The second part of the Sarantine Mosaic is a wonderful fantasy, GGK’s reworking of Byzantium is a gem of a book. An intricate interweaving of light and dark; pain and hope; as beautiful as the mosaics crafted. The characters, descriptions and use of language are a delight. ( )

This book is a great follow on to Sailing to Sarantium. Crispin the mosaicist is in the middle of everything again, as he works to complete his masterpiece on the dome of the cathedral. He is the confidante to 2 queens and several other important women, and is right in the middle of things - even when he doesn't know it.
A lot of activity is packed into this book, though it is mostly on a personal scale, not on the scale of the empire - until the end, when things move in major and unexpected directions.
This is well written, with good style, excellent descriptions and great characterization. I'd like to know one thing though - how does a guy get to be as popular as Crispin? Every beautiful and powerful woman in Sarantium is after him, one way or another, even when he's just being an honest artisan. (no, this isn't covertly a romance novel) Makes you want to take up the art! ( )

Bought hard copies for my personal library: I've read all the novels Kay has written that are out in the market. I LOVED his Mosaic series and his Lions although I found all his other books rather shallow and vague to hold my attention--but I do need to reread them because sometimes it is a matter of timing. I've also done mosaics myself, albeit not on the grand scale that the character does, Crispin's art and the way her perceives things is familiar to me. I found the characters in Sailing and Lord very well developed and realistic, Kay's use of history quite thorough and the story intriguing. There's enough high action but more importantly, there's all that political subterfuge that made Roman politics so--deadly. What I like best about the Mosaic series is it focuses on how the everyday, "middle class" people lived and thought, what their daily lives might have been like, how the changing tides of politics affected everyone's lives. Ovid, Homer and Hollywood gave us insights on what life among the ruling classes was like, we have studies on what a gladiator's life might have been like, what a Roman slave or prostitute was often like. But Kay's series offers us a glimpse into what life for the regular folks like you and I might have been like. All with a touch of the supernatural/fantasy to spice up the story. It's a perfectly seasoned, subtle, beautifully blended meal--and it doesn't make me fat no matter how many times I devour it.

Summary: Crispin the mosaicist has come, under imperial summons, to the capital city of Sarantium, and there has been given charge of creating a mosaic larger and grander than anything he could ever have aspired to. Much as he would like to, however, he cannot simply retreat up his scaffolding to his work; the city swirls around him, rife with depths and complexities, currents both personal and political and frequently both. A time of change is coming - rumors of a war being planned against Crispin's homeland, his exiled queen friendless and alone in the great city, violence in the streets and in the stands of the Hippodrome, a pagan doctor and spy arriving from the lands to the east, and above and below it all, the smooth and treacherous subtleties of the most powerful imperial court on earth.

Review: I can understand why, from a publisher's point of view, the Sarantine Mosaic was split up into two books - a reader is more likely to take a chance on two 550-page books than on one giant 1100-page one. Yet, from the point of view of a reader, I wonder if that was a mistake. I read these books relatively close together - about a month apart - but I can instantly tell that they would have been better, and I would have been more involved, had I read them sequentially. That's part - but not all - of the reason why I think I didn't connect with this book as much as I have with much of Kay's other writing. The other part is that I never really connected with any of the characters. This book felt a little more distant to me than some of Kay's others... it concerns itself with broad, cataclysmic, history-making changes rather than with the more personal revolutions of many of his other books, and I felt the difference. At least for me, the personal is more powerful than the political, even when the political is built out of the personal, as it is in Lord of Emperors.

The format is all in short sections from a wide variety of viewpoints. This style isn't unfamiliar territory for Kay - he uses it to some extent in all his books - but it's employed here to much more dramatic effect. There is a reason this duology is called The Sarantine Mosaic, and it's to do with the writing as much as with the profession of the main character. Little glittering chips of scenes, some of which are nearly incomphrensible on their own (several would have gone straight over my head had I not already read The Lions of Al-Rassan), but put together form a shining, detailed whole. There's a definite flair to the writing, but the mosaic-style approach and the lack of a strong main character to get attached to (Crispin's around, but his viewpoint does not command a majority of the scenes) led to my having a harder time getting emotionally invested in the book.

The writing, though.... Oh, the writing! Kay's a phenomenal writer, of fantasy and of literature and of fantastic literature, able to conjure mature, complex, multi-layered characters, intricate plots, and vivid environments with an elegance that's difficult to describe. There is a touch more supernatural presence and magic in this one than in several of Kay's other works (Lions and A Song for Arbonne had very little, if any), although less than in Tigana or even in this novel's predecessor, Sailing to Sarantium. The result is something that's not quite historical fiction, not quite fantasy, but some amalgam of the two, driven by a powerful narrative voice and a joy to read. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Not my personal favorite of Kay's work, but an excellent book nonetheless. If you're going to read this series, though (and if you enjoy fantasy, or any well-written, mature fiction, I highly recommend you do), buy both and read them together - too much of the power of the story gets lost, otherwise. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/945115.htm...

My write-up of the first of these two books, Sailing to Sarantium, ended by wishing that I had bought the sequel at the same time. I repeat that wish now. The two books are so closely intertwined that it's a shame to let the memory of one fade before you start the other. Anyway, like its predecessor, this book is simply a triumph.

But with a difference. Where Sailing to Sarantium stuck fairly closely to the history of our world, in particular the story of Justinian, Theodora, Belisarius and the Hagia Sophia, Lord of Emperors starts by nibbling away at the edges, and then abruptly and brutally swerves into its own timeline a bit over half way through. Suddenly, it all is up for grabs. Viewpoint characters die horribly. Any certainty we had is lost. I think that even if you don't know anything about Byzantium, it's a dramatic development on a par with George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. But if you do know what is 'supposed' to happen, the impact is incredible.

But the historical knowingness is not what makes this a great book. (And I add to that historical knowingness the accelerated appearance of Kay's versions of the rise of Islam and a specific spoilerish Christian controversy, brought into the novel for justifiable plot reasons respectively about a century and about two centuries too early.) The overall title of the series is The Sarantine Mosaic, and this is not only a reference to the grand work of art which Caius Crispius is brought to Sarantium to construct, but also surely a reference to the way the books are built up from little pieces - a progression of tight-third-person narratives (some crucial characters to the plot, some purely incidental) - within the overall structure of a framing plot, most of which in Lord of Emperors takes place in the course of two intricately and intimately described 24-hour periods, two days which illuminate the book's structure like the mosaics on either side of an orthodox church.

And apart from fantastic characters, desperate sex, Machiavellian politics, and an unforgettable chariot race, the book - indeed both books - are a deep reflection on the place of art in life, and how some are called to it, some respond to it, and some reject it. A couple of people said they felt the ending of Lord of Emperors was a bit of a let-down. I agree that the emotional place where the key characters end up has been signalled too far in advance to retain the dramatic momentum which Kay probably intended. But read it again, and look at what he is saying about art and the artist. And then look at the work that inspired him. I don't think you will remain unmoved. ( )