Guy Gavriel Kay's fantasy career began with "The Fionavar Tapestry", a popular trilogy mixing Arthurian and Tolkienian themes. He's since developed an original vein of alternate- historical fiction; richly suspenseful stories whose period settings have different country names and added magic. The Lions of Al- Rassan reinvented medieval Spain; Sailing to Sarantium lovingly reflects the intrigue and splendour of the Byzantine Empire, and echoes W.B. Yeats's famous Byzantium poems. Magic exists: at least one old god is horribly real, and those artificial singing birds celebrated by Yeats take their life from an unexpected, creepy source. Sarantium City is intensely imagined, with dynastic upheavals, riot and rebellion, a smashing chariot race, and knives glinting in every alley. There's sharp intelligence here, too. The hero, an outlander mosaic expert summoned to decorate Sarantium's newest and greatest dome, faces his worst test at the Emperor's court—where mechanical trickery lurks, conversation is double-edged, exile awaits the loser in a debate on mosaic techniques, and there's a Sherlockian challenge to deduce how the top charioteer pulled off a magical-seeming coup. Kay has laid fine groundwork for this new series "The Sarantine Mosaic", with more to follow. —David Langford

Guy Gavriel Kay's tales of kingdoms and empires that never quite were blend real history with an economic use of magic; blink and you would almost miss the interventions of the supernatural. Lord of Emperorsis the second half of his The Sarantium Mosaic, a full-blooded and passionate epic of Byzantine intrigue and artistic commitment. All of his characters are in the great city of Sarantium now—Crispin, the great mosaicist, Gisel, the exiled queen of the barbarian kingdom of the West and Rustem, the brilliant young doctor and unwilling spy. Emperor Valerius and his wife Alixena have plans for their world—they are summoning troops from all directions—and plans for their city. Crispin is working on the dome of the great temple; and yet time and chance, those rulers that lie beyond all emperors, will ultimately dispose of all plans and all planners. Kay is as good on the manners of charioteers—there is a particularly fine chariot race here—as he is on the double-crossings of generals and imperial secretaries. This is a rich complex fantasy with a real sense of how its world works. —Roz Kaveney