address every major plot point and theme in a very natural way, so that even if there wasn't a continuation (there is... Lords of Emperors, here I come) I would have felt completely satisfied in the finale. As open ended as it was, the plot and actions can clearly be furthered, but at the same time I found myself highly satisfied and truly enjoying Sailing on its own merits. It has been a long while since I finished a novel energized and excited to read more. Sailing to Sarantium did that for me. Highly recommended.
—Neil
The Sarantine Mosaic is the last of the GGK books for me to read, and so while waiting for things I reserved from the library on the Time 100 quest, I decided I would knock it out.I always find it interesting when reading GGK how he can follow the same formula and make it always seem so different. The parallel this time is obviously to the Byzantine Empire, but what really sets this apart is the way GGK immerses in the chariot races - which of course he often does in some way or another (like the troubadors in Song for Arbonne). The ruminations on mosaics are also unique to this particular GGK story.The standard intriguing is there, and some magic lurking on the fringes but not the "I cast a spell!" kind. Occasional looks far into the future of some minor character, and, more than most GGK books, thoughts on why our understanding of history is never going to be perfect. For this story, I suppose that makes sense given that the era's historians are known to be fractured (or so GGK says in a preface).Of course, it's only book one, so we'll see if the second takes the build-up here and goes somewhere even better. I am optimistic.
—Mark
Not sure why this isn't incorporated in my previous review. Anyway, I listened to it this time, and mostly disliked the narrator, but I am surprised at how much I remembeered the story when prompted. I had forgotten most of it except for the mosaics and the journey. The phrase 'sailing to Sarantium' is a metaphor for a life changing journey here, although there is an actual city of Sarantium, loosely modeled on the Rome of ancient times. Interesting story, although it's in book two that things really come to fruition.
—Sandra
