Ann Walker
6/9/2016
Absolutely enchanting, a delight from the first page. Those of you who loved Kay's "Sarantine Mosaic" duology may find this of particular interest; it's set nine hundred years after those books, and twenty-five years after the fall of Sarantium. It's hard to consider these books as fantasy, rather than very thinly disguised historical fiction, and this is all about Venice, Byzantium, Rome, and the Holy Roman Empire. It's intensely character-driven rather than plotty (I'm not ever sure what the plot is), and the mood is lush and dreamlike. The varying points of view (varying even with a few paragraphs of each other) is a bit dizzying at time, but it works well. Lots of interesting female characters too.