Last Light of the Sun

From his very first books, the trilogy known as the Fionavar Tapestry, Guy Gavriel Kay was recognized as one of the world's finest and most innovative writers working with the fantasy tradition. In later works he has taken on, with striking success, an alternative history of Europe, which reached a pinnacle with 2004's The Lost Light of the Sun. Set at the hinge moment of Britain's Alfred the Great's enlightened reign (he's known as Aeldred in Kay's parallel Europe), Lost Light is a drama of cultural clash and change in a world shadowed by the presence of faerie but deeply engaged with human questions of ethics and honour.