All the Seas of the World

Guy Gavriel Kay's 2022 novel follows two characters — a Jewish merchant-privateer and a woman who survived childhood enslavement — through a fictionalized fifteenth-century Mediterranean world where their hired assassination of a khalif accidentally ignites a war others call holy. Kay's signature approach renders history at a quarter-turn from reality, letting him explore religious persecution, belonging, and survival with literary weight rather than the constraints of strict historical fiction. The treatment of trauma, slavery, and religious violence is thoughtful and restrained, not exploitative — but it's genuinely present. Some reviewers found the prose style demanding and the pacing deliberately slow. For adult literary fantasy readers willing to meet the book on its own terms, this is compassionate, carefully crafted storytelling that reviewers have called among Kay's finest work.