On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast, a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small. One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course-and is bent upon revenge. Another is a seafaring merchant who still remembers being exiled as a child with his family from their home, for their faith, a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time. All the Seas of the World is a drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives-in the past, and today.
Guy Gavriel Kay Book order
Guy Gavriel Kay crafts fantasy fiction often set in invented realms mirroring specific historical periods and locations. Though marketed as historical fantasy, he prefers to avoid strict genre categorization. Kay masterfully blends historical resonance with imaginative storytelling, creating deeply resonant narratives. His work offers readers a unique exploration of timeless human themes through a distinct literary lens.







- 2022
- 2019
A Brightness Long Ago
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
Guy Gavriel Kay, bestselling author of the groundbreaking novels Under Heaven, River of Stars and Children of Earth and Sky returns with yet another breathtaking epic.
- 2016
The extraordinary all-new epic fantasy from the beloved author of Tigana.
- 2013
In his novel Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay told a vivid and powerful story inspired by China's Tang Dynasty. Now, he revisits that invented setting four centuries later, a world inspired this time by the glittering, decadent Song Dynasty. Ren Daiyan was still just a boy when he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed his life-in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the forests of Kitai among the outlaws. From there he emerges years later-and his life changes again, dramatically, as he circles towards the court and emperor, while war approaches Kitai from the north. Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar, his beloved only child. Educated by him in ways young women never are, gifted as a songwriter and calligrapher, she finds herself living a life suspended between two worlds. Her intelligence captivates an emperor-and alienates women at the court. But when her father's life is endangered by the savage politics of the day, Shan must act in ways no woman ever has. In an empire divided by bitter factions circling an exquisitely cultured emperor who loves his gardens and his art far more than the burdens of governing, dramatic events on the northern steppe alter the balance of power in the world, leading to events no one could have foretold, under the river of stars.
- 2011
In a setting that evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China, Shen Tai has been sent a mysterious and dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses in recognition of his service to the Emperor of Kitai. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that the horses must be claimed in person--otherwise, he would probably be dead already.
- 2009
The second volume of Guy Gavriel Kay's acclaimed fantasy series is reissued with the original cover art by Martin Springett.
- 2008
Ysabel
- 511 pages
- 18 hours of reading
Set in modern and ancient Provence, this exhilarating, moving novel casts brilliant light on the ways in which history -- whether of a culture or a family -- refuses to be buried.
- 2005
Guy Gavriel Kay creates a work of intricate richness, brilliantly bringing to life Viking, Anglo Saxon and Celtic cultures as they balance on the knife-edge of change in a turbulent age.
- 2002
A Song for Arbonne
- 608 pages
- 22 hours of reading
Arbonne is a lush, fertile land near the sea, and its people revere music and the Goddess Rian. In Gorhaut, the God Corannos and war are the only considerations. These two countries are on a collision course, that will lead to a war in which son battles father - and life-long friendships end in death. Honouring a lineage from Homer to Tolkien and Le Guin, Guy Gavriel Kay has written a high fantasy where both style and substance reign supreme. His characters breathe life with every entrance, his settings are as real as the fields we know. As triumph and disaster appear on page after page, the reader will fight, love and cry with all the protagonists. A Song for Arbonne has echoes of medieval France and its famed Court of Love, yet lives in the classic fantasy world of a master's imagination.
- 2002
Lord of Emperors. Book II
- 531 pages
- 19 hours of reading
Crispin the mosaicist, having finally achieved his journey to fabled Sarantium, wants nothing more than to confront the challenges of his art high on the scaffolding of destiny - but in Sarantium no man may easily withdraw from the turmoils of court and city, or forget that the presence of the half-world is always close by. From the east another voyager also comes on a journey of self-discovery. Rustem of Kerakek, the physician, learns that saving the life of Bassania's King of Kings is not enough to ensure a man's fortune. He must find his own balancing of family and ambition, healing and death, as he, too, is drawn into the deadly webs of Sarantium. This eagerly-awaited conclusion to the magnificent sequence begun with SAILING TO SARANTIUM finds a huge cast of characters from all walks of life caught up in rumours of war and perilous intrigue as all the threads of the tale come spectacularly together in a time shaped by violent upheaval - and the memory of fire in the streets.





