Kushiel's Dart (Kushiel's Legacy) by Jacqueline Carey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Kushiel's Dart (Kushiel's Legacy)
Book Review: The Story of "O" meets Kim
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a sumptuous, sensuous, sophisticated book; it's magnificent. Set in a beautifully-realized alternate history world with a truly interesting and workable theology, KUSHIEL'S DART is an intelligent erotic-political fantasy for adults. A marvelous, hate-to-put-it-down read.Book Review: Perverse and overblown
Summary: 2 Stars
I find first person writing hard to get into in the first place. Now I have to wonder what is up with Tor. Child prostitution, rape, and all other forma of perversion seem to gather great reviews but left me with my stomach turned. This is certainly a carefully written book, so I gave it an extra star, but the plot is dully buried under the titallation and I did not find the characters appealing. I guess sex sells.
Book Review: "That which yields is not always weak"
Summary: 5 Stars
Two days ago I walked into my favorite bookstore and was greeted with shouts and a rather heavy book tossed into my hands. The owner told me that this book "had my name written all over it". So I shelled out my money and took it home.Wow! I cannot say that I ever imagined such a book as this existing. With today's society being as obsessed and disgusted with taboos as it is, the fact that a book that combines S/M, fantasy, erotica, slave literature, political intrigue, and incredible battle scenes is out there, it's just too lovely.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who has a penchant for the interesting, but not for those who are light of heart. Phedre's scenes with her patrons are often more in depth than the average "spanking scene" that books incorporating S/M contain. Kushiel's Dart also maintains an impressive ability to be pansexual. No matter what sexual orientation or proclivities it's readers have, they will find something to interest them.
The best part of this book, as far as I see it, is the fact that the villainess is not 100% loathsome to the protaganist. In fact, it is the love/hate/fear relationship that really sends the plot running.
This is a great book, and I'm still trying to figure out how this is a first novel.
Book Review: The Best Book of the Year
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best fantasy book I've read in a long time, hands down -- although calling it a fantasy is a bit of a stretch at times. There's very little magic involved and it reads more as an alternate history. So, it kept my attention with a strong narrative and highly interesting characters.The main character, Phedre, who tells the story, is a complex character not always happy (but quite often so) with her lot in life, that of a courtesan who enjoys sex no matter what the circumstances, including extreme pain. Once this "gift" is recognized as a young girl, she's raised to take advantage of it to get information out of high-ranking officials, while enjoying herself in the process.
The story winds into many places, eventually taking her all over the known world. But the journey doesn't detract from the story, but rather adds facets to Phedre's personality, also enabling her to make many friends and enemies who enrich the story.
I'm sure this story isn't for everyone. The sex is explicit and often violent. While it's more character-driven than plot-driven, there's a definite goal and resolution to the story. I'm very much looking forward to future books from this author and I want to thank her for writing a book I'm not going to have to wait for a year or more for a resolution to.
Book Review: Fun book, great heroine
Summary: 4 Stars
Kushiel's Dart is a fun, different, sensual historical fantasy/romance. I didn't find it really "big", though, not epic or mythic the way George RR Martin's or Frank Herbert's books are. It's really a personal adventure, the story of a woman with extraordinary gifts and problems who manages to find a place in her world and save her country as well as herself along the way.This book reminded me at times of Guy Gavriel Kay's A SONG FOR ARBONNE -- but with a lot more sex and S&M, and with a heroine who is definitely one of a kind. Fantasy/romance readers who don't mind explicit sexuality, say fans of Storm Constantine or Laurell K. Hamilton, should love it.
Phedre, our heroine, is born an "unwanted whore's get" in a nation sort of like medieval France, and raised in a society of courtesans. She has the curse (gift?) that she enjoys being made to suffer, and enjoys pain. Naturally, she's trained to serve as a prostitute for men and women with sadistic tastes. But she soon becomes more than that. From prostitute she becomes a court intriguer, from court intriguer she becomes captive and spy in barbarian lands, from captive and spy she becomes a wartime ambassador, and by the end she's become a noblewoman in her own right, come to terms with her taste for suffering, and found True Love. Oh, and she saves the kingdom from treachery and invasion, too.
Phedre is what makes the book worthwhile -- watching her grow into herself, celebrating her victories, rooting for her when she's in evil hands (which is often). Phedre is almost never safe, but she's always growing, so to speak, always becoming stronger, and the challenges she faces keep changing. She certainly earns her victories. She's both the most distinctive and the most real fantasy heroine I've read in a long time. Other fantasy heroines are too often generic "compassionate women" or "warrior women" or (still worse) "universally perfect women", but Phedre is both unique and completely believable.
The writing in the book is very good. The setting and the other characters are fine, they seem quite real, but the interest of the story is always Phedre. That's my one complaint. Unlike Zelazny's Amber books or Herbert's Dune, I can't say the _world_ of this book fascinated me. I don't find myself yearning to know more about most of the places the author describes. I can't say I cared too much about what happened to the people who weren't in Phedre's personal struggle. For me this book was all about the heroine, and the world and the plot were just stages (if well-written stages) through which she moved. So whether you love or like or hate this book probably depends on what you read fantasy for: the world and the story, or the hero(ine) who leads you through it? I fell in between on this one.
If you're a "world" person or a "plot" person, you might be happier elsewhere. But if you read for the sake of a main character you hope to fall in love with and suffer and triumph with, and if you don't mind a book with a lot of sexual content, Kushiel's Dart should delight you.