Children of Earth and Sky [book review]

While in Dublin last weekend, I found myself without a book to read and walking by and in a nice bookstore on Grafton Street, I discovered that Guy Gavriel Kay had published a book recently! Now, this was a terrific surprise as his Song for Arbonne was and remains one of my favourite books.

There are similarities in those two books in that they are both inspired by Mediterranean cultures and history, A Song for Arbonne being based upon the Late Medieval cour(t)s of Love in Occitany, while Children of Earth and Sky borrows to the century long feud between Venezia and the Ottoman empire, with Croatia stuck in-between. As acknowledged by the author, this novel stemmed from a visit to Croatia and the suggestion to tell the story of local bandits turned into heroes for fighting the Ottomans. Although I found unravelling the numerous borrowings from history and geography a wee bit tiresome, this is a quite enjoyable pseudo-historical novel. Except the plot is too predictable in having all its main characters crossing one another path with clockwise regularity. And all main women character eventually escaping the fate set upon them by highly patriarchal societies.  A Song for Arbonne had more of a tension and urgency, or maybe made me care more for its central characters.