International bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest work is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy and offers an extraordinary cast of characters whose lives come together through destiny, love, and ambition.

In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man looks back on his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra’s intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son of a tailor. He took service at the court of a ruling count–and soon learned why that man was known as the Beast.

Danio’s fate changed the moment he saw and recognized Adria Ripoli as she entered the count’s chambers one autumn night–intending to kill. Born to power, Adria had chosen, instead of a life of comfort, one of danger–and freedom. Which is how she encounters Danio in a perilous time and place.

Vivid figures share the unfolding story. Among them: a healer determined to defy her expected lot; a charming, frivolous son of immense wealth; a powerful religious leader more decadent than devout; and, affecting all these lives and many more, two larger-than-life mercenary commanders, lifelong adversaries, whose rivalry puts a world in the balance.

A Brightness Long Ago offers both compelling drama and deeply moving reflections on the nature of memory, the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune’s wheel.

OMG, I got a Guy Gavriel Kay Bookmark!!!! Thank you, thank you! 

423 Pages

Out May, 2019

MY THOUGHTS:

I received this book in exchange for my honest review.

If we were to imagine time as an hourglass and every speck of sand within its glass a life in the vast expanse of endless happenings, living throughout the revelations of history… time, each speck on its own would not be very relevant to the existence of the hourglass, but without the collection of millions of specks there would be no hourglass full.

It is that way with each and every being on this world. One life, may not be considered important or hold some amazing claim to fame like some who do. One life and all that it affects when glancing upon it in the grander scheme of things is not paid much attention to and unless that same life does something of great value to stand the test of time, then that one life may dissolve into obscurity.

One human life seen from space can only achieve so much. But humanity as a collective force… stand back!

This is what the author tries to convey in this book. Sometimes, that one life may be a hero to many, touch so many lives, affect it in ways that so few know about and often times over-looked because it is just one life amongst many.

The writing style of this author is amazing. He is able to pull things from this reader that I never thought about before, see things through different perspectives while trying to show that every life is just as important as all those grains of sands in that hourglass. All serve a purpose, affect those other grains each connects with, and without those grains of sands, life or time cannot function unaffected. Each holds a relevant purpose.

This book is about people and how one affects others. Even those people whose lives are thought to exist in irrelevance.

I gave this thought provoking book: