For me, Kay is most successful when he relies least on magic, and focuses on the forces of personalities, decisions and destinies. In this country there is less magic than in Kay’s Tigana: what remains is little more than religious mysticism. Into this web of rivalries and obligations come Lisseut, a jonglar seeking to make her name, and Blaise, an enigmatic mercenary whose life has been defined by a struggle against his distant, manipulative father. But all is not well in the south: beyond the northern mountains, the advisers to the king of Gorhaut are agitating for war, and the Arbonnais nobles are weakened by a desperate rift between the dukes of Talair and Miraval, the result of wounded pride. Like the vast majority of his novels, A Song for Arbonne takes place in a context closely mirroring a historical period from our own world: in this case, Southern France in the age of the troubadours.Īrbonne is a dreamy country basking in a Mediterranean climate, where the deeds and loves of the great are remembered in song, and where noble women have a say in politics through the Courts of Love and the rituals of courtly love. This is the sixth book I’ve read by Guy Gavriel Kay and it is once again set in his distinctive parallel world with its single sun and twin moons – white and blue – though the names of the countries and the gods aren’t the same as in his other books.

A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay