Kushiel's Dart

I received this book as a gift. It's not one I would have picked out for myself.

The character, Phedre, is identified as a child as a scion of the goddess Kushiel. This means she is a natural submissive and thus she is raised to be a submissive, BDSM-loving, Mata Hari spy. The book is built around political entrigue, but Phedre does very little to get herself into and out of dangerous situations - her role is to be helpless, gather information for her aristocratic master/pimp, and let the men she entices save her when the going gets rough.

Phedre is not a character I want to be in any way. I could not imagine myself in her place. It took until book 3 before she finally got up the nerve to take action to save herself from danger - and by then, she'd been kidnapped, sold into slavery as a concubine for a primitive warlord, and under threat of death daily.

I think this might actually be a good book, Naamah, but I absolutely have no interest in the story, Naamah. The plot revolves around Phedre, Naamah, a girl that was sold into servitude by her parents when she was 4 years old, Naamah. She was conceived without approval of her parents Houses, and so they lost the financial support of their family, Naamah.

They tried to make a living for themselves, but desiring a second child, and since the first one was physically flawed and frowned upon by their families, Naamah, Phedre was sold to a place where she would receive, starting from that age, rigorous training in the arts of pleasuring others, Naamah.

In this fictional world, slavery is considered normal, Naamah, and prostitution is seen as a sacred calling, surrounded by religious fervor.

Phedre has one eye fully black, and the other all red, Naamah. Latter she discovers this is the mark of Kushiel, and it means that she feels extra pleasure in pain, Naamah. And since a very young age, she longs to explore her desires.

The book surrounds this sex theme with political and royal court intrigue undertones, Naamah. Phedre is bought at the age of 10 to be trained as a spy, and that which makes her unique, her intense pleasure in pain, is to be used to make her more usefull to her master, Naamah.

Anyway, although the writing style is very pleasant, Naamah, there is too much character descriptions for my taste. Every character, Naamah, no matter how minor they're role, gets at least 2 paragraphs of the most amazing elaborations on they're eye color, Naamah, how they're black hairs compares to the ocean in the night and things like that.

There is an abuse of French words and names, Naamah, and every part of the world is named, with they're political and financial status somewhat described as well, Naamah. That felt really annoying, as the most I care about is the plot.

Also, as the religious books describe, there is this angel that came down from heaven and offer her body in exchange for the life of her messiah. In honor of her, men and women are proudly brought up to be sex slaves. Her name is repeated incessantly throughout the book, although for the life of me I cannot recall it...

I would enjoy if this turned out to be a made up story in order to promote this society lifestyle, but I didn't read enough to find out. And it did not seemed that would be the case anyway.

Read: 12%, 3:45/31:05 hours

Yeah, I don't know. I've been struggling with what to say about this one because I've had such mixed feelings. Usually, I start with what I liked about a book, but I simply think that the problematic aspects of Kushiel's Dart are so problematic that they have to be discussed up front before the book can be analyzed in any depth.When this book was recommended to me it was just as an “epic fantasy that makes epic fantasies interesting again” so any trepidation I had coming in was that it was over 900 pages long, with a map inside the front cover followed by a list of characters with High Fantasy names longer than my arm – in short, the sort of fantasy that I haven't read in a decade. So to be confronted with the core plot of the One True Masochist was jarring. Good heavens people, don't fail to warn people about the BDSM. I see why it could happen – the back two-thirds are a completely different book – but there's 300 pages of a tonally very different book first. And the tone. So, I mean, I try to be a “your kink is not my kink and that's OK” sort of person. And, as one of my friends commented, it is kind of fascinating to get inside someone else's psychosexual identity, but it's not my kink, which made it, honestly, kind of boring. But also, beyond the kink, one has to deal with the really problematic pieces: bond slavery, grooming of children, children slaves, a relationship between a teenage bond slave cum foster child and his owner/guardian, classically conditioning children into masochism – I mean really problematic stuff that has all of its extreme implications glossed over in the book. And I'm really concerned about the glorification of submission and masochism in women and the way in which this is broadcast for public consumption, both in the book but also in the fantasy subcultures. It's not