Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

A truly wonderful story about those who aren't heroes of stories. The protagonists are the secondary characters, the ones of the sidelines that stories don't normally pay attention to. In fact, the hero is literally (view spoiler)[a nameless character from Kay's previous novel, Children of Earth and Sky, who wasn't even glimpsed then except as part of a group in the background. (hide spoiler)] But that is precisely the point: to show that, even while world-changing events are taking place, no one, however small, is unimportant or expendable.

All the characters in this books are beautifully humanised. Some of them only get into the spotlight for a couple of pages, so that if you are used to a more traditional way of telling stories, you might wonder what is the point of their being mentioned at all. The point is that there are no villains or nameless crowds. One character who might appear as a temporary antagonist is the focus of his own storyline as soon as you've started rooting for his defeat, so that you stop wishing he'd lose and instead enter a much more complex relationship to all the characters (it's far less simple to engage with a narrative if you clearly feel that both sides would be worth rooting for, that losing has implications for all characters implied, not solely for the named ones). Another character has only two sections written from his viewpoint, but he brings life to the nameless crowd of spectators in a race, showing that none of those people are unimportant, even if the story can't dwell on them.

The main event is the imminent fall of Sarantium, yet it is hardly shown at all. Nonetheless, it informs the entire novel, by creating an atmosphere of restlessness, of upcoming chaos. When the end of that arc comes... I'm not going to spoil anything, but I cried a little.

It is an unusual novel, weaving back and forth between the past and present, with an unusual voice dominating the narrative (a first person narrator reminiscing about his past, with something of an obsession with choices and chance and what made his life turn out that way), and an extensive cast of supportive characters, all of which are equally engaging, even if we meet them only for a short time. It very successfully shows the other side of history, the part about the people who don't really care what side will win in the end, but who try instead to make a living in troubled times. It has an epic quality to it, but above all, it is profoundly human. That is perhaps its greatest success: showing that the little ones, the unimportant ones, can also have their own epics, and don't belong only in trite or drab narratives.