Guy Gavriel Kay

I clearly remember finding The Summer Tree on the new books shelf at Minotaur Books in Melbourne (back when it was on Elizabeth Street and still stocked a decent number of SF and fantasy books). The cover was pretty and the story sounded interesting. It blew me away. This was back when Celtic themes in fantasy were the trend and something I loved. It was the first time I had read a book with characters that weren’t adolescents and it all worked for me beautifully.

I devoured the whole trilogy as it was published and automatically bought Kay’s next book, Tigana. Tigana is an amazing book, but it is also heart-wrenching. When A Song for Arbonne came out next I just couldn’t quite face have my heart torn apart again and I stopped reading Kay’s books.

When Ysabel came out in 2007 and I learned it was set (at least mostly) in the real world, I decided to give it a go and thoroughly enjoyed it. Under Heaven I read with a book group and while I had some issues with it, I was reminded of all the reasons I had loved Kay’s books.

I’ve also been wanting to read The Summer Tree again for ever so long, but I never was quite brave enough to do it. I had seen people who read it after reading later Kay, being unimpressed and I loved it so that I didn’t want to risk that. This month, I finally did read it again. And I loved it all over again. So much so that while I was planning to read something else after finishing it, I have moved immediately on to The Wandering Fire.

Thus, Guy Gavriel Kay is another author whose books I always wanted to read, but never quite did. That makes him one of my planned Author Reads.

Just Finished	Up Next

Since he wrote his series sequentially, I’m going to work on reading his books in the order they were published. Not all are ebooks, but several have been released along with paper book rereleases (yay, at least some matching covers). I’ll read in ebook where I can and see how I manage in paper with the others.

Sadly, all his books haven’t been released with the new, matching covers for paper editions of his books to make the dream library, but there’s still time for it to happen.

The Summer Tree	The Wandering Fire	The Darkest Road	Tigana
1984 READ Fionavar Tapestry 01 Own in paper No ebook available	1986 READ Fionavar Tapestry 02 Own in paper No ebook available	1986 READ Fionavar Tapestry 03 Own in paper No ebook available	1990 Read Previously Own in paper
A Song for Arbonne	The Lions of Al-Rassan	Sailing to Sarantium	Lord of Emperors
1992 Unread Own in paper	1995 Unread No ebook available	1998 Unread Sarantine Mosaic 01 Own in ebook	2000 Unread Sarantine Mosaic 02
The Last Light of the Sun	Ysabel	Under Heaven
2003 Unread	2007 Read Previously	2010 Read Previously Own in ebook