I hate to say this, but I have lost my good opinion of Guy Gavriel Kay. I liked some of his earlier novels very much, but I'm more than halfway through Sailing to Sarantium and not only is he constantly beating that phrase into the ground so that it loses most of its power of evocation, but he is relentlessly foreshadowing events well beyond any credible or useful point. As an opening sentence, "Had he arrived back at the inn after the racing as he intended...Crispin would have almost certainly conducted himself differently in certain matters that followed," has a certain panache. But when it occurs well past the middle point of the novel, perhaps in the belief that this trick heightens a flaccid tension despite having been overused throughout the book, that's just bad narrative. It's ruined all suspense, and I feel like I have to shove the author aside so I can get on with the actual story.
It could have been a marvelous story. He reworked history with breathtaking originality in The Lions of Al Rassan. Not this time. Instead, I'm left wondering if there will be any payoff at all in the end, emotional or plotwise. Probably not. What a letdown.
Work was insanely busy all day, as it has been all week, so I waited until my lunch hour to call the airline that awarded me a free trip to Las Vegas. I'd invited Denise to come with me as a birthday present; we were going to bring tons of film and shoot nonstop. I finally decided on a weekend in February, and I was pretty excited about planning my trip. I rang them up and asked to book it. As soon as I gave the promotion code the agent said, "Oh, no, you can't use your tickets on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday." That can't be right, I replied, one of my co-workers had already booked her flights, and gotten weekend dates. "We'll cancel her flights. She'll never get on the plane," the agent said snottily. "What's her name?"
Oh, man, I blew a gasket. I went through two reps and one supervisor. There wasn't one word on the award letter about certain days being off limits, yet there was a fairly extensive listing of blackout dates and other limitations to meet. I'd done my part by earning the tickets and following the rules. It was a total bait and switch. They changed the rules and claimed it was always that way. I let them have it. I don't curse when I'm that mad. If your company screws me or my clients over I am utterly, devastatingly, precisely explicit about your personal failings, your company's bad faith methods, the immediate monetary punishment I'm going to seek by aggressively selling away from your company, my willingness to contact the Better Business Bureau, and if necessary the damages I will be asking for in a court of law. All three of the airline's representatives were silenced by my invective. It was not a happy experience.
"Free" travel is never really free, you know. Agents earn it by selling a designated market share, or a certain number of air segments, then pay taxes on the tickets, and a processing fee. I busted my hiney selling that airline over their competitor as part of their competition. I persuaded clients to try them out since their fares were lower, even though they were a brand new, untried airline. What a chump I was. It's a slap in the face, especially after all the nasty attitudes the bigger airlines display towards travel agents these days, as though it were a crime to earn a living. No one wants to pay us to do our job, but they sure want us to sell their tickets, give them comparative price information, find them hotels, advise them on neat places to vacation, do all the work and then smile when they tell us they're shocked at us daring to charge fees or take a commission. I'm so sick of being perceived as some kind of vulture or flack.
So I'm not going to Las Vegas, and my book is pissing me off. I am prescribing a hot tub, a midnight walk with my dog, and a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, I'll start thinking of a new plan for Denise's birthday.
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