GGK News

Lurking around the message boards at Bright Weavings, the official site for author Guy Gavriel Kay (whose books, if you haven't read them, are awaiting you with increasing levels of haughty impatience), I learned that Kay's Canadian publisher already has a blurb on the web about his new novel, The Last Light of the Sun, which is coming out next spring. The blurb can be read here, for you folks who like to click links. For those of more impatient character, well, I quote it in full right now.

Over 250,000 books sold! In his eagerly awaited new novel, Guy Gavriel Kay turns his gaze to the northlands, brilliantly evoking the Viking, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures of a turbulent age.

There is nothing soft or silken about the north. The lives of men and women are as challenging as the climate and lands in which they dwell. For generations, the Erlings of Vinmark have taken their dragon-prowed ships across the seas, raiding the lands of the Cyngael and Anglcyn peoples, leaving fire and death behind. But times change, even in the north, and in a tale woven with consummate artistry, people of all three cultures find the threads of their lives unexpectedly brought together...

Bern Thorkellson, punished for his father's sins, commits an act of vengeance and desperation that brings him face-to-face, across the sea, with a past he's been trying to leave behind.

In the Anglcyn lands of King Aeldred, the shrewd king, battling inner demons all the while, shores up his defenses with alliances and diplomacy-and with swords and arrows-while his exceptional, unpredictable sons and daughters pursue their own desires when battle comes and darkness falls in the woods.

And in the valleys and shrouded hills of the Cyngael, whose voices carry music even as they feud and raid amongst each other, violence and love become deeply interwoven when the dragon ships come and Alun ab Owyn, chasing an enemy in the night, glimpses strange lights gleaming above forest pools.

Making brilliant use of saga, song and chronicle, Kay brings to life an unforgettable world balanced on the knife-edge of change in The Last Light of the Sun.

Well, that certainly sounds compelling, even setting that first clause, which sounds like a cross between selling books and selling Quarter-Pounders. The blurb doesn't make any mention as to this being the opening book in any kind of series or multi-volume work, so I have to assume it's a stand-alone.

Who knows, maybe by then I'll have a job and thus be able to buy the damn thing.

UPDATE: It's confirmed that the book is a stand-alone.