CBR15 Book 52: "Kushiel's Dart" by Jacqueline Carey

Page count: 1040 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR15 Bingo: Sex (the protagonist is a god-touched masochist courtesan spy)

Kushiel's Dart is the first novel in the Kushiel's Legacy series, which came to number six books in total. Jacqueline Carey also wrote an additional trilogy in her Terre D'Ange universe, and over the course of all of her books, pretty much explored every continent in her alternate-history fantasy world. This first book is set in an alternate historical version of Europe, set at about Renaissance times, or somewhat earlier, although the descriptions of the Skaldi society (Vikings) and the Albans (the Celts and Picts) clearly being from more medieval times. 

Our protagonists come from Terre D'Ange, which is located where our France would be. In this Universe, Jesus died on the cross and his blood, mingled with the tears of Mary Magdalene, fell to Earth, who gave birth to a new deity, Elua. Not acknowledged by the Yeshuite god, Elua went wandering the world in company with a number of angels who felt compelled to go with him. Eventually, Elua and his angelic companions came to the land that would become Terre D'Ange and settled there. Elua's main decree to all of his followers was "Love as thou wilt", and because of this, any sexual act is seen as holy by the D'Angelines. It also means that non-consensual sex of any kind is not only a crime, it's literal heresy. 

Phédre, our unlikely heroine, is the orphaned daughter of a courtesan, who is taken into the household of a mysterious nobleman. She is trained not only in the sexual arts, as a courtesan herself, but taught to watch, listen, observe, and reflect, and her patron, Anafiel Delauney, wants her and his other protegée, Alcuin, to spy for him and ferret out secrets among the nobility who have assignations with them, for reasons he refuses to reveal to them. Phédre has not only sworn herself to the service of Namaah, the goddess of pleasure but is utterly unique in her generation as someone marked by the stern god of punishment, Kushiel. She experiences sexual pleasure through pain, often the more extreme the better, and that makes her a valuable tool for Delauney to ferret out secrets. Both Phédre and Alcuin feel a strong debt of gratitude towards Delauney and therefore serve him with absolute loyalty, but as Phédre gets older, she can't help but wonder what conspiracy her patron is actually trying to uncover. Unfortunately, by the time she figures out the entire truth, she's also unearthed a conspiracy against the Crown itself and needs to be removed.

Since this book is more than twenty years old (originally published in 2001), anyone who wants to can find detailed plot summaries online. I don't really want to reveal too much of the plot, because part of the joys of this book is discovering it all for yourself. In a recent interview, the author herself described the book as "Kinky, but feminist! Epic fantasy, but alternate history! Tattoos! Slow-burn romance! Cool fight choreography! Subversive theology! Big battle scenes! Lyrical prose for readers who love words like ‘ormulu’ and ‘incarnadine!’" So if you think that might be something for you, you should absolutely consider giving it a chance. I hadn't read the book for more than a decade (probably closer to fifteen years by now) and was very happy to discover that it still absolutely holds up as well as it did in my memory, and still very much deserves its place as one of my favourite fantasy novels. I had forgotten just how slow it is to get started, but on the other hand, when the action finally kicks off at about the 40% mark, it doesn't slow down until the very last chapters and some of the action leaves you absolutely breathless. 

I first discovered this book back in 2004. I bought my mass-market paperback copy in Barnes and Noble on Union Square in New York while visiting my BFF Lydia. So it felt extra special to be re-reading it while I was visiting her and her husband now in their house in Vermont. The reason I remember so very clearly when and where I was when I first got this book is not only because it was unlike any fantasy I had read up until that point, pretty much, and it completely engrossed me, but also because the copy of the book that I bought had a misprint, where about halfway through, in possibly the most tense and dramatic section of the whole book (and that's saying something), about 70 pages of the book were missing. There was just a repeat of the previous 70 pages instead. I can promise you that it was a terrible place to suddenly be ripped out of the story, and I had to rush back to the bookstore the next day and secure myself another copy (which thankfully did not have the misprint), so I could see if my beloved protagonists survived their desperate trek through the icy northern wastes (if you've read the book, you know which bit I'm referring to). 

