A long time ago young and intrepid I became convinced that finding connections between things was the height of criticism, rather than looking at the differences and the implications of those differences. Intertextuality and all that crap you know…But I soon discovered that it was a reductive opinion and I found plenty of support for online; the whole "everything's a remix" attitude where, if you think about it, man, everything's like the same. It was the criticism of much of Goodreads (a website I've less time for now) where art had to be empirical and quantifiable. X is like Y, therefore we need a jargon term to describe all things like X or Y because it is a movement or technique. This isn't to say there's no place in criticism for technical terms and identifying techniques; versification is a healthy field and knowing your iambs and so on is useful to be armed to talk about literature. On the other hand the quantifiable and measurable is only one half of criticism, the other being looking at the purpose to which those things are put. I can identify a line of iambic pentameter, or a Hero's Journey, or whatever; on the other hand the next step, I feel, is understanding what makes this line a good line, or this Hero's Journey interesting and novel.

I don't really 'trust' professional reviews for books and in fact have previously got into arguments with a few authors about their use of 'paid reviews' on Facebook/Amazon/Goodreads, etc., to give 5* rave reviews. When the books then turn out to be pretty meh. More widely though, for me reading is quite a personal experience. What I like and enjoy is heavily dependant on person choice and experiences. There are loads of fairly trashy fantasy series which will never win a prize for literature (nor should they!).

I was engrossed and addicted for 5 wonderful days devouring the almost 1000 pages of this duology. The writing and prose is eloquent, clever, and beautiful; Kay’s storytelling had me captivated within the first few pages: the ideas, the words, the descriptions all rooted in what I can only call a legendary mythical-fantasy-realism that almost seemed just as rooted in reality, science and history at times. I particularly loved the second novel. Reading these 2 volumes in 2021 didn't just stop time for me, but turned it inside out for me, as I felt I was as much accessing a gigantic dreamscape as reading a book. What Kay does is Poetry in prose I call it - prosetry ( prose+ poetry). Some of Kays’ descriptions are so rich: like Milton and Blake converted into paragraphs, into prose. Silly as it sounds I was just so angry with myself for not having re-read them earlier. Rare is the poetry or prose that can truly transport you to another place, imaginary dimension, and make you want to stay there. Thankfully Kay is one of those few writers who still walk amongst us (I still mourn the loss of Ursula Le Guin every so often) who can raise you to Heaven, and even higher heights, just on the strength of their words, their prosetry.

I read the individual volumes of this duology in 2007. I was curious to see how it fared now 14 years later. I gave the 2 individual volumes “Sailing to Sarantium” and “Lord of Emperors” 4 stars in 2007. Now I’m gonna bump it to 5 stars because the amount of crap being published nowadays in Fantasy is so disgustingly high and feel the need to promote outstanding stuff and this work by Kay is one of the best things ever published in the Fantasy field. I loved this Kay re-read so much that I’m going to embark on “The Lions of Al-Rassan” next which I still remember as one of my favourites. ( )

I read the two books contained in this volume as one, so I can't really review them separately. Loved the setting, loved the characters, loved the writing. Elements of mystery and magic woven through the setting, but not central.

Loved the analogy of bird-to-soul; loved the complexity of characters' religions, faiths, beliefs, and integrity. In this book, characters could have varying levels of these four things without contradiction. Thus, spirituality in these books is much better developed than in most fantasy / sci-fi. ( )