A Brightness Long Ago is hard to classify. It's not entirely fantasy, nor is it exactly historical fiction. Guy Gavriel Kay has crafted something simultaneously both and other than, something utterly audacious. In this novel, Gay tells small, delicate, fervent human stories about people whose significance in any other book would have been minimal. He calls these stories from the margins and gives them a center in which they can breathe. And I absolutely loved it.

**
A Brightness Long Ago breezes by at a leisurely pace, the novel taking its sweet time to get to the good stuff. The unhurried pacing might be frustrating for readers who prefer propulsive plots, but where the novel lags, the writing more than makes up for it. Gay's prose is exquisite, yet never extravagant; the kind of potent poetic writing that you hardly notice for how effortlessly it flows across the page. Kay is also very skilled at conveying place and people, and while the reader is only privy to the small corners, distant and blurred, that the author introduces us to through his characters, the sheer amount of history, the sheer sense of scope—is deeply felt. Kay's depiction of Batiara, his analogue of Renaissance-era Italy, is beautiful, and the way he embroils his characters within its sweeping, staggering, and brutal political realities kept me on the edge of my seat. It also left me very excited to read more of Kay's books just to catch more glimpses of his world.

A Brightness Long Ago is, in many senses, a statement about how heroes don't always fit our definition, nor should they, and that's what sung to me the most. The characters of A Brightness Long Ago will not be arrayed in glory, their images will not be painted on the walls of great houses, and their names will not be enshrined in history. They will not be extoled for what they’ve done, nor will they be cursed either, because no one will remember their courage or their tenacity or their humility and the last vestiges of their lives will simply be swept from the floor with the dust and the lint. But their stories, the novel insists, are just as worthy of being told.

All in all, A Brightness Long Ago is a very rewarding read; I was not only riveted by the novel's genre-bending structure, but as well by its boldness in telling the necessary stories of those who, even when they are brave, their experiences important, are often relegated to the sidelines and the shadowlands.

I was provided with an electronic copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

Since it took me so long to get to it, I decided to buy the audiobook and listen to it, thus pushing it up my TBR to a place I could actually get to it.

And once again, Kay hits a home run with this novel. It has a slow pace, but like an excellent meal that's a good thing, as it allows the reader time to savor every moment and concentrate on each flavor.

This is what makes Kay special, his beautiful crafting and marvelous character development. Then he'll throw in some plot surprises that you might not see coming, and break your heart in the process.

While this book seems extremely interesting, I found it to be confusing and hard to follow. Maybe if I had given it more chances, but it took a while for me to really be immersed into the story and once I was, I wasn't all that interested.

This book was so beautiful and makes me want to go back and read everything by this author. It was so beautifully written. The story was complex without being overwhelming. It was very noticing and kept me on my toes.

Guy Gavriel Kay remains the greatest high fantasy writer in modern literature and shows no signs of being in danger of losing his place with this beautiful, heartbreakingly lovely book. I love revisiting Kay's previous haunts and there's something especially melancholy about moving through the world of the "Sarantine Mosaic" perhaps because that series, at least for me, ends on such a strange, sad note. Kay will always be my go to for poetic prose, memorable characters and epic adventure of the first order, this book is no exception.

Not my favorite even though Kay is one of my favorite authors.
I had difficulty keeping the characters straight because several chapters pass before we come back to them.
Still, it was nice to be back in a familiar universe.

Oh, Guy Gavriel Kay, there's no one like you. I know going in that I'll get larger than life characters with interpersonal drama that shakes the entire world. Even if in this book the main character, Danio, deliberately insists that he's just a little person who got to see a glimpse of those who truly change the world by their presence.

Kay works in a world that's a close analogue of our own, but each country and people have different names and slightly different histories. In this world, he's written about the time when Constantinople was the center of the western world, the Reconquista of Spain, troubadors in France, and most recently about a Venetian spy sent to Dubrovnik and on to Istanbul in "Children of Earth and Sky".

This book functions as a sort of prequel to "Children of Earth and Sky". Seressa, an alternate version of Venice is where Danio hails from. He's the jumped-up son of a tailor who had the good fortune of a good education, and from that education comes exposure to the great men and women of his time as he seeks to find his path in life. Batiara (Italy) in this book is in its time of city-states and yearly wars. There are a couple of standout generals who can be hired by affluent cities to fight their wars, and these generals are the great men whom Danio meets. He also meets the lover of one general and the cousin of another, who is extremely formidable in her own right. In this time, Sarantium (Constantinople) is under desperate siege by the star-worshipping Asharites (Turks) and those who worship the sun god Jad (Christians) sometimes send men and treasure and sometimes only reassure themselves that Sarantium could never fall.

The book starts off with an assassination, goes into an analogue of the famous Palio (the horse race through the town of Siena), and it's really got anything you'd want in a novel- romance, violence, drama, world-shattering events. It's also got really good prose and characters who are all interesting and likable and made more tragic because of it.

I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 because I feel that it's more slight of a novel than my favorite of Kay's works such as "Lions of Al-Rassan" or "Children of Earth and Sky". But that still means it's one of the best books I've read this year.

Originally I wasn’t going to review this book because it is by Guy Gavriel Kay, and here at The Quill to Live we basically have a blanket recommendation for anything he has ever written. His ability to churn out a powerful novel that is equal parts historical fiction, fantasy, and love note to history is well known. However, it is very likely that A Brightness Long Ago will be our book of the year – thus it seemed important that we actually review it. So here you go: as always, Kay has crafted a masterpiece of prose, commentary on the human condition, believable characters, and exploration of what it means to be a part of something bigger than yourself. This book is utterly beautiful, heartbreaking, and will be a favorite of anyone who has a pulse. There you go, review over. What, you want more? Fine, I will actually do my job.

A Brightness Long Ago, according to Kay’s book blurb, “is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy. Unfortunately, because I am an uncultured peasant, I am not familiar enough with European history to have recognized that without his prompting. While some of Kay’s books feel extremely evocative of specific historical times and events, Brightness felt less rooted in real events than some of the other Kay books I have read. As with all Kay books, the story is focused on small individuals who experience moments of something bigger than themselves. In this instance, the larger world events revolve around a long slow conflict between two powerful military leaders: Folco and Teobaldo. They are two proud, brilliant, and unyielding men who are vying to leave their mark on the world. The book follows a continent-sized chess match between these two titanic personalities and explores a number of their attempts to seize power from surrounding powers. Although they are the focus of the plot, the book is much more about the lives that they touch and change in their momentous conflict. In particular, our primary POVs are Danio and Adria – a man of some learning who continuously finds himself at the center of climactic events due to the choices he makes, and a woman who rejects the mantle of aristocracy because she wanted to do something that matters.

This is a tale of people learning about how the world works, seeing how they can change it, and the decisions they make when push comes to shove. It’s a story of how people are forged by their surroundings, and how they can rise to be more or fall to be less. It’s about decisions that must be made in the blink of an eye that profoundly change the course of the decider’s life one way or another. It’s about one of my favorite subjects – the quiet unrecognized achievements of the people who changed the world, but what they did will never be known to anyone but themselves. It’s about people who run towards ambition and influence, and those that do everything they can to live quiet lives and accept the influence of others being thrust upon them. All of these small things that A Brightness Long Ago are about build a deafening crescendo of emotion, poetry, and commentary on the human condition that make it one of my favorite books I have read.

I love this book so damn much for so many reasons. Kay’s characters are always perfect, but I haven’t liked a cast this much outside Sailing to Sarantium – Danio and Adria stole my heart and won’t give it back. Kay’s stories usually focus on ordinary people who hear gunshots and run towards the sound. However, Brightness has an interesting mix of characters who seek momentous events out, and those who actively avoid them. For those who have read a number of his other pieces, I feel you will find some interesting fresh personalities in Brightness that defy the expectations of even the most well-read readers.

