While I enjoy Doomy Doom of humorless mythic DOOOOOOOOM in the right mood and from certain sources (Tolkien, wu xia angst, etc.), I am also Very Much OK with lower doom and higher humor levels! It's mostly only high fantasy where I really *need* that sense of doomy mythic elevation to be able to enjoy it, and while the Alexander books pushed those particular buttons much, much better than pretty much any fantasy I've read in ages, it's not something I require from historical novels. And it sounds like the Kushiel books read a lot more like recognizable alt-Europe historical AU with fantasy elements rather than secondary-world high fantasy (which is a good thing, because at this point I'm pretty much allergic to most modern Western fantasy...)