In this pseudo-historical novel, sold as fantasy although there's essentially no magic in it, Kay transposes events of 11th-century Spain to an alternate world (signalled by its two moons). That's one way to introduce history to people who wouldn't usually read it, I suppose, and I have to plead guilty to not having read much history on the subject myself. The alternate world allows Kay to take real events (the strange massacre that opens the book actually happened, for example) and compress them into the frame of a novel: shortened timeline, protagonists central to events. I think he does a pretty decent job of it. Certainly I found his characters appealing, and the depiction of their culture, though simplified, evocative.

RELEASE NOTES:

sent to Romania

received it today :)

thanks a lot, vasha, can't wait to get the time to read it!

I spent two breathless days reading this... It's better even than "Tigana" - which was my Kay book No. 1 until now :).

Another parallel world from Guy Gavriel Kay - the tale of the ending of the Maurish civilisation in a different Spain, as it could've been... The characters are extremely well painted and I must admit I fell inlove a few times already with some of the heroes and a few of the heroines too :)
I'm a bit of a history-crazed otaku (errr... read that as "obsessed would-know everything person" though it's not the exact meaning...)and my impression of the fallen Arab (well, Maurish to be exact) calyphates in Spain got enhanced by Kay's approach (with one erata: Ammar, one of the main characters, was so much the mirror image of Omar the poet,Harun Al-Rashid's celebrated friend, that it was a bit annoying, the historical Omar having nothing to do with the Maurs)...
The sad, sweet remembrance of past glory and future renewal never ceases to surprise me (as it did in "Tigana" too, but on a completely new level)...
I loved this book and I'm going to keep it a while at least... I've got to make my younger brother read this!! So the book goes now to his TBR pile...

Thank you SO much, Vasha, for sharing this glorious book!!