Review.

All the Seas of the World

Guy Gavriel Kay

Pub date: 17 May, 2022
Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
Reviewed from NetGalley

Classic Guy Gavriel Kay. I was pleasantly surprised to note that All the Seas of the World took place in the familiar pseudo-Mediterranean world of The Lions of Al-Rassan and A Brightness Long Ago—in fact a few old faces even show up—so it was obvious from the start this was going to be a comfy read.

Kay does try to twist this tale with a bit more “literary” bent — employing a deft hand with narrative structures and commentary on the nature of story and story-telling, but I am not sure it was exactly necessary. It certainly doesn’t hurt though, and adds a pleasant lyrical tone to the book. Still, it’s hard to judge how the tale would have stood up without it.

The story itself is not exactly a dynamic action tale of love, loss, exile and revenge although it contains all those elements. Instead it’s more of an “epic” overview of the lives of his characters: their pasts, presents and futures, and their struggle with inevitable forces of time and change. Kay does introduce a little mysticism/magic here and there to add flavour and help intertwine the various plot threads but the story rests gently on those tropes and relies more on the characters themselves (or plain old fate) to move the action along. I enjoyed the story telling and found I sympathized with the characters—even the “bad” ones. And that, I think, is really a mark of good story.

I liked it. As I said it was classic Kay, huge in scope, narrow in focus, yet well written and not prone to getting caught up overly in its own mechanics. Just enough reliance on stock characters to make the situations accessible but more than enough detail and novelty to make sure no one was a stale representation of type. All the Seas of the World is not a short, exciting romp, but more than satisfying as a long leisurely tale of the storyteller milieu. But most especially, I like a book that helpfully includes a map and cast of characters, but is well written enough that they are essentially redundant—how could you not?