A Brightness Long Ago was a flawless piece of literature that left me crying on a plane, kept me up to 5 AM on the edge of my seat, and challenged me to really think about the decisions you make in life. Every single thing that Kay makes is excellent, and this is one of his best. A Brightness Long Ago simply begs to be read and I don’t want to know the person who doesn’t enjoy it. As I said in my first paragraph, Kay has crafted a masterpiece of prose, commentary on the human condition, believable characters, and exploration of what it means to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Rating: A Brightness Long Ago – 10/10
-Andrew

This was my first Guy Gavriel Kay novel, and I don't think it will be my last because he is such a prolific writer, but I really struggled with this one. The reader is immediately thrown into the universe, and I found this to be jarring. I also found myself skimming most of the book, but I know that it was highly rated, so I would recommend it to those who are looking for a stand-alone fantasy novel.

Now that I’ve read a handful of Kay’s books and understand the beautiful tragedies that are his tales, I will celebrate the release of each of his new books – they’re just SO good. A Brightness Long Ago, while not a visually exciting book (the cover is fine, just not overwhelming), was a truly lovely read. It is set in the same world as several of his other books including Sailing to Sarantium and Children of Earth and Sky and it was a treat to return to familiar places again.

Guy Gavriel Kay is gifted at writing these elegant, historically inspired tales in which he examines how choices both great and small made by people both grand and humble can influence history. I hesitate to even label many of them as fantasy because the presence of the fantastical is so minimal it could almost be excluded entirely. A Brightness Long Ago doesn’t really need a summary from me – I would do it an injustice, so best just to read the official synopsis. Just know that it’s beautifully written and at times somewhat heartbreaking, though it’s entirely worth it.

This can definitely be read as a standalone despite it being set in the same world as several other books. The other books are set at different times, with mostly different characters so it won’t detract from the experience. I, however, do plan to go back and read all the other books set in this same world because I just love it to be honest. Somehow GGK makes me nostalgic for something that never existed and his writing evokes actual feeling and pensiveness from me which I find to be amazing. I would highly recommend the audio version of the book as his narrator, Simon Vance, brings characters to life so well.

Guy Gavriel Key is an amazing world builder and this book doesn't disappoint. Though this book has a fantasy element, this book is about the characters. You will be drawn in and come to love, hate, and feel all the emotions for and about these characters. If you have never read any of Guy Gavriel Key's books, you need to! This book is about people dealing with world changing events and takes place in Batiara (similar to 1400 Italy) and how simple choices can have great rippling effects. Love it.

4.5 stars

You can read all of my book reviews at http://www.NerdGirlLovesBooks.wordpre....

Wow. This is a beautifully written book that will stay with you. How have I never read this author before?? Once I finished I immediately looked up the author's other books and intend to read them as soon as possible.

I don't even know how to explain this book. I wouldn't really categorize this a fantasy book, although it has certain qualities found in them. It is also not a true historical fiction book either, as the countries and characters aren't based on real people or places. The book description states that the world the author created evokes early Renaissance Italy and I would agree. The book is a wonderful blend of several genres and while it may initially seem like a quiet story about unrelated events and characters, a common theme slowly emerges.

Do the little, impulsive choices you make every day alter your fate? Can the decision you make to go left instead of right change the course of other's lives? The story begins with Danio Cerra recalling his early life and the people he met along the way. His father was a well-known tailor and his connections allowed Danio to attend a prestigious school. His intelligence and skill earned him a place at the court of a Count, who he quickly learned is a horrible, evil man. Danio's fate changes when he recognizes a woman, Adria, who is brought to the Count's chambers to "entertain" him. Guessing her intention, Danio does not warn the soldiers guarding the Count, and allows events to play out. That decision will change the course of his life, as well as the lives of those he encounters along the way.

Danio's later decisions bring him into the spheres of a variety of characters, some who are important, influential people and others who are just trying to survive the times. The events and people at first don't seem to be related, but as you continue to read a common theme emerges. It took me a little bit to get into this book, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend you read this book.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Imagine you’re a chef and at your restaurant you only make one meal. It’s beautiful and satisfying and no one’s complaining about the plate of gorgeous food in front of them. In fact, you have plenty of repeat customers, because hey, a lot of people go to restaurants and order the same thing every time. Why venture into the unknown towards probable disappointment?

But no matter how great your one meal is, some of your customers are eventually going to wonder what the dessert menu might look like.

