May Book Review: Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

First, the blurb:

Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy...and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange, she has no choice.

Betrayed into captivity in the barbarous northland of Skaldia and accompanied only by a disdainful young warrior-priest, Phédre makes a harrowing escape and an even more harrowing journey to return to her people and deliver a warning of the impending invasion. And that proves only the first step in a quest that will take her to the edge of despair and beyond. Phédre nó Delaunay is the woman who holds the keys to her realm's deadly secrets, and whose courage will decide the very future of her world.

Considering Kushiel’s Dart originally came out in 2001, and the third book in the Phédre trilogy (Kushiel’s Avatar) was published in 2003, I’m going to go ahead and not worry too much about spoilers. If you haven’t read it yet, are considering doing so, and are sensitive about spoilers...just go ahead and skip this review.

All three of you who read my blog.

And now, on to the review.

Several friends have recommended Kushiel’s Dart to me over the years, but I never got around to reading it. A delay I now deeply regret. When one of my beta readers said my writing (in particular, the book I’m querying) reminded her of the original trilogy—Carey has since published two spinoff trilogies and a standalone that retells this first novel from a different character’s POV—I decided to move it up on my TBR list. Having finally immersed myself in Phédre’s world of Terre d’Ange, I am simultaneously deeply flattered at the comparison and questioning that beta reader’s sanity...because I am not at all in the same league as Carey, but oh boy, one day I long to be.

Almost as much as I longed to throttle Joscelin during some portions of this book when he was being particularly judgmental and stubborn.

Let’s start with the world-building, because that was some next-level awesome sauce (sorry, my elder millennial is showing). One of my favorite things about fantasy as a genre is the ability to immerse myself in a completely new world, to explore different magics and mythologies and cultures, but my absolute favoritest favorite thing is when that new world is rooted in real-world history. I would classify this as a secondary world, though I’ve seen several others describe it as alternate history based loosely on classical cultures reimagined in a late medieval/early renaissance period, which is fair. As a history buff with a background in linguistics, I enjoyed matching up real-world cultures with their fictional representations and piecing together the big events of world history that Carey changed in creating Terre d’Agne, which centered around an apocryphal addition to the crucifixion of Jesus (Yeshua) in which his blood mixed with Mary Magdalene’s tears in the womb of Mother Earth to produce the angel/god Elua, who several angels then defected from heaven to follow. The former Catholic in me reveled in the blasphemy of it all.

Characters: I love Phédre. I loved her introspective and analytical voice. I loved her sensuality. I loved her heart and compassion. She was a compelling character, and every time her heart broke, so did mine. I cried multiple times reading this book (and reading the series) for Phédre’s sake. I teared up when Delauney bought her marque, thereby rescuing her from a life of ignominy. I bawled when he later died alongside her foster brother, even though I knew it was coming; she foreshadowed such tragedy from the first. And that’s not even getting into everything Phédre suffers in Skaldia, on her journey back to Terre d’Agne, in her quest to fulfill her mentor’s blood oath.

And Joscelin. Oh, Joscelin. Stoic, valiant, faithful, desperately and tragically in love with Phédre, and with a physical description awfully reminiscent of my own husband. I do have a soft spot for men who are tall, blonde, and brooding. And is there anything more deliciously brooding than a man sworn to celibacy falling for a woman who serves, with her body, both a goddess of love and a god of pain? What a love story, truly.

With a book as long as Kushiel’s Dart (and two more books in the trilogy of comparable length), there’s a whole slew of well-developed characters to love and hate—sometimes in equal measure. Melisande? Be still my little bi heart (even if she is a villain).

And that’s another thing I’ll mention: love me some bi rep, presented without judgment.

Writing style: Beautiful. Reflective. Perfect. It has the taste of an elegant and poignant memoire, narrated with the wisdom of distance while maintaining the visceral immersion of present experience as Phédre walks us through her early life, training, coming of age, quest, and all the trials and tribulations therein. This is the quality of writing to which I aspire. This is the tone and pacing I wish more contemporary genre fiction possessed. The contrast is especially apparent, having recently read mostly books published in the past few years or so (in search of comp titles, more or less, as I am very much a nostalgia reader). It feels like—and this is only my perspective—the narration in contemporary genre fiction isn’t allowed to breathe. If no one is getting stabbed on page one, no one is reading past page two. The MC has to flit from crisis to crisis with no rests or reflection, or the book is “boring.” We fixate on a character’s sweaty palms or shallow breathing and call it interiority, instead of letting the narration linger on a single event or emotion, or even using narration to fill in the blanks between more “exciting” scenes. Meanwhile, Phédre lingers, and it’s perfect. Her story will likewise linger in my brain for decades to come.

...which, come to think of it, might have something to do with why I haven’t acquired myself a traditional publishing deal yet. Apparently, such a writing style isn’t really in vogue anymore, and supposedly it is nigh on impossible to get a book with a word count higher than 100k trad pubbed, and almost certainly not as a debut. Alas, contemporary attention spans leave much to be desired, and that’s not even accounting for reduced leisure time for everyone across the board. We’re so busy go-go-going and, in many cases, just trying to survive, we by and large don’t have time to sit and read and appreciate literary quality writing in genre fiction.

Considering The Night Chemist likewise takes place in a secondary world inspired by speculative real-world history and features a bisexual (and sexually liberated) heroine with an introspective, analytical voice, I suppose I can see some validity in my beta reader’s comment after all. I’m pretty confident in my abilities, but I am also humble enough to admit Carey does it better. But more than anything, reading this trilogy just made me nostalgic for 90s – early 00s fantasy. The books I checked out from my school library every week and devoured. The books that made me fall in love with stories. The books that made me want to be a writer in the first place. Patricia McKillip, Juliet Marillier, Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and Jane Lindskold were far more influential on my own literary voice than anything published since 2020. If I had read Kushiel’s Dart when it first came out, I have no doubt Jacqueline Carey would be on that list of influences...and she most certainly is now.