I decided to re-read this now because Jacqueline Carey published her companion novel Cassiel's Servant at the start of August, where we get to know Phédre's unfailingly loyal (if initially deeply disapproving) companion Jocelin Verruil a lot better. Not only do we get to see the events of Kushiel's Dart from his POV, but we also find out about his life before he gave his vow to protect and serve Phédre, no matter what. Unlike E.L. James and Stephanie Meyer, who also wrote POV novels from "the other side", this doesn't feel like a cynical cash grab to me. For one thing, Carey waited more than 20 years after publishing her original novel to do this, and Joscelin's book comes out 12 years after the last book Carey published in her Terre D'Ange universe. She's written a lot of other things in the interim, and I don't think she'd write and publish this companion novel if she didn't feel like it could shed new light on her already cult classic novel. 

It also pleases me that this book happened to become my 52nd review of the year. It feels good to Cannonball on a really excellent novel. 

Judging a book by its cover: In the decades since the novel first came out, it's had many different covers, but this is pretty much the original one. It was recently re-published with some gorgeous UK covers, that I'm going to have to resist buying (I already have the entire original trilogy, I don't need new copies). I know it's probably irrational, but I hate that the illustrated Phédre has bangs - why did anyone think that was a good idea? Phédre is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous (apparently nearly all D'Angelines are near-perfect specimens), and based on the historical setting this is supposed to take place in, that hairstyle feels very out of place.  

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR6 Book 42: "Songs of Love and Death: All Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love". Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner R. Dozois

Page count: 468 pages
Overall rating: 3.5 stars

This is an anthology, where all the stories are focused around love and death. I know, extremely surprising, based on the title. I will write a tiny bit about each of the stories, and conclude with my general impression of the anthology as a whole.

Love Hurts by Jim Butcher -  4 stars.
See my write-up here.

The Marrying Maid by Jo Beverley - 3 stars
A young man needs to convince a reluctant woman to marry him in less than three days, or a faerie curse will kill him and everyone in his entire family within the year.

I liked the concept, and that the story was set in the mid-18th Century, which is a lot earlier than a lot of the romance I read is set. It was an interesting concept, it just didn't engage me a whole lot.

Rooftops by Carrie Vaughn - 2 stars
A young playwright has an encounter with a superhero, in a city where they are clearly not all that unusual. She starts to wonder if her seemingly workaholic boyfriend has a secret identity.

I liked the blending of superheroes with the more mundane, but the story didn't really go anywhere exciting. The only other thing I've read by Vaughn is the first Kitty Norville book, which didn't impress me much either. Based on these things, I'm not likely to seek out more of her work anytime soon.

Hurt Me by M.L.N Hanover - 4 stars
A woman buys a purportedly haunted house and all the neighbours start speculating about how long she'll last. Strangely, the woman doesn't seem very bothered by the ghost, and may have had an ulterior motive for buying the house in the first place.

This was a really effective little horror story with a cool twist. When I started reading it, I wasn't too thrilled, but then the story had a quick turn-around, and changed my mind entirely. One of my favourite stories in the anthology.

Demon Lover by Cecilia Holland - 2 stars
Fioretta, a formerly beautiful village girl, crippled and scarred in a fire, accepts the magical aid of a wizard without considering the price she'll have to pay. She finds herself longing for her old life, and the chubby village boy who proposed to her.

I had trouble entirely sympathising with Fioretta's plight, as she was pretty much in a situation of her own making. She wasn't all that hideous or crippled, and there was absolutely an element of TSTL to her character.

The Wayfarer's Advice by Melinda M. Snodgrass - 2 stars
A sci-fi story in which the crew of a small trading vessel find the rescue pod of the ruling princess of the galaxy, after a space battle that appears to have destroyed her entire fleet. The captain and the Infanta obviously have a history, and loved each other when they were still in the military academy, yet she had to marry someone else for political reasons. Now, with everyone believing her dead, they might have a second chance at happiness.

I don't tend to like sci-fi at the best of times, but the science fiction wasn't the main gripe I had with this story. There was just a bit too much convenient coincidence, and I never really liked either of the main characters (although several of the supporting cast, the crew on the trade ship, were cool).

Blue Boots by Robin Hobb - 3.5 stars
Set in the same universe as her Farseer and Wildship Traders trilogies, this story takes place in one of the more remote seven duchies. A young serving maid can't help but become infatuated with the handsome minstrel of the keep, even when there are rumours that the minstrel is in fact involved in some way with the Lady of the Keep. They go on one date, but then he goes with the lady on an extended journey, and the entire keep is abuzz with gossip about how the lady's coming back with an heir for the crippled lord. Heart-broken, the girl is caught in a storm, nearly dies, and loses her memory. Can she ever be reunited with her minstrel lover?

