The sequel to Sailing to Sarantium, and final book in the Sarantine Mosaic, and I loved it! Kay’s books seem to simultaneously have not much happen, while so much does happen. And so far all have a melancholy, realism to the ending. Just lovely. ( )

Lord of Emperors - Kay
4 stars

“People see different things, remember different things, though all might be looking in the same direction.”

So many people and so many different perspectives in this final book of Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic. The first book begins with the death of an Emperor, an assassination, and the crowning of a new emperor.
This book ends with another assassination, several executions, and the crowning of a different emperor. There’s a spider web of political machinations against the vibrant and dangerous city of Sarantium.

“Crispin looked up at the statue rising before him. A man on a horse, a martial sword, image of power and majesty, a dominant figure. But it was the women, he thought, who had shaped the story here, not the men with their armies and blades.”

I’ve always enjoyed the female characters in Kay’s books. Despite the historical settings of his fantasies, he gives women prominent roles and positions of influence, if not power. This book was no exception. There were three women vying for power in this book. Clearly, it could not end well for two out of three of those women. That much was predictable, but I found at least one of the outcomes far from believable. Kay also gives each of these characters a strong sexual appeal (and appetite) while making it clear that each of them knows how to use that attraction as a weapon. As a plot device, and with the addition of several minor female characters, it became tediously repetitious.

I also found the chariot racing to be tedious, although the people of Sarantium obviously do not. I sympathized with the Emperor Valerius who regarded the races as an annoying interruption to the work of the day. I suspect that the author loved the races as much as the citizens. The suspense of the culminating race was so richly described. It was riveting entertainment for the masses while the true epoch changing event was taking place quietly off stage. Kay is a master of metaphor.

Of course, the overriding metaphor is the mosaics. The mosaics are emblems of impermanence. Kay refers to the deterioration of this art form in his later books. Having read the other books first, I know that most of the artwork mentioned in this book doesn’t survive the ages. But, poor Cais Crispus knows his masterpiece will be destroyed even before it is completed. I wanted to cry for him.

The religious landscape of this book is complicated. The old pagan beliefs are retreating. There are factions and schisms within the ruling Jadite beliefs. A new prophet is about to emerge from the desert. Kay may have built a fantasy world with a fantasy map, but it is well grounded in the history of our real world. As he foreshadowed the destruction of the mosaics in the Dome of Sarantium, I kept thinking of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. ( )

one of my favourite duologies I've ever read. ( )

321

Guy Gavriel Kay might write the must fundamentally human fantasy there is. His stories are steeped in all the love, loss, ambition, and confusion that fills even the most mundane life, yet writ large on lives that echo through the history of this faux-Europe he draws with such deft strokes.

Lord of Emperors finishes the Sarantine Mosaic duology with all the inevitability of history, with triumph and defeat and pain and joy. It is not an easy end, nor one without tears, but it is a grand ending and one I could not stop reading.

One of the most compelling parts of any Kay book, and this one is no different, is how he cuts to the heart of those who do extraordinary things to find why and how they can accomplish such. The genius racer, the great artist, the emperor: all are still simply human, mortal and fallible, but some part of them transcends those limits, and this is what Kay so deftly examines.

In Lord of Emperors, we are shown the kind of will and drive that allows a man, a racer, to ignore near mortal injury and even his own chance at winning to create a perfect race for his team. The artist, Crispin, faced with a loss nearly as great as when plague took his family from him, can do nothing but what he has done, and creates. The emperor... Well, I will not spoil that.

Every book of Kay's I reads becomes another favorite. This is no exception. ( )