The Sarantine Mosaic Books in Order

The Sarantine Mosaic is a duology set in an alternate sixth‑century Mediterranean, where the glittering imperial city of Sarantium echoes Constantinople and the western realm of Batiara recalls Ravenna and the fading Roman world.

In Sailing to Sarantium, master mosaicist Caius Crispus—known as Crispin—grieves his wife and daughters, lost to plague, and lives only for his craft. When an imperial summons arrives, he is pushed into taking his ageing mentor’s place and traveling east to design the mosaics of a grand new sanctuary for Emperor Valerius II.

Art is his passport into a court where every favour has a price and every smile might be a trap.

The journey itself is full of danger and strange encounters: assassins on the road, a queen with her own desperate political gamble, and the alchemist Zoticus, who gives Crispin a mechanical bird, Linon, carrying a human soul. When he finally reaches Sarantium, he walks into a city humming with factions, religious tension and chariot‑race rivalries in the great Hippodrome.

Lord of Emperors continues the story inside the city. While Crispin climbs the scaffolding of the sanctuary and becomes a confidant to both Empress Alixana and exiled Queen Gisel, a physician named Rustem arrives from the eastern kingdom of Bassania, ordered to serve as a spy at the Sarantine court.

As rumours of war, riots and assassination swirl, both men must navigate questions of loyalty—Crispin to his homeland and his art, Rustem to his king and to his own conscience—against the backdrop of an empire trying to secure its future. The books are rich with details of workshops, taverns, races and processions, and there is a thread of the uncanny in old gods, prophetic dreams and the stubborn life of Linon.

Readers who enjoy historically grounded fantasy that cares as much about artisans, doctors and dancers as it does about emperors will find a lot to savour here. The duology stands on its own but also connects to other novels set later in the same world, including The Lions of Al‑Rassan and A Brightness Long Ago.