I like Robin Hobb a lot, and it was lovely to revisit her world again, if only for a little while. I did think that it was blatantly obvious that most of the gossip spread around the keep was malicious, and that our young heroine was a bit too prone to doubt her beloved. Still, considering Hobb has the first book of a new trilogy featuring Fitz and the Fool, coming out later in the year, this was a very nice warm-up to get me excited.

The Thing about Cassandra by Neil Gaiman - 4 stars
A man keeps hearing friends and family mentioning his first girlfriend, Cassandra, to him, and thinks back to his teenage years. He's extremely surprised to discover that she's looking for him, and wants to reconnect.

This was a really very strange story, but I liked it a lot, and it still pops into my head even weeks after I finished the anthology. I tend to think that Gaiman's at his very best when he's writing short fiction. I can't wait for his entry in the upcoming Rogues (also edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois), which brings back the Marquis de Carabas.

After the Blood by Marjorie M. Liu - 1 star
I'm honestly having trouble remembering what this story was even about, because I skim-read the whole thing. Something about a post-apocalyptic future and danger and a dude who I think was some sort of vampire and a woman with woobly magical powers. His Amish-like family completely shunned him when they realised he'd turned into some supernatural creature.

Suffice to say, I didn't like the story at all, and can't be bothered to even skim through the collection to remember it. Based on this, I'm not going to be reading anything by Majorie M. Liu anytime soon.

You and You Alone by Jacqueline Carey - 4 stars
A prequel of sorts to Carey's Kushiel books, this tells the story of the epic romance between Prince Rolande of Terre D'Ange and Phédre's mentor, Anafiel. Because the framing narrative is set during the first third of Kushiel's Dart, there are some spoilers for that book, and anyone who hasn't read it yet (why haven't you, it's one of the greatest epic fantasy novels ever written!), should probably skip it and read once they've read the first book in the trilogy. I also don't want to give away too much of the plot here, as it is actually all pretty spoilery, but for a huge fan of Carey's Terre D'Ange universe, it was lovely to go back and revisit fairly minor characters and see how their stories fit into the greater whole.

I'm just going to reiterate - if you haven't read Kushiel's Dart, and you claim to like fantasy, you really should rearrange everything on your schedule so you can read it ASAP. You will thank me, I promise you.

His Wolf by Lisa Tuttle - 1.5 stars
A college professor in Texas falls in insta-love with a dude who owns a wolf. Turns out he's a drug dealer with shady connections, who's killed when he tries to give up his drug dealing (cause he loves her too - seriously they spend ONE afternoon together). The woman adopts his wolf.

Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with this. I hate insta-love. I really do. I refuse to believe that characters can built a viable and believable romance based on one casual afternoon together. This story didn't convince me of anything different. It was pretty dumb, in my opinion. Lisa Tuttle, you are unlikely to appear on my reading list.

Courting Trouble by Linnea Sinclair - 4 stars
Another sci-fi story where an intrepid starship captain reunites with her former best friend, who also happens to be a spy. They had a massive falling out when she felt he supported her cheating ex-boyfriend over her. Turns out he totally fancied her and still does. Now he they have to rescue her spaceship from being destroyed.

I'd only ever read Gabriel's Ghost by Linnea Sinclair before, and wasn't exactly blown away. To be fair, it was a monthly pick in Vaginal Fantasy, and the Grand Duchess of the bookclub herself, Felicia Day, admitted that they should have picked a different book in the series, as several of the others are better. Based on that promise, and this story, I think I would absolutely be up for trying some more of Sinclair's books. This was fun, had a convincing romance, a very cool heroine - and I'm always a sucker for a good secret agent hero.

The Demon Dancer by Mary Jo Putney - 1 star
A whole bunch of guys have died in the last twenty-four hours. A police officer with some sort of supernatural gift figures out that the deaths are due to a succubus being in town. She needs to be stopped. He works with the old lady "slayer" to bring her down.

OMG, this story was predictable and dumb. I could tell where the story was going from the first pages, and it didn't make me like it any more. The Guardians of the story clearly had extremely convenient powers for fighting evil, especially our hero. The romance angle was frankly rather skeevy, and the ending, which as I said, I'd seen coming from pretty much page two, just made me want to throw the book away. Mary Jo Putney, I've never read any of your romances, but based on this, you may be blacklisted now.

Under/Above the Water by Tanith Lee - 2 stars
I'm going to be entirely honest, I'm not completely sure I understood what went on in this story. There something about an ancient sunken underwater kingdom, and the betrayed ruler of such, and a heart-broken lady in a boat who witnessed someone drowning herself. The story keeps jumping, and the stories are clearly intertwined somehow, I should probably have read it more carefully.

