Our November meeting was hosted by Beth. Present were Beth, Betty, Carla, Colette, Jane, Janet, Linda, Michèle and Shirley. Beth had some very nice cheese, olives and a pâté.
This month we discussed Shirley's book A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay. Mr. Kay is a Canadian author born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. He worked a year with Christopher Tolkien to help edit J.R.R. Tolkien's unpublished works. He also worked as a writer for the CBC radio series The Scales of Justice. His first book, The Summer Tree, was published in 1984. He is considered a fantasy fiction writer of novels that have a historical aspect. They are usually in fictional settings that resemble real places such as in China, Italy, Spain or Turkey taking place during real historical periods.
A Brightness Long Ago tells the story of a power struggle between mercenaries to take over the Court in fictional Batiara after the murder of its brutal ruler by a young strong woman, Adria. The Beast as he is called, has young women brought to him that he rapes and kills. Adria has decided to end his rule by posing as his next victim and kills him by poison from her lips. The story is told by a merchant of the Court, Danio Cerra who helps Adria escape after she poisons the Beast and finds himself in the middle of the struggle to take over the Court.
For several of our members this was their first fantasy novel and many found it very interesting. We all found the characters to be well developed and the writing lyrical and poetic at times. There were several characters both major and minor, all well described and developed. The only character some thought we did not get to know was the narrator Danio. Some thought there were too many descriptions of battles and the slaughter of people. We also had a discussion about how and when the story should have ended, some of us thinking that the death of Adria should have been the end. One of our members, who is an avid reader of Guy Gavriel Kay, felt that ending the story at that point would be too devastating and dramatic. We agreed, whatever our opinions of the book, that Mr. Kay is an excellent storyteller.
As with many books where opinions differ, we had a great discussion. Thank you Shirley for introducing us to this very interesting Canadian author.
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