Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay (2025)
When a powerful noble is brutally murdered, the city of Orane is suddenly thrown into chaos. Landing somewhere in the middle of this chaos is Thierry Villar, a tavern poet of some renown whose primary claim to fame is insulting the wrong people with his verse. But his skills and charm as a poet may be precisely what saves his city and his nation. That’s certainly an interesting premise and protagonist for a fantasy novel. I appreciated how Kay sought to avoid the usual genre clichés while, at the same time, drew inspiration from European history to help ground his fictional world. But about halfway through the novel, I realized that I didn’t care one whit for the story or its characters. Furthermore, Kay’s prose lacked the depth and richness that I appreciated so much in earlier novels like Tigana and A Song for Arbonne. Did not finish.
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