I'm giving it 2 stars because it was nicely atmospheric, and I suspect I may have liked it more if I'd read it more carefully, and understood it more clearly.

Kaskia by Peter S. Beagle - 2 stars
A guy gets a strange computer from his brother-in-law with a number of keys you can't find on a normal keyboard. He starts interacting with an individual who may or may not be part of the computer, or exist in a universe somewhere else. His obsession with his new online friend starts putting his current relationship in danger.

This story was just wierd, and ended a bit strangely and sadly. I'm not sure I like the implications that were made towards the end of the story.

The Man in the Mirror by Yasmine Galenorn - 2 stars
A young woman moves into an abandoned old house, trying to recover from an abusive former relationship. She discovers that there is a man trapped in the mirrors of the house, the cousin of the man who used to torment her. Frightened at first, the young woman comes to find the man a comforting presence.

This was quite a sad story, and I felt a lot of sympathy for the heroine. I haven't read anything else by Galenorn, but wouldn't rule out trying something, as I didn't hate this story, by any means.

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows by Diana Gabaldon - 3.5 stars
Pilot Jerry MacKenzie is asked by a special operative to train for a secret reconnaissance mission. While practising in the highlands of Scotland just before All Hallow's Eve, his plane crashes, and he passes out after experiencing something inexplicable by a stone circle. He discovers that he is trapped, far away from his wife and son, and desperately tries to return to them.

This story is connected to events in Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone, book 7 in her Outlander series, and the only one I haven't read yet. I suspect this story will not have resonated very much with people unfamiliar with Gabaldon's universe, but as I know which character Jerry MacKenzie and his wife Dolly are connected to, and understand why this story was told, I found it a lovely expansion of the already existing story. I suspect I may have rated it even higher if I'd read the book it's most closely connected to, but that shall have to wait for later in the year, when I've finished my first Cannonball.

So those are all the stories. I tend to find that anthologies that feature multiple genres, and multiple authors, many of which write about already established characters, can be a bit hit and miss. Because in this case, most of the stories here that were connected to other series, such as those of Butcher, Carey and Gabaldon, were authors whose books I have pretty much all read and love, those stories worked really well for me. I honestly am not sure how those three stories would work for non-fans of the authors' books. As for a lot of the other stories, there were very few I actively hated. I read the entire anthology because it fit into several of my reading challenges, most prominently the Monthly Motif one. I also own this book in a rather gorgeous hardback copy, an anniversary gift from my husband, so it felt wrong to only read selected stories. In future anthologies of this kind, I may only dip in and read the ones that seem relevant to me.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR3 Book 54: "Naamah's Blessing" by Jacqueline Carey

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Page count: 624 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: July 7th, 2011
Date finished: July 10th, 2011

This is the third and final book in a trilogy (which is, in turn, the third trilogy set in the fictional world of Terre D'Ange, and this review will contain some spoilers for the first and second books in the series. If you want to avoid them, skip this review, and go read Jacqueline Carey's excellent Kushiel's Dart instead.

Moirin has been away from her father's homeland of Terre D'Ange for years. She has endured much, experienced numerous exotic countries and cultures, but returns with her beloved husband Bao. The land she returns to is much changed. King Daniel is grieving his dead wife to the point where he's no longer able to rule and has appointed an ambitious Regent to rule in his stead, three-year-old princess Desirée, a miniature version of Queen Jehanne, hardly ever sees her father and is being raised by nursemaids. The crown prince, Thierry, is on an expedition to Terra Nova, the recently discovered continent far across the sea to the West. Moirin and Bao do their best to make the princess feel loved and Moirin accepts the role as Desirée's oath-sworn protector, even though several people at court fear and avoid her, due to her half-pagan heritage. When disaster strikes the royal house, Moirin and her husband have to travel to Terra Nova, to prove that Prince Thierry is not dead, as rumour would have it, and bring him back to Terre D'Ange. It's a long and hazardous journey, and mistakes from her past come back to haunt her, making the task nearly impossible.

