For whatever reason, Guy Gavriel Kay just insists on getting better and better. Sailing to Sarantium outshone the already excellent Lions of Al-Rassan, and now Lord of Emperors--the stunning second half of the Sarantine Mosaic--somehow surpasses even its predecessors.

Emperors picks up the story of the overwhelmed but still tenacious Crispin, now Imperial Mosaicist to Valerius II and thoroughly steeped in the machinations of Sarantium--not to mention being personally entangled in the lives of the emperor, the empress, and now his own queen, the exiled Gisel. Lord of Emperors also sends a new protagonist sailing into Sarantium, an unassuming country doctor who--like Caius--has found himself thrust into a position of great potential and peril, a victim of both circumstance and his own competence and moxie. The two struggle to stay afloat in Sarantium's swirling intrigues, as Valerius prepares for war in Crispin's homeland and unexplained, ghostly fires flicker around the city.

A touching, literate, and doggedly intelligent book, Lord of Emperors continues to prove Kay's mastery of historical fantasy (Sarantium being a well-researched analog to sixth-century Byzantium under Justinian and Theodora), as he gracefully spins a rich, convincing weave of legend and history. While other fantasy titles might have us imagine our lives as great heroes, Kay leaves a far more lasting impression by celebrating the heroics and passions of ordinary people who possess extraordinary character and spirit. --Paul Hughes


From Booklist
The second volume of the Sarantine Mosaic continues the adventure of the provincial mosaic-maker Crispin in the imperial capital Sarantium, a fantasy-fiction version of Byzantine Constantinople. At center stage is Crispin's involvement with Rustem of Bassania and his family, who, after saving the Bassanian emperor's life, have been sent to Sarantium as spies. (This is a reward?) When Rustem enters the city, his bodyguard is killed, and he becomes part of the circle that includes Crispin, Crispin's rescued slave-girl mistress, the exiled queen of Antae, and a fine and authentically limned lot of soldiers, chariot racers, ordinary people, and members of the imperial household. Half the fun of the book is seeing how Kay turns the Byzantine reign of Justinian and Theodora to the uses of his own story, and a good part of the rest is exploring the early history of the same fantasy universe he used in The Lions of Al-Rassan (1995). Kay is fulfilling the promise of Sailing to Sarantium (1999) magnificently. Roland Green


From Kirkus Reviews
This second installment of Toronto-resident Kay's latest fantasy epic, following Sailing to Sarantium (1999, not reviewed), brings to a conclusion the story of Crispin, the mosaicist. Desiring only to practice his art in the city that has captured his imagination, he finds he cannot remain aloof from the swirling mysteries and intrigues that sustain Sarantium. Essential reading for all Kay fans. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.



"His most ambitious work yet...When it comes to imaginary worlds, Guy Gavriel Kay is the Lord of Emperors."



"Compulsively readable...Kay is a storyteller on the grandest scale."

FROM OUR EDITORS

Art for Fantasy's Sake

Guy Gavriel Kay's Lord of Emperors triumphantly concludes the massive, two-volume historical fantasy collectively entitled the Sarantine Mosaic. Sailing to Sarantium, the opening volume, appeared last year and introduced us to Kay's dazzling fictional analogue of the early Byzantine Empire under Justinian I, who is here reimagined as Valerius II, the ambitious, infinitely subtle emperor of Sarantium. It also introduced us to a large cast of characters from every level of Sarantine society. Chief among these is Caius Crispus -- usually called Crispin -- a master mosaicist from the western province of Batiara. Crispin, who has lost his wife and two daughters to an outbreak of plague, is an acerbic, unhappy man with nothing to lose and nothing much to live for, until he is summoned to Sarantium to play a part in one of the emperor's grand designs.

Valerius II has dedicated his reign to two particular goals. First, he plans to reunite the ancient, sundered Sarantine Empire by recapturing Batiara, which is currently ruled by the beleaguered young Queen Gisel. Second, he plans to dedicate a monumental new cathedral to the reigning deity of Sarantium, the sun god Jad. To Valerius, who has no children, these twin ambitions constitute his intended legacy to the future. This notion of legacies -- of monuments that endure beyond the span of the individual life -- is one of the novel's governing concerns and permeates the narrative on every level.

Crispin's role in all this is to design and construct a vast mosaic that will cover the dome of the newly completed cathedral. This dome -- an architectural wonder patterned after the dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople -- appears to Crispin as "a gift," a huge canvas capable of supporting the most profound artistic visions. He conceives a mosaic commensurate with the canvas he is offered, which will both memorialize his own beloved dead and reflect his sense of the teeming, tumultuous, god-haunted world around him. Crispin sees this proposed mosaic as his own legacy, and all he wants is the opportunity to work on it, to stand on the scaffold -- above the affairs of emperors and men -- and pursue his vision.