And that analogy is close to where I find myself as a Guy Gavriel Kay fan. I’ve been reading him for close to a decade now and I’m a completist (except his poems, haven’t read those). His books make me cry. They’re lovely and poetic and full of ordinary and extraordinary people alike trying to make good choices when the world doesn’t seem to give them any.

Even as a fan, I’m cognizant that his books tend towards a certain…sameness. He works with archetypes — the poet, the warrior, the artist, the lover, the priest — and continually revisits themes of fate and choice. He does it well, but while reading his latest offering I found myself wondering what else he has to offer.

A loosely tied companion book to Kay’s CHILDREN OF EARTH AND SKY (Amazon), A BRIGHTNESS LONG AGO (Amazon) is a meditation on the power of memory. Plucking a (very) background character from CHILDREN OF EARTH AND SKY Kay imagines a rich inner life and history for Guidanio Cerra. Danio is old now, and powerful, caught in a rush of memories from his youth as he sits in a council room in Venice Seressa, meditating on the unexpected ways his meeting with one woman changed his life.

That young woman is Adria of Ripoli. In a world that only offers two paths to women of her rank — marriage or the convent — she tries to carve a third path for herself, which is what brings her to Danio’s attention as she flees the scene of an assassination. She is also the niece of Folco di Cino and thus a player, however small, in the generation-spanning feud between Folco di Cino and Teobaldo di Monticola, which provides the central tension in the novel.

The exact nature of the feud is never important. There are too many incidents, slights, grievances — some real, some imagined — to untangle or to keep score. What’s important is the gravity of the feud, the way it warps and shapes the world, dragging Danio from the path that he’d chosen and involving him with more dangerous and powerful people than he’d ever imagined.

Danio’s reflections are the major POV throughout the novel. First person is rare enough (in adult speculative fiction) because it requires a sustained character voice and doesn’t allow a lot of context, which Kay avoids by making most of Danio’s perspective a reflection of the past so that he can provide his own context. Perhaps it was just the setting in Batiara (Guy Kay’s equivalent of Renaissance Italy) but Danio’s perspective reminded me of a Browning-style dramatic monologue (See: “My Last Duchess”). Kay does switch POVs throughout the book, although these are presented in third person, so they are immediately distinct from Danio’s musings. As always, his small glimpses of other lives are poignant and interesting and I especially enjoyed the journeys of Jelena and Antenami Sardi.

While Danio’s voice is interesting, I thought that A BRIGHTNESS LONG AGO was not Guy Kay’s strongest novel, perhaps because Danio’s character, from whom so much of the story flows, was simply a little flat. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion to experience and a universal one, but it pales during an extended reading in contrast with more current and lively passions. For example, I would have loved to see more from Adria’s perspective, or even more of Folco’s.

My final recommendation is that if you’re sucker for books with extensive, well-researched reading lists in the back, you should check out this novel. However, if you’ve never read Guy Kay before, this probably isn’t the book to start with. Try TIGANA (Amazon) if you’re interested in a little more magic, or THE LIONS OF AL RASSAN (Amazon) if you want to cry your eyes out.

There are some really satisfying plot and character moments near the end that I felt like were some good pay-off for the journey; but just because I wonder what else could be on the menu doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the meal.

I spent the first few months of 2019 reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s early works (for the first time) as a primer to this book’s release. I polished off his first six novels and thought I was ready to dive in here until I saw the world map that features “Sarantium” quite prominently – I closed the booked and jumped back and read Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic as final preparation. I’m glad I did, because that duology enhanced my understanding of this world and there are several callbacks within Brightness to the events in those books. Here, Kay is exploring the ripples of time, how small actions have an impact on the world at large and how our memory of the past shapes our understanding of our future.

Much like Kay’s previous work, A Brightness Long Ago is beautifully composed, emotionally engaging, and it features compelling characters with depth. I really loved being introduced to minor, seemingly inconsequential characters who, once they had played their part in this specific narrative, have the remainder of their lives described to us and how consequential they end up being in their own right.

As much as I enjoy Kay’s writing, I hit a wall about midway through here and really limped my way to the end over several weeks. Whether a result of my own disjointed pacing or the book’s, I was never quite hooked. That kept it from full 4-star territory, but I will gladly continue on with GGK’s oeuvre.