Naamah's Blessing is in reality the concluding volume of nine books in Jacqueline Carey's alternate history version of our world. Throughout the nine books (the preceeding two trilogies set several generations before this one), she has explored an alternate Renaissance Europe, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and in this trilogy, Asia, Central and South America. Her books are wonderfully researched, and there is a lot of historical knowledge to be gained from them, even though they are set in a fantasy universe. While travelling much greater distances than either Phédre or Imriel, the protagonists of Carey' other trilogies, Moirin's life, although eventful, contain a lot less political intrigue, and that, in some ways, makes this third trilogy less engaging and thrilling than the other two. While it is never boring to read one of these books, neither book in Moirin's trilogy excited me as much as Carey's first trilogy, or Kushiel's Mercy, the third book in the Imriel trilogy. Still, they are great comfort reading, and very well written, so if you enjoy Carey's other Terre D'Ange book, read these as well.

CBR2 Book 59: "Naamah's Curse" by Jacqueline Carey

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Page count: 576 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: June 12th, 2010
Date finished: June 13th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR NAAMAH'S KISS!

For those who may not have heard of her, Jacqueline Carey is the author of two completed fantasy trilogies, and currently working on a third, set in a world which bears similarities to our own. Looking at the map in the front of her books, the geography bears striking similarity to that of our world, but the countries bear different names.

The main characters from her first two trilogies were from Terre D'Ange, the land of the Angels, loosely based on Renaissance France. To quote from her books: "Elua was born when the blood of Yeshua ben Yosef, the son of the one God, mingled with the tears of the Magdelene and was carried in the womb of Mother Earth. With Elua's peaceful wanderings and the one God's rejection of him, seven angels then rejected God to become Elua's companions on Earth. These angels and Elua himself then founded a nation (Terre D'Ange) and comingled with humans before leaving. D'Angelines are the people from their descent. The D'Angelines live after one precept: "Love as thou wilt". They are all strikingly beautiful in different ways, and really open about sex.

As Carey kept writing, she showed her readers more of her fantasy world. The heroine of her third trilogy, Moirin mac Fainche, is the daughter of a D'Angeline diplomat and an Alban priestess. Alba is a mix of Pictish Britain and Celtic Ireland, pretty much. Moirin's people worship the great bear spirit, but as she is half D'Angeline, she is called on adventures, and to find out what that side of her heritage means. Moirin's travels take her across the sea to Terre D'Ange, and much further again, to the great Chi'in Empire (China), where she has to help the Emperor save his daughter, who is possessed by a dragon. It may sound lame, but it's really not! She falls in love with a half-Tartar (Mongolian) peasant boy, the assistant to the scholar she is traveling with, but he is accidentally killed while they are saving the princess. The old wise man she is with, uses Moirin's limited healing powers and his own, to sacrifice his own spirit, and Bao is brought back, at the cost of his Master's life. After his resurrection, Bao and Moirin are also forever connected, as half of Moirin's soul, always connected to the great bear spirit, seems to be lodged in Bao.

Unable to deal with this, and the death of his beloved Master, Bao leaves Moirin, to find out about his own heritage, in the Tartar lands. At the start of Naamah's Curse, Moirin is sick of sitting around waiting for him, so she goes in search of him. This means we get to see Carey's version of historical Mongolia, a real treat for me as I visited the country last year. Moirin does find Bao, and their reunion is glorious, but the book wouldn't be very long if Moirin got her happy ending a quarter of the way in. Moirin is abducted by Vralian priests and taken far away from Bao. Vralia is pretty much Russia, and the priests there worship in a variation of the Greek Orthodox Church. The priests have heard of the shocking customs of the D'Angelines, and this bishop believes if he can "cure" Moirin of her sinful, and lustful ways, and make her a convert, his religion will spread far and wide - to become the only true religion.

By the time Moirin escapes, she realizes that Bao is no longer in the Tartar lands, and as Moirin has been kept in warded chains that drown out their connection, he has traveled in the opposite direction from where she is, and has become captive of the legendary and deadly Spider-Queen of Kurugiri (located approximately where Tajikistan is today). So Moirin obviously has to set off to rescue him, impossible a task as that may seem at first.

Jacqueline Carey's books are always a treat, and Naamah's Curse was no exception. Her language is rich and descriptive, and very evocative. Some readers may be a bit put off by the graphic descriptions of sex in her earlier trilogies, but Moirin, not being a courtesan, as her first protagonist, or a young, beautiful man, as her second protagonist, does not have nearly as much sex and the books are amazing fantasy adventures that I would recommend to anyone. If you've never tried Carey's books, and are curious, I would recommend either starting at the beginning of this trilogy - with Naamah's Kiss, or going back to the very beginning and reading Kushiel's Dart (probably still her best book).