Sailing to Sarantium, the first book of the Sarantine
Mosaic, ended on a subtle note—a strange portent indeed for a duology robed
in the clothes of saga and high fantasy.
The pieces on the board suspiciously quiet, it remains for Lord of Emperors to see them open their
attack through to the end game. And
indeed, Kay being Kay, the plot does unravel in dramatic fashion, the meaning
of the title not what the reader may think.
Lord of Emperors opens with the introduction of an important new character: the Bassani
doctor Rustem. Coming from the
Arabian-esque east, Rustem is called to serve a dangerous patient, and in the
aftermath is asked to perform one more service for his king: go to Sarantium as
a spy for the Bassani. Death the door
opening if he rejects the request, Rustem reluctantly says goodbye to his
family, and soon enough, finds himself on the streets of the great city. Crispin having begun work on the dome,
another unlikely visitor finds themselves on Sarantium’s streets: his Queen
Gisel. War and rumors of war with
Bataria swirling through the courts and the mighty hippodrome, the Emperor, his
beautiful queen, the senators, the Blues, the Greens, and everyone in the city are
caught up in the intrigue and violence which unleash themselves on the city one
fateful day. Life taking on a whole new
meaning, Crispin’s project reaches its end, but not in the manner he expected.
Paying off in every way a reader might anticipate, the climax and
conclusion of the Sarantine Mosaic
will have the reader slowly yet compulsively turning pages. Kay’s prose continues to soar, and the facades
of emotion (at least veiled emotion) the characters are presented in manifests itself
in a plot line worthy of the saga the duology is. Assassinations, trysts, egos at large,weddings,
deaths, revenge, chariot races (superbly done), and riots are the devices of
engaging fantasy put to quality use like so few practitioners of the genre can.
Scrape away the lacquered veneer Kay lays on in several coats, however,
and beneath lurks a grim dark fairy tale (aka contemporary epic fantasy). The ending predictable and trite, the
Machiavellian scheming, steamy late-night affairs, bloody deaths, and the FATE
of the nation in balance are more the territory of George R.R. Martin and Paul Kearney. Certainly it’s possible to
locate themes in the work, but these do not seem to go beyond standard fantasy;
honor, glory, legacy, loyalty, etc., etc., which, if you’ve read your share,
can be tiresome. Kay’s characters and
plotting are richer than the overwhelming majority of epic fantasies out there,
but that doesn’t prevent a spade from being a spade once you’ve shaken the
spell of the prose.
In step with this point, the manner in which Kay presents women is rather embarrassing at times. Intelligence,
beauty, wit, a sense of fashion, etc., etc., are all fine virtues for a woman
in a novel. But when every woman in the novel possesses those
virtues, not a plain-faced Sally or a wise elderly servant in the mix, the
story distances itself from reality—a reality Kay appears so desperately to
want to comment on—and becomes a fairy tale.
It’s difficult to take seriously presentation that strays so far from relevancy. Moreover, it seems their bodies represent
tools in Kay’s eyes. “It came to Crispin,
watching the queen reach the marble floor to accept bows and her cloak, that
he’d been offered intimacy by three women in this city, and each occasion had
been an act of contrivance and dissembling.
Not one of them had touched him with any tenderness or care, or even a
true desire.” Forgive me, but sex equalling
politics is the stuff of sensationalism, and does not lend itself to sophisticated
literature.
In the end, Lord of Emperors is
a worthy conclusion to Sailing toSarantium that plays out in strong, confident fashion. Fully capitalizing on the potential for romanticizing
(and simultaneously sensationalizing) of Roman rule on the Bosphorous, Kay’s
storytelling, however, never seems able to escape itself. For as much of a spell he casts over the
reader with his superb pacing and flow, the storyline amounts to nothing more
than a grimdark fairy tale. That being
said, Kay builds the city of Sarantium superbly in the mind’s eye. The chariot race is a knockout. Anyone looking for a realistically
fictionalized version of Byzantium could not perhaps do better. Fans of George R.R. Martin would thus take a
strong liking to Kay’s style. Both creating
strong characters and allowing them to play out in a story hinging upon sex and
violence, honor and glory, there’s little for fans of contemporary epic fantasy
to disapprove of.
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