I am a bit behind on my reviews mainly due to some minor health problems but I’ll try to make up for it. 

After reading A Song for Arbonne this is my second book by GGK and I must say that this just resonated a lot better with me. Yes, this is also Historical Fiction which is not my favorite thing but I just immediately vibed more with fictional historical Spain than with France. Pretty sure my subconscious is just biased that way because I had to learn both languages in school (speaking neither really today) and while I hated French class I actually quite enjoyed Spanish. 

But let’s talk about the actual book. The main thing that made this book feel much smoother to me was its pacing. While Arbonne was quite slow at times I felt like there was almost always something major happening here and it just kept propelling me forwards into the story. 

The book tells a story about a divided country and its three major cultures, each one with a different religious belief system. And while religious themes are not my favorite in general, I felt like the core message of this book was way more about trying to overcome those differences, tolerance in general and just trying to find peaceful solutions instead of warring with each other over different ideologies. 

This mainly gets reflected with our 3 main POV characters (there are quite a few others but these are the most important ones), each from one of the different cultures. 
They are a military captain, a doctor and a poet / assassin and I really liked following all three of them, finding out about their backstories and just all their interactions with each other and just in general how they learn to care and respect for each other despite of how the were raised or let to believe by their respective societies.  It just paints a very beautiful picture

GGK also is a very talented writer and his truly evocative prose just adds to the overall great experience. 

The ending came as quite a bit of a surprise for me but it definitely felt fitting and totally in line with the core themes of the book.  

More GGK is sure to come in the future although the book club I started his books with put a halt on for now to read some other stuff but maybe we will get back to it. I certainly will.