This is only the second book I’ve read from Guy Gavriel Kay, but I feel secure in stating that I’ve never come across another author who has his way with words. There’s something about his prose that is both breathtakingly lovely and oddly jarring. In A Brightness Long Ago, Kay paints with his words, writing something that is lush and poignant and real enough to touch. This novel is somewhere between historical fiction and low fantasy, and Kay straddles that divide with great finesse.

Danio is one of the lucky youths who, despite low birth, are chosen to attend a school with noble children. Because of this education and a compelling personality, Danio finds himself in the midst of history in the making throughout his life, whether in the form of being present during an assassination or witnessing a horse race that will live on in legend or standing on the sidelines as mighty men made war or truces. His was an oddly calming, graceful presence among larger-than-life personalities. There was this graceful poise and sense of honor to his character that I found incredibly compelling.

While Danio was the only first person perspective character, we did have other perspective characters. A pagan healer, a wealthy second son with no head for politics, an important daughter who wants nothing more than to escape the life that is expected of her and live life to the very fullest, a mistress yearning for legitimacy. There are others, as well, but these are the lives that most often intertwine themselves with Danio and the two powerful men who seem to dominate this part of the world. All of the characters were multifaceted and interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them grow and change over the course of the novel. The one thing each character seemed to have in common was a preoccupation with sex, but from what I gather that is a common theme in Kay’s work.

The setting for this book is very heavily inspired by Italy, as is apparent by the names of people and places given. The land is made up of city-states who often find themselves at war with one another. So often, in fact, that springtime has become synonymous with war. I’ve read very little set in Italy outside of Romeo and Juliet, so I found the setting very thought-provoking. There was a horse race, briefly mentioned above, that was one of the most amazing sequences I’ve read. I could see and hear and smell absolutely everything, as if I had fallen into the pages and landed in the scene itself. I believe this race with stay with me for some time, which was unexpected.

There are two reasons that this book didn’t receive a perfect rating from me, and they’re both incredibly subjective. First, the central themes of the story were war, romance, and politics. Two out of these three themes are topics that I often find myself lost in, unable to focus on the intricate political movements and patterns of war. While these are areas I can read past, I have a difficult time enjoying a story that is made up in such large part by these components. Second, I believe that I would have enjoyed this story even more and connected with it on a deeper level if I had read Kay’s Sarantine Mosiac. I won’t explain why, but I’m positive that there are plot points that would have brought me to tears if I had already developed a bond with Sarantium.

Once again, Kay crafted something incredibly beautiful with this story. While it might not be an immediate favorite, it definitely enticed me into trying more of Kay’s work, and soon. Tigana remains my favorite book my Kay, and among my favorite fantasy novels period, but I now believe that Tigana won’t be the only of his works that I will come to love and cherish. If you want to be transported, and see how the world can be impacted by one life, this is a beautiful novel to try.

I'm never quite sure how Kay will do it, but he will always draw me in to his latest world and the brief lives of his characters and break my heart. I know he is going to do it. I think I am prepared for it and will not allow him to do it this time, oh no. Oh yes. This story sweeps through a pseudo-Renaissance Europe, with a handful of exquisitely drawn characters coalescing and splintering and flowing together and apart through various significant events. The brightness is not the events, not the times, but in this case it is three specific individuals whose spirits seem to light the people and events around them. Richly absorbing and haunting.

Danio Cerra has both a curse and a blessing. He lives in interesting times. He also plays a part in those times. This is a lyrical telling as Danio remembers a time in his youth and the people he meet and interacted with. A journey filled with danger and tension that changes Danio's life.

I've never actually read a novel by Guy Gavriel Kay before, though I've heard wonderful things about his works. I’ve had Tigana on my to-read list for at least a decade, but somehow never got to it or any of Kay’s other novels. That was clearly a BIG oversight on my part. With Kay's latest novel, A Brightness Long Ago, he once again proves why he is an acclaimed writer in the fantasy realm.

I began A Brightness Long Ago and was IMMEDIATELY sucked into the writing. It is stunning prose that evokes so much emotion, even without saying much. And with a beginning such as that in A Brightness Long Ago, you almost don't care what comes next. But of course, you are dying to find out. Kay sets the stage for the tale to come, and occasionally brings us back out of the story to remind us of the viewpoint, the memories of our main protagonist.

