Guy Gavriel Kay is masterful at what he doesbut whether his books are a good entry point to Fantasy is more a matter of what you're expecting from them and the genre. (Aside from his earliest trilogy and his YA novel, Ysabel), Kay's novels are more like historical fiction set in secondary worlds with a "quarter turn to the fantastic" (to steal a popular phrase used to describe Kay's work.) There are elements of fantasy in his novels, but they are grounded in recognizably human issuespolitical, personal, religious, etc. You won't find fireball slinging' wizards, fantasy races like elves, dwarves, etc. It's not fantasy in Tolkien's moldrather, they're something like Follett's Pillars of the Earth or Clavell's Shogun, just not set in our world (and not quite so long/dense). Each of his settings (some of which share an overall planet, some which don't), are all directly inspired by countries, people, histories, religions, cultures, etc. from our history, and you'll often find parallels to recorded historical events.
