Drawing to a close, I think

Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee
Continuing in the proud tradition of rad sci-fi that is incomprehensibly foreign to my waegukin-ass head, Ninefox Gambit fills both my love of sweet star empires and my need to be reminded of the massive cultural disparity in Asian power dynamics.
Let me sum this book up as best I can: This book is a Warhammer 40k fanfiction where the Cult of the Emperor has been replaced with the Chinese Zodiac.
It's phenomenal and crazy. Caste systems to the extreme. Strict adherence to calendrical observances generate unexplained supernatural phenomena that can be channeled via military formations? Space stations that act like beacons projecting Belief into the universe? Immortal souls implanted into people as hosts, in order to fight heretics? Weapons with names and effects that would make Mieville give them a high five.
This book is a genuinely ripping space opera and I was chuffed to read the ding dang thing from start to finish. I was also entirely out of my element pretty much the whole damn time, but unlike the Three Body Problem I was able to tread water enough to appreciate it. It requires a certain willing mindset, and shit goes out the window for the final fifth of the story in a MAJOR way but what space opera with intents to be a series doesn't?

The Sarantine Mosaic - Guy Gavriel Kay
Do you recognize this guys name yet? I goofed. That fuckin light space opera was me forcing myself to rip loose of this masterful man, so clearly the best course of action was to immediately follow it up with his two-book epic interpretation of 600 CE Byzantium, complete with chariot races and the slow descent of Rome-analogue into the sea.
Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors is a duology set in the same universe as the other two Kay books on here, albeit - since it's once again history turned slightly into the fantastic - hundreds of years in the past. This time we're in the Byzantine empire, what becomes Constantinople which becomes Istanbul. The capital of the western world for a thousand real years, the center of three empires, and just Roman as all hell. Sandals. Artisans. Decadence. Intrigue. Chariot racing.

Everything I have previously said about Kay remains true here. And indeed, is only reinforced now that I have enough of an education in his universe to see the connecting threads.
These books are heavy, weighty, appropriately so for the representation of the rise and fall of massive empires and the lives of those who live within them.
My previous weak comparisons to Game of Thrones continue. In style only, really. Shifting rapidly between interconnected characters views and storylines. Court(s) intrigue. People at all levels of power. The existence of power as an element.

Imagine game of thrones if you replaced the dragons with a heartbreaking examination of the injustices and simultaneous exultations of the human condition.
These books convey solemnity in the same way as stepping into a large, empty building. It carries weight.
It has no dragons, just (mostly) humans hopelessly tangled in each other, and yet I am here trying to get across that I read it as if it contained nothing but dragons. I devoured these books. I fucked my sleep schedule up for these books.

These books, this author, elicits in me very nearly the same feeling as first reading Dune did. I guess Dune is my metric for awe at the scope of a writer, which is why I keep going back to it.

These two books had more blatant fantastical elements than the others, which was a nice and appropriate change.
Like the others, it schooled the fuck out of my knowledge of the appropriate historical era.
More than the others, it demanded sacrifice.
But that is appropriate, for a city so grand.