The Sarantine Mosaic

Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay may be my favorite books ever, now that I have read them twice. I do not say that easily. I'm bad at picking favorites, and don't like to do it in general. One thinks of other possibilities and cringes slightly to say that one is better than the other. Not because one can’t be better than the other, but because of the presumption – who am I to say that the Sarantine Mosaic is better than The Lord of the Rings, for example? Especially when the former might not exist if it weren’t for Tolkien? I have no problem with someone saying it, but me? Ha!

At any rate, Guy Gavriel Kay combines two of my favorite genres, fantasy and historical fiction, and his writing is amazing; plus he gets bonus points for helping Christopher Tolkien put together The Silmarillion. The Sarantine Mosaic is my favorite among his books, although I haven’t read Tigana since April 1999, and it was powerful as well – probably a close second. I think everyone should read these two books… or at least everyone who is smart enough to understand and interpret them correctly. He does tend to put at least one sexually explicit scene in every book, but the Sarantine Mosaic is cleaner than most, and only has one I think. Certainly I would love it if my roommates would read them; Rachel for the history, Joi for the art, and all of them for the message of loving even when you are going to lose what you love.

The books are about a mosaicist... and the people at the Sarantine court. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Sarantium was inspired by Byzantium; 6th century Byzantium, to be exact. I really can't say much more than that. Any interesting summary of the plot would give too much away. Even the beginning events are too enjoyable to read, I don't want to give the basic premise. It's a very character driven plot, but not in a "no action" sort of way at all. Gaah. You have to read it. I don't even want to post a link to the history it's based on, because that would still give away some stuff. I'm assuming most people aren't especially familiar with 6th century Byzantium and the reign of Justinian. Based on these books, they should be.

I simply love them. Kay is so good at observing life, observing people, and writing truth and beauty. He writes about the power of love, and the destructive power of hate. The limits of love, sometimes, when its object is someone devoted to vengeance. Rich and complex, yet comprehensible, without the confused feeling of Dune. But read it again, and you will catch more. Ordinary conversations become poignant, and the amazing scenes do not lose their power. Oh bother, I can't describe it, you have to read these books!

Here's what one other has to say about them:
"Kay is a global phenomenon... His prose is surefooted and poetic... A storyteller on the grandest scale, his Sarantine empire [is] peopled by prostitutes, charioteers, senators and slaves, all drawn in fine detail. Yet despite the distance of time and place, his historical characters breathe and bleed; we feel they are our intimates... Kay has complete control of all he creates... His real subject is the power of art to survive and give posterity its version of the world... Mosaic serves as both subject and style: Kay's method is to juxtapose chunks of contrasting tales, breaking and building suspense, inviting parallels between individuals high and low in society. It is fascinating... to see how the stories connect." Time magazine (Canada)

I have a slight disagreement on one point -- I think his "real subject" is, perhaps, about the "power of art to survive," but its very strongly mixed with a theme of the fragility of art -- and its inherent value despite.

And here's Guy Gavriel Kay's own words -- "On Writing Sailing to Sarantium". I especially like this quote: "Fantasy is -- at its best -- the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focusing beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future. It is -- or so I have argued for years -- a genre, a mode of telling, that offers so much more than it is usually permitted to reveal." No wonder I like his work...

Guy Gavriel Kay. And Quiz.

Yeah, I know, I said my next post would probably be a review of The Sarantine Mosaic. Well it isn't. It's this. First, I found out that they're going to make The Lions of Al-Rassan (also by Guy Gavriel Kay) into a movie! Cool (at least if they do a good job)!

Second, which Fruitsbasket character are you? I'm Kisa. Here's a link to the "You're Yuki. Have a computer virus," quiz.

Guy Gavriel Kay. And Music.

I've added another link -- Guy Gavriel Kay's website. My next post will probably be a review of his books Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors (a duology entitled The Sarantine Mosaic).

For now there isn't much to say. I'm still working for Jeff technically, although I haven't done much recently. I've been working for Mom more than Jeff in the last week; mowing lawns, picking up Melanie, washing dishes. I got over the Evil Sickness of Death rather quickly, so that's good. Because I've been doing a lot of driving recently I've also been listening to a lot of music -- tapes and the radio, since that's what my car can play (a vast improvement from my last car, which couldn't play anything). I've enjoyed the original cast recording of "Into the Woods" quite a bit -- I got it for about a $1 at Savers, and it's been more than worth it. I want to see a video of it now, so I can understand the second half better. I've heard it's depressing, but I don't care. Agony and Agony Reprise are my favorite songs...

Oh, and if anyone feels like giving me a random present, how about this CD? I've heard the second song on it played three times on classical stations on the radio now, and they don't normally repeat songs much. It's Faure's Pavane, but for classical guitar and orchestra. It's so beautiful! Oh, and you could also give me The Book of Secrets...

