Kris’ Book Reviews

The cold north, home of the aggressive Erlings, quarrelsome Cyngaels and civilized Anglcyn. This the where Guy Gavriel Kays next book takes us. And as the last three books it tells a story about the world which takes much from ours. This time the story takes place around X century (if you like to think in real world terms).

We meet the first main character during his theft of a horse that was to be burned in an Erling leaders funeral. The next person that we will watch closely in this novel is Cyngael prince which seeks revenge (I can’t say more). There are even more characters and it’s hard to tell which is more or less important. But definitely the most interesting of all of them is king of Anglcyns, who is base on Alfred the Great. As usual in Kays recent books there are many side stories picturing the lives of simple people and how they are affected by major events that happen around them.

What’s different in this book is that there are fantasy characters (mostly ones based on Elfs) appearing very often and they play a key role in the plot. The final scenes aren’t maybe as dramatic as in The Lions of Al-Rassan or Tigana but are nicely shown.

Overall The Last Light of the Sun is a much better accomplishment than The Lions of Al-Rassan, the story is more entertaining and actions forced me to read longer and longer. Although it’s far from the Sarantine Mozaic (Sailing to Sarantium (Sarantine Mosaic, Book 1), Lord of Emperors (Sarantine Mosaic, Book 2)) series. Once more I was so much interested in the nations presented that I just had to read some more info on the early days of England and Alfred the Great. Book that succeeds in entertaining and keeping the reader interested even after reading the book is worth buying.

Rating 8/10

Buy The Last Light of the Sun

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.