Guy Gavriel Kay has a wonderful talent. He tells stories in an invented world that is so rich in historical echoes that I found myself smiling with pleasure as I heard the echoes, while engrossed in the story. Warmly recommended.

Kay triumphs at creating complex political landscapes and then populating them with characters who make the stakes important and the struggles real. Another magnificent ­history-that-never-was from a master.

The greatest living author of epic fantasy

[Kay] wields plots and all-too-human characters brilliantly, in a world where nothing is as valuable as information. This big, powerful fantasy offers an intricately detailed setting, marvelously believable characters, and an international stew of cultural and religious conflict writ larger than large.

Its power derives less from its tweaking of history than from its complex, nuanced characters whose stories come to intertwine in revealing ways . . . Kay has a remarkable gift for lending surprising depth to even walk-on figures.

As with all of Kay’s novels, the lush historical tapestry serves principally as background for compelling, sympathetic characters whose stories gradually weave together in ingenious ways.

Kay is in masterful control of his material, and the prose is elegant. This is writing of the highest order. Very highly recommended.

An intriguing, complicated blend of pitch-perfect characters doing the best they can, in a well-realised parallel history, and occasionally changing the world. I couldn’t put it down, and in that spirit, I highly recommend that you pick it up.

I finished this one earlier today. The year is young, but Kay’s latest could well be the best speculative fiction read of 2016!

Children of Earth and Sky is Guy Gavriel Kay doing what he does best, and better than anyone else working in fantasy today: telling the story of empires and wars through the lens of characters so vivid and convincing that they feel real, and absorbing you into their lives.

Everything about this book, from the characters to the world created – including the subtle elements of fantasy that imbue it – makesCHILDREN OF EARTH AND SKY a wonder and a joy to read.

one of the few truly philosophical fantasists writing today. Like his other novels set in a history just a few degrees off from our own, Children of Earth and Sky is a superbly entertaining, profoundly moral, & politically astute, novel.

Richly rewarding