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If I had read this when it was new in 1991, probably 4 stars, maybe 5.
But now I've read Kay's later work and seen what 5-star work really is. This falls short.

Oh, it's a heckuva story, full of interesting characters even if far too many of them are Sworn To A Noble Cause. There's a complicated plot, and therein perhaps lies the problem. Kay admits in his afterword that he wanted to tell a story about certain things, referencing other things. And he wrote a story to fit into that framework. It shows. Far too many of the events are driven by pure narrativium, which is to say that they happened because the plot required them to happen.

Even though it's quite an interesting framework.

Kay's superb "Under Heaven" and his Sarantium series feel much more like putting characters in a setting, creating tensions, then watching little puppets struggle to their inevitable heroic doom. I like those books better.

This one has lots of heroic doom, for sure, probably too much. I found Dianora's quite implausible, although I applaud Kay's effort to show her split allegiance. I was pleased to see that other reviewers also noted a similarity between the Alessan plot in the first half and Sanderson's Mistborn (I am not suggesting that either author had even read the other's work).

I can't blame Kay for what was then and still is now a standard rule of fantasy: you have to have powerful rulers executing people every few pages, and about every 200 pages you need a battle scene so hundreds or even thousands of infantry can be slaughtered gorily.

You also need wizards who can't use their powers, and one who is going to use ALL of his powers with about 30 pages to go.

There has to be a coffee analog (here, it's khav) with a not-quite-coffee name, although there's no need to rename horses, swords, bows, arrows, shields, inns, wine, cloaks, ...

The Rhun plotline was OK, but there were far too many opportunities for us to think, "Hah, that one's going to be really important before this book's over."

Sensible, clever Brandin's rage at Stevan's death is fine at first, but when we see that he's sworn to stay until a certain event far in the future, it becomes a tad implausible. Narrativium again. Then we come to his decision to, er, change the focus of his ambition. A bit heavy on the "he decided WHAT?" when Kay was so careful to have everything else roll out neatly.

There's also quite a bit of faking out. Let's just say that when some things happen, we learn a few pages later that, oh, haha, that didn't happen -- for various reasons that we learn either immediately or quite a bit later.

Still a very good book, but don't assume it's Kay's best. It isn't.