The words evoke a nostalgia, even though it is not your own. You are immediately transported into the memories of Guidanio Cerra and feel as though they are your own reminiscences. The prose is woven beautifully amidst a deeply engaging tale of powerful players in a dangerous world. The world is reminiscent of early Renaissance Italy. If you are familiar with the time in which Leonardo da Vinci lived, you get a sense of the historical figures Kay is using as a reference and modeling into his own tale.

While A Brightness Long Ago is a reminiscent tale from one character, you can take lessons and meaning from his musings and apply them into your own past. Reflections of love, destiny, ambition, power, and the overall winding path of your own life are wrenched from your soul as you submerge yourself into the reflections of cast of characters. At one point, Guidanio Cerra reflects that  

 “Some people mark you as they go by.”

The same can be said of books. And Kay’s latest is certainly one with the potential to mark you, as it has me. There are lessons to be learned, from a particular wisdom of sailors recurring throughout the book in varied forms to the introspective comments on the past and the choices made. The book also wades into politics and religion in a nuanced way with additional lessons, if you choose to see them. And through it all, there is an engaging story with intelligent women defining their own lives in a time where that isn’t common. And a story of rivalry and warfare, with horse races thrown in for good measure.

A Brightness Long Ago is available now from Berkley Publishing. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy to read and reread again and again.

A Brightness Long Ago is the sweeping, elaborate tale of Guidanio Cerra, an accomplished young man who becomes involved in the dangerous feud between two mercenary leaders. Set in an world resembling Renaissance Italy, it is richly detailed and thought provoking. Guidanio is an old man telling the story of his youth, and it’s a commentary on memory, and how the choices we make intertwine with the randomness of fate. There are several recurring characters; a daring, enigmatic young woman that Guidanio falls in love with, a young healer who keeps encountering the feuding mercenaries (and treating the casualties of their feud), and of course, the dangerous, brilliant mercenaries themselves.

I made it to 73%, but unfortunately had to quit. This just wasn’t my type of novel. Kay is, obviously, an accomplished writer and world builder, but this is my first book of his, and his style isn’t for me. I found the pace tediously slow, with no real plot driving the action. It was a series of random events that intertwine the lives of multiple characters. It’s not always told in a linear fashion; a chapter will be from a random characters POV, and the omniscient narrator tells how his future will play out (after giving you extensive back history, for a character you will never meet again…).

There is also that recurring theme of choice and randomness and fate, which is reiterated constantly and which I found tiresome. Like..I get it. Different choices produce different futures. You don’t need to say it outloud 20 times. There was also no sense of urgency, even as the characters headed towards conflicted. The tone felt almost placid, and I just wasn’t interested in continuing because I never felt invested in the story. But if you are already of fan, then by all means check this out. It’s just a matter of personal taste. So a 2 Star rating doesn't mean it's bad quality, I just didn't enjoy it.

I confess that I always dread just a little bit reviewing a new Guy Gavriel Kay novel. Not because I’m concerned it won’t be any good; Kay writing a bad book would have to be on anyone’s list of Impending Signs of the Apocalypse. But because what makes his books not just good but stand-out good is so damn ineffable.

Granted, not solely so. I can easily toss off a host of tangible, well-crafted elements, all the usual suspects: fascinatingly rich characters, compelling plots, immersive world-building, etc. But the single best reason I can think of for reading a Guy Gavriel Kay book is the supreme elegance and grace of his writing. Which also happens to be the single worst recommendation for reading a Guy Gavriel Kay book. “Elegance and grace?” the potential reader says. “What the hell does that even mean?”

Which is when I scrunch forward in my chair, waving my hands oh so animatedly and enthusiastically and say, “It means . . . It’s, you know. . . Like, when he . . . “ And then my mouth opens and shuts a few times like a trout pulled into a canoe, my hands fall limply to my sides, and I mutter a la Potter Stewart, “Well, I know it when I see it.” Meaning I’ve just aligned Guy Gavriel Kay with hard-core pornography, which is about as far from “elegance and grace” as I can imagine (not that I’m imagining mind you). So yes. Always a little dread.

