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hekate24 's review for:
Kushiel's Dart
by Jacqueline Carey
10/5/2019. A comforting reread for the hell of it. This is an old favorite and this won't be a review so much as a meditation on how my relationship to this series has changed over the years. Putting it all under a spoiler tag.
And yet, this is the book that's most honest, imo, about how harmful and hypocritical D'Angeline society can be. They make a civic religion out of free love and consent but- as in all societies- there's a ton of tension between the civic religion and what people are doing. Supposedly sex is put on a pedestal and Naamah's service is holy. And yet people call Phedre a whore all the time, and she's looked down upon for her mother (who is at the upper echelon of Naamah's servants by the by) being a "whore" as well.
The emphasis on D'Angeline beauty also smacks of eugenics at times, but at least it complicates things by having Phedre's life be very uncertain solely because of a tiny spot in one of her eyes.
I wish that the latter books had leaned into this kind of tension more.
All this aside, this is still a thrilling book. Rereads actually improve it because you have a much better sense of all the different factions. The escape from Skaldia is one of my favorite sequences in all of literature all these years later. Also Phedre is a wonderful heroine. She's deeply flawed and that's fantastic. She's very much a product of her culture and milieu, rude af at times, but such a clever survivor as well.
The older I get- and the more I side-eye D'Angeline culture- the more I can appreciate Joscelin as well, heh.
Spoiler
This is the messiest book in the OG trilogy (particularly regarding all the heavy handed foreshadowing.) The older I get the more disgusted I become by Delaunay, who I've never really liked. It's hard to be upset by his reduced station when the first third of this book is devoted to him grooming two young children and then having sex with one of them. There are so many people who deserve to be punished on behalf of Alcuin in particular with Melisande at the bottom of the list, to be honest. The part where it discusses nobles observing as Alcuin grows with excruciating slowness from child to young adult makes me want to throw up forever. It really bothers me that Carey seems to venerate Delaunay. I can see why Phedre would, but given that the author has written short stories about him and Rolande... Yeah.And yet, this is the book that's most honest, imo, about how harmful and hypocritical D'Angeline society can be. They make a civic religion out of free love and consent but- as in all societies- there's a ton of tension between the civic religion and what people are doing. Supposedly sex is put on a pedestal and Naamah's service is holy. And yet people call Phedre a whore all the time, and she's looked down upon for her mother (who is at the upper echelon of Naamah's servants by the by) being a "whore" as well.
The emphasis on D'Angeline beauty also smacks of eugenics at times, but at least it complicates things by having Phedre's life be very uncertain solely because of a tiny spot in one of her eyes.
I wish that the latter books had leaned into this kind of tension more.
All this aside, this is still a thrilling book. Rereads actually improve it because you have a much better sense of all the different factions. The escape from Skaldia is one of my favorite sequences in all of literature all these years later. Also Phedre is a wonderful heroine. She's deeply flawed and that's fantastic. She's very much a product of her culture and milieu, rude af at times, but such a clever survivor as well.
The older I get- and the more I side-eye D'Angeline culture- the more I can appreciate Joscelin as well, heh.