Overview

Venice in the eighteenth century: Her ancient beauty lingers still. So too does Death, whether dealt by the righteous Sword of Justice or the febrile blade of revenge. But who is to say which? As the workers of the Arsenale, Venice's great shipbuilding powerhouse, cross paths with her artists, maskmakers, and Golden Book patricians, they engage in fraught private struggles and bloody public clashes. Warring factions vie for dominion, and no one is spared. Meanwhile, from his aerie at the end of the century, the Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova bears witness to the unfolding drama. As he parses a murder, revealed through his keen gaze are the currents upon which the century's ideas and events flow through Venice, shaping the lives of her people. Among these are Giulia Lama and Giambattista Piazzetta, artists whose complex relationship plays out against familial intrigue and the intricacies of Venetian signorial society. Through the prism of Casanova's musings, ever more secrets emerge from shadowed lives. At the same time, Death stalks high and low; it lurks in the verses of Bartolomeo Dotti, a poison-penned nuncio, skulks in the cravings of Gasparo Cucato, an Arsenale tough, and strikes young artisans enjoying an innocent outing. The beautiful court artist Felicità Sartori confides to Casanova that perhaps the animus began in the time-dimmed machinations of a Neapolitan musician. Or perchance, it lay srouded in the arcane knowledge of The Tusk, brought to Venice from a land that worshipped Death's own goddess, Thanth. In the thousand-year epic of the Serenissima, myriad questions rise and fall with her waters. In Venice sword & Blade, the eighteenth century's answers to such questions satisfy the yearnings of some, trouble the repose of others. Which might you have been...and why?

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9781958891001

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Venice Sword & Blade is Valerie Ceriano's second novel drawing on a fascination with the eighteenth century - its art, its intellect, its inhabitants, its aura. The story transpires in settecento Venice, an incandescent era swathed in the Serenissima's lurid sunset hues. Valerie Ceriano lives and works in New York City.

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