But here we are anyway at yet another ineffable masterpiece in his newest, A Brightness Long Ago. And thus once more into the breach . . .

Like most of Kay’s novels, this is a historical fantasy, one which returns to his version of Italy (Batiara) during the early Renaissance, opening a bit before the world-shaking fall of Sarantium, or, for those who know their Kay, about a quarter-century before the events of Children of Earth and Sky. The cast of characters include:

• Guidaniao Cerra, the young son of a tailor who managed to be educated in one of the best schools, placing him in the path of a more influential class. His is the sole first-person POV; the rest come to us via a third-person omniscient.
• The two mercenary captains Teobaldo Monticola and Folco Cino, famed both for their military success and for their long-standing feud, whose origins are shrouded in mystery though rumored reasons abound
• Folco’s niece Adria, a fiercely bright and independent young woman seeking in his service a period of meaningful and active freedom before she is constrained into the less active (but no less impactful) roles offered to women of the era
• The healer Jelena, whose wandering ways place her in more than a few fraught encounters with the dangerously powerful
• Antenami Sardi, the oft-mocked, good-for-nothing child in the most powerful family in the region

I described Cerra, or Danio as he’s often called, as young, but more accurately, we actually meet him first as an aged man, and it is his emotional recollection that makes up much of the story, until we return once more at the very end to his older self, making much of the novel one long flashback, appropriately so for a story (and novelist) often so focused on exploring memory: its malleability and unreliability, its bittersweet ache of joy and sorrow intermingled, how it haunts us, how it eludes us, and how, perhaps, it answers the question of what will remain of us beyond our ephemeral existence.

Kay signposts this theme in lyrical, elegiacal fashion in the first few pages. First with an opening epigraph from a Czeslaw Milosz poem:

An instant is invincible in memory.
It comes back in the middle of the night. Who are those holding torches
So that what is long past occurs in full light

Then via an omniscient narrator who shows us:

A man no longer young . . . [who] finds his mind turning back to when he was, indeed, still young. We all do that. A scent carries us back, a voice, a name, a person who reminds us of someone we knew . . . We see only glimpses of history, even our own. It is not entirely ours — in memory, in writing it down, in hearing or in reading it. We can reclaim only part of the past. Sometimes it is enough.
And finally, via Danio’s own first-person POV:

The sailors say the rain misses the cloud even as it falls through light or dark into the sea. I miss her like that as I fall through my life, through time . . . I dream of her some nights, still, but there is nothing to give weight or value to that, it is only me and what I want to be true. It is only longing.
That’s passage has a concise beauty to it, and contains a wonderfully apt metaphor in the way it evokes so much of what we associate with memory: the way it has its own gravity, its own weight, and yet is also intangible; how it never ends but is called up time and time again (clouds to rain to sea to clouds to rain to sea to). The way it is only a foggy kind of truth, as Danio acknowledges later, thinking how “Memory is a troubling thing, some things . . . are vividly recalled (or we think they are); others . . . are difficult to recollect with clarity.” How both rain and memory have a dual nature. Thunderstorms and gloom, trauma and sadness (how many funeral scenes are done in the rain?). Spring showers and fond recollection, each regenerating the world, bringing the dead back to life. “Isn’t it also true sometimes,” Danio wonders, “that the only way a person survives after they die is in the memories of others?” This appears to be true for this world at least, even if it is a world where the dead linger a while after dying, enough for us, via that omniscient narrator, in some of the most moving scenes in the novel, to get a sense of their longing, their regrets and thwarted desires.

A Brightness Long Ago (the title itself refers to those memories of our youth that burn so deeply into our souls) also subtly mirrors the memory theme in its structure, for just as we cannot help ourselves from constantly looking back to earlier days, the novel does the same, with many a chapter starting by backing up in time relative to the one just prior, sometimes by just minutes, other times by months.