Of course, he cannot. The affairs of the world keep pulling him down from that scaffold and drawing him in. Lord of Emperors chronicles, in mesmerizing detail, the infinite complexity of that world, from the intrigues of Valerius's court to the more prosaic realities that govern the lives of the common people of Sarantium. The foremost of these is the obsessive factionalism that dominates Sarantine society, a factionalism whose focal point lies in the Hippodrome, site of the fanatically attended chariot races that Kay describes (both here and in Sailing to Sarantium) with such immediacy and power.

Kay uses Crispin's story to open up a window on a critical period in Sarantine history, a period marked by political upheaval, religious controversy, and the complex interplay of hidden personal agendas. Many of the players whose stories intersect with Crispin's are the dominant figures of the empire, the central forces behind large, sometimes terrible events. Among them are Valerius himself, the former peasant who has gained the Sarantine throne through a formidable combination of cunning, ruthlessness, and foresight; Alixana, the dancer who became an empress and who is, in every significant respect, her husband's equal; Gisel, the besieged queen who will do whatever is necessary to protect Batiara from Sarantine invasion; Leontes, the military leader whose religious views will have an enormous impact on Crispin's planned mosaic; and Styliane Daleina, whose family was sacrificed to Valerius's ambitions and who is animated almost totally by her hatred of the emperor.

At the same time, dozens of less exalted figures parade through these pages, among them legendary charioteers, dancers, and actresses, cooks, spies, and traitors, visiting physicians, children with second sight, scheming historians, soldiers, architects, artisans, and slaves. Kay moves his story gracefully along from character to character, viewpoint to viewpoint, place to place. During the course of its considerable length, the narrative encompasses not just Sarantium but the wider world beyond its borders. Within that wider world, foreign rulers devise schemes of their own, men and women offer their allegiance to very different gods, a "half world" filled with mysteries and magic occasionally asserts itself, and the Islamic threat that will eventually help to undermine Sarantium makes its first, tentative appearance.

Kay has structured his hugely accomplished narrative exactly like a mosaic, artfully deploying hundreds of varied pieces, creating, in the process, a coherent, brightly colored world in which history and imagination work hand-in-hand. Seen in its entirety, the Sarantine Mosaic has the feel of a genuine magnum opus. It is an intelligent, ultimately moving narrative in which color, sweep, and spectacle are firmly grounded in an understanding of the universal need to leave something of value -- art, empires, children -- behind. Like Sailing to Sarantium, Lord of Emperors is imaginative fiction at its finest, an intimate epic that further consolidates Kay's position as the finest living practitioner of historical fantasy.

—Bill Sheehan

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the world's foremost masters of fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay has thrilled readers around the globe with his talent for skillfully interweaving history and myth, colorful characterization, and a rich sense of time and place. Now, in Lords of Emperors, the internationally acclaimed author of The Lions of Al-Rassan continues his most powerful work.

In Sailing to Sarantium, the first volume in the Sarantine Mosaic, renowned mosaicist Crispin -- bekoned by an imperial summons of the Emperor Valerius -- made his way to the fabled city of Sarantium. A man who lives only for his craft, who cares little for ambition, less for money, and nothing for intrigue, Crispin now wants only to confront the challenges of his art high upon a dome that will become the emperor's magnificent sanctuary and legacy.

But Crispin's desire for solitude will not be fulfilled. Beneath him the city swirls with rumors of war and conspiracy, while otherworldly fires mysteriously flicker and disappear in the streets at night. Valerius is looking west to Crispin's homeland of Varena to assert his power -- a plan that may have dire consequences for the family and friends Crispin left behind. But loyalty to his homeland comes at a high price, for Crispin's fate has become entwined with that of Valerius and his empress, as well as the youthful Queen Gisel, his own monarch who is an exile in Sarantium herself. And now another voyager arrives in Sarantium, a physician determined to earn his fortune amid the shifting currents of loyalty, intrigue, and violence.

Drawing from the twin springs of history and legend, Lord of Emperors is also a deeply moving exploration of art, power, and the ways in which people from all walks of life seek to leave an impression that endures long after they are gone. It confirms Kay's place as one of the world's most esteemed masters of fantasy.

FROM THE CRITICS

Charles DeLint - Fantasy & Science Fiction