All the Seas of the World, by Guy Gavriel Kay

With Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel, we are in the same world and with some of the same characters as in his last book, A Brightness Long Ago, soon after the events of that novel. It’s not quite a sequel though; while some characters recur from Brightness, the focus is on two new characters, a pair of sea-going traders — one male, one female; one Kindath, one Jaddite — who take on an incredibly risky job: to assassinate a ruler.

Things don’t go quite according to plan, but in some ways they go better — the two enterprising traders/adventurers, Rafel and Nadia, end up with unforeseen wealth, influence, and connections, even though they technically don’t complete the job they were hired to do. The rest of the novel is the unfolding of the consequences of that action, in the lives of the two main characters and many peripheral ones.

Everything I’ve said in previous reviews about this whole cycle of GGK novels — beginning with my all-time favourite, The Lions of Al-Rassan, continuing through Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, and bringing the story hundreds of years forward into the Renaissance era with Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago, and now this book — applies here. The richness of this almost-historical-fiction in a sort of parallel earth with two moons and many striking similarities to real history, the extremely light touch with which fantasy/folklore/mythology/the supernatural is layered into the story — all of that. The writing is beautiful, the characters memorable, and this was another unforgettable addition to the world Kay is creating in these stories.