Besides being a reflection of theme, the structure also reinforces the interconnected nature of events and relationships in the novel and emphasizes as well another prominent theme, that of choice versus fortune (or choice melded with fortune; I’m not sure Kay offers up a definitive prioritization). As with the focus on memory, Kay doesn’t shy away from letting his characters speak directly on the topic. Early on, Danio says “we accumulate sins and guilt just by moving through our days, making choices, doing, not doing.” And soon enough he makes the choice that will bring him together with Adria and into the feuding circular dance between Teobaldo and Falco, first by not doing (keeping quiet about a potential assassination), then by doing (helping the assassin escape).

All of the characters here are, as Adria tells Danio “living a life I choose." Each the product at every moment of the series of choices that led to that moment (Kay makes this concrete in the several references to characters meeting at crossroads). Time and again Danio remarks on how an action (or lack of action) was “part of the choice I made”, how sometimes we “have to choose a path, at speed, in the night,” and how, perhaps most importantly, “the choices we make. The person we become.”

Some of course have wider ranges of options—the powerful find fewer paths closed off to them. Women are more constrained. But as Kay has often shown in his other novels, saying a woman’s role in society is limited is not to say she is powerless, and so here we see multiple women (and others are referenced as well) who carve out their own road to agency and power even amongst the narrowed map of their lives. Kay doesn’t throw historical reality to the wind by presenting women as having utter freedom of action, but nor does he use “history” as an (ignorant) excuse to rob them of freedom.

Much of Adria’s sense of poignant urgency is her awareness that her time with the most freedom of choice is limited (a truth given, like memory earlier, a wonderfully effective metaphor via a thrilling horse race). Falco knows this too, as he explains to his wife: “I am trying—with your permission—to give her that different life for a time, before it will have to change. To respect what she’s shown us all that she wants” (note that subtle bit of agency belonging to his wife as well: “with your permission”). And that time does come to an end, but it does not mean her ability to choose does as well: “She’d known, riding out of that inn yard in the morning, that it was time . . . A door had opened, and had now closed behind her. Her own decision at least . . . She needed to see what other doors could now be found, and be made to let her through” (and again, note that subtle reference to agency and power: “be made to”).

Balanced against these repeated references to choosing a path are nearly as many nods to “fortune.” The acknowledgement that as much as we make the world an arena for our choices, the world makes of itself a playground with us its toys. Random encounters, bad weather, dumb luck, the errant spin of an arrow, all of these are examples of “the capricious wheel spinning.” But even with this recognition of chance, as Jelena notes, “Fortune’s wheel might spin, but you acted — or did not — in response to where it went.” Choice yet again.

Those choices to act or not act, Kay is quick to point out, affect not only oneself but ripple outward. Danio notes “the forks in our path are not only for ourselves,” as he recalls how one such decision of his affected an entire city and thus a region. Adria muses on how a woman can choose one path and thus “control not only her own life, but possibly influence the world beyond whatever walls she found herself behind.” A cleric, from a chance encounter, chooses to go to Sarantium (Kay’s version of Constantinople), to defend it against the besiegers and so finds himself at one of the most world-shaking events in this universe — Sarantium’s fall, marked by the doleful tolling of bells. But even though choices ripple outward into larger events, Kay never loses sight of the human, and so that epoch-shattering event is echoed by how news of the death of a single person “began tolling, very much like a bell” inside the head of someone for whom she was as important as the golden city.

These are not, after all, the great and powerful of history. They are the middling powerful (Teobaldo and Falco) at best and those whose lives intersect, sometimes even for moments only, with the powerful. These are the people Kay is interested in and the people he creates memorable characters from. There is so much more I could say about this novel. How it presents art as one possible answer to memory’s failure (though art, he makes clear, is not history, even art that pretends to be). The way storytelling itself weaves its way throughout (what is memory, after all, but story?), in direct references, in references to books and pens and weaving and mosaics, in a beautiful interlude about halfway through of a “maker, a shaper . . . deciding what to tell us. What to add, what not to share . . . “ The use of bird imagery. The inside references to two moons. The perfect pacing. Scenes of taut, almost unbearable tension. Heartbreaking-deaths. The many moving mini-stories of characters we barely meet. The utter control of point-of-view as we zoom outward or forward in space and time and then back in. The respect Kay has for his characters. And yes, dammit, the sheer elegance and grace of his writing. A Brightness Long Ago is yet another gorgeous, moving novel from a master craftsman. I dread the next one.