Name: Lord of Emperors
ISBN: 9780061020025

Guy Gavriel Kay

Crispin the mosaicist finally achieves his goal of journeying to the fabled Sarantium, but is drawn into the deadly webs of the court and the city.

The Conclusion of the Sarantine Mosaic

Lord of Emperors

In this conclusion to the sequence begun with"Sailing to Sarantium, " Crispin, the mosaicist, has achieved his journey to fabled Sarantium and only wants to confront the challenges of his art high on the scaffolding of destiny. But in Sarantium no human may easily withdraw from the turmoils of court and city, or forget that the presence of the half-world is always close at hand.

Jenna T.

Aahhhh the second book truly outdid itself... I'm gonna ramble a bit so I'm sticking the rest of this in spoiler tags haha.
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Oh God I cried when Leontes told Crispin that he would have to take his mosaic down. Like straight up ugly-crying through that whole chapter, thinking about how badly I wanted him to have that mosaic, to have that to his name... And right before he was about to put his daughters on it!!! Twist the knife, why don't you?!
But even so, even through the pain and the tears, I forced myself to see the message. There was always the focus, throughout the story, of creating something that lasts beyond death. Of making something that won't change. And the characters—and me, the reader—are forced to come to terms with the fact that nothing does last. Or, at the very least, maybe not in the ways we expect. To live means to change, and to refuse to change is to die. Faiths will change, wars will begin, empires will break and spread and mend and fall. People will die. Gods will rise, and others will be forgotten or forbidden. Buildings will burn. Mosaics will fall down. And one's name may not live beyond the memories of those one knew in life. Everything one spent their life building may be torn down in a single day. How does that quote go? "Rome wasn't built in a day, but it burned in one"?
But at the same time, the point is not to keep living forever in any form. It is to create beauty and experience joy in the moment, and to let go of that moment when it passes. Mourn it and carry it with you, but do not try to linger in a moment past. And in other, infinitely smaller ways, you will find that things do live forever, just perhaps not in the way you imagine they might. The zubir lived on, supposedly forgotten, but still honored in the shadows, still persisting through centuries and empires. Heladikos persisted. The memory of Crispin's mosaic, of Valerius's valiant schemes, of violence and kindnesses... these things will also live on, echoed elsewhere by those who saw them or experienced them, and in that way they will live forever.
It was poignant, it was lovely, and I don't know if I'll ever experience anything quite like this story again in my life.
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Lord of Emperors The Conclusion of the Sarantine Mosaic