I decided to buy Tigana for my kindle upon reading the sample and was really interested in the style. The story looked interesting too but could not comment on that at the moment. I just want to know what type of fantasy does Mr Kay write? I s he like David Gemmell with lots of action, or more like GRRM with more intrigue and political and social unrest or like Feist or Steven Erikson? I just want to get a heads up on this author I am not familiar with. What can I expect from him?
I wouldn't really compare him to Gemmell, Feist or Erikson. Out of the authors you mention he has some similarities with GRRM in terms of the type of story he writes - character-driven, not much magic (usually), lot of political intrigue, some moral ambiguity - but his writing style is quite different to Martin's. Out of other modern fantasy authors I'd probably say he's closest to Bujold (as someone else mentioned) or Daniel Abraham. The exception is his first series, the Fionavar Trilogy, which is much closer to Tolkien in terms of both plot and writing style.
I like Kay's books a lot, he's one of my favourite fantasy authors.
I'd say his best books are
Tigana,
A Song For Arbonne,
The Lions of Al-Rassan,
The Sarantine Mosaic and
Under Heaven. Tigana is probably my favourite but the others I listed aren't far behind. The
Fionavar Tapestry trilogy has some very good bits and some of the most powerful scenes in any of Kay's books but other bits I didn't like so much and I think he improved as a writer in later books.
Ysabel and
Last Light of the Sun are his weakest two, although still reasonably good.