Returning triumphantly to the brilliantly evoked near-Renaissance world of A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky, international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay deploys his signature 'quarter turn to the fantastic' to tell a story of vengeance, power and love.

On a dark night, along a lonely stretch of coast, a small merchant ship sends two people ashore: their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. The consequences of that act will affect the destinies of empires as well as lives both great and small.

One of those arriving on that stony strand is a young woman who had been abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude far from her home. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course — and is bent upon revenge. The man who will bring the others out from the city on his ship — if they survive their mission — still remembers being exiled as a boy with his family, for their faith; it is a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time.

All the Seas of the World is a stand-alone page-turning drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives — in the past, and today. (From Viking)

All the Seas of the World is on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist. The final five books and the panellists who chose them will be revealed on Jan. 25, 2023.

Guy Gavriel Kay is the author of 15 novels. His Fionavar Tapestry fantasy series has sold over a million copies worldwide since being published in the 1980s and has been optioned by the Canadian production company behind Orphan Black. Some of Kay's other titles include Children of Earth and Sky, Tigana, River of Stars and A Brightness Long Ago. In 2014, he was appointed to the Order of Canada.

"My readers have allowed me to write on different themes, different motifs, different things I've wanted to explore and have stayed with me.

"Readers understanding what you're trying to do is a really intense form of success. And on a mundane but fundamental level, success for a writer is being able to keep writing. It seems that what I do works for readers in now more than 30 languages, which is a lot of countries. That's a profound gift that readers give me because I'm able to do that, keep writing."