All the Seas of the World

I felt very clever at picking up on the thread here of finding home as an adult, of returning ‘home' (even if when that home is a place that no longer exists) and creating ‘home'. Of taking events that happen to you when you're young and letting them be part of you, but not all of you. Of the consequences of surviving. And then Kay explains all this in the afterword, and I felt less insightful.

All the Seas picks up four years after A Brightness Long Ago, whose main thread is an event that happened in the past and how that shaped the narrator of that story. That narrator is in this tale too, as well as many people you've already met from Brightness and also Children of Earth and Sky, set twenty years after All the Seas. They wind together, as you'd expect from Kay.

I don't know that this is as strong as others I've read by Kay, but is that just because it's my first reading? I find they need at least a re-read to solidify what they have to share with me. It's absolutely solid Kay, in that you're getting a large cast, a sweeping tale, events that change lives in unexpected ways, and of course no neat ending. It'll stand alone, but I think you'll get more out of it having read Brightness first.