Ask a Silly Question, Get a Silly Answer

I've decided what I'm going to say next time someone asks how I remember all my brothers' and sisters' names: "Well, my parents always recite my sisters' names for me when they're trying to remember mine, so those are pretty easy. I never can remember my brothers' names, though..."

Rain

I would like to take this opportunity to inform all my friends not living in Southern California that we have had a very wet winter. I'm sure it's normal for other places, but it's unheard of here. According to one source, this is our wettest winter in 115 years, and the 3rd wettest since records began. As long as we get an average amount of rain for the rest of the season, it will become the wettest recorded. Evidently a "season" lasts from July 1st to June 30th. The average for July 1st - Feb. 23rd is 10.15 inches. We've had 33.87 inches. Much fun. Well, not for everyone. It's caused mudslides and such, of course. But I figure I never got to play in the snow as a kid, so I made do with rain, and I enjoy it to this day. As does my sister.

Shannon Hale, work, sickness, depression, Japanese...

I added a new link to my sidebar. It's to Shannon Hale's website. Besides having written and published a couple good books (The Goose Girl, which I stayed up most of a night to read; and Enna Burning, which took me slightly longer, probably because I wasn't on Christmas vacation at the time), I like her blog! I can identify with her... if you just ignore the bits about being a published, full-time author, wife and mother, that is. Of course, she doesn't know me, but that's okay. I doubt she'll mind me mentioning her.

In other news, I'm working for my brother now, learning to program. Or I'm trying to -- being sick is putting a damper on things. I seem to have what Rachel finally got over, and I hope I get well faster! I really don't want to be sick right now. I'm having enough trouble keeping up with everything as it is, without having the Evil Sickness of Death, with the recommended treatment of doing nothing except taking (short) showers. Poor Rachel, I'm even more sorry now that you had this for a month! Blech!

Do you ever have those days when you feel you're drowning in all the things you need to do, and, even worse, it seems like the load should be easy, the sort of thing other people out there can do practically without trying? Sigh. This depresses Marcy. This may be why she's making two posts on her blog in one day.

On the bright side, I'm learning Japanese faster than the other people in my Japanese-learning-group. On the not-quite-as-bright side, this means we don't get to learn as fast as I want to. I spent a good deal of time last week practicing with Hiragana flashcards until I really could read sentences in it, and then I came to class (the small, unofficial kind) only to find that no one else could, so we reviewed again, and our homework for next week is to be able to do what I already can do this week. See, there's a depressing side to everything. (=

Oh well, I may have depressed my readers (although I doubt it), but I feel better now! I think I'll go watch "Fruitsbasket." And don't tell me this is why I'm feeling overwhelmed. "Fruitsbasket" is productive -- it helps me practice my Japanese. So there.

Cheaper by the Dozen

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey is one of the books I chose to buy myself as a Christmas present from Liz. It would make a good book to read aloud in a group. It's a collection of funny stories of living in a family of twelve with an efficiency-expert for a father. Through the stories you come to know the family, and to hurt with them at certain points, even though the majority of the book is humor. This book tempts me to write about my own family, in the hopes that I, too, would produce something which could help people to understand my family. But what do you do with the bad parts, the parts family members wouldn't want written (let alone published!) about themselves? Changing the names wouldn't be enough, for those who know us. Perhaps I'll stick to semi-fictional stories; then it's more difficult to ascertain who inspired each character.

While I'm at it, I'm going to "not-review" a couple more of my Christmas books now. Any links will take you to the titles' book reviews (the real kind!) on Sonderbooks, my sister's site; none of them will be to amazon. If you want to buy them I'm sure you'll manage. In fact, if you want links to amazon you can find them on Sonderbooks, and I think Sondy gets a small commission for any you buy through her links.

First there's The Light Princess, by George MacDonald. I didn't write about it right after I read it, like the other ones, so if I had anything particularly insightful to say, I think I've forgotten it. It was a good book though. I think it only took me a couple hours to read, it's quite short. But good. Um... I liked the fact that the princess having no gravity meant that she was both physically weightless and emotionally "light" (I can't think of a word at the moment which means precisely the opposite of "grave" emotionally).

Then there's The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. Not an amazing book, but fun. I'm curious about the other Pimpernel books, perhaps someday I'll read a couple of them. The first one might be especially enjoyable if you didn't know who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. I don't think it's very hard to guess, but still, it's probably better to read it before watching the movie, unlike what I did.

The Hollow Kingdom and Close Kin, the first two books in a trilogy by Clare B. Dunkle, made delightful reading. I had read the first one before, actually quite recently, but not the second. The second one had a character in it (Sable) very similar to a character I want to write. It worked quite well, and it's a concept I can still use without anyone accusing me of plagiarism, so I'm going to.

That's all the Christmas books I've read so far other than Sailing to Sarantium, which I'm going to not-review together with its sequel, Lord of Emperors, so there won't be any more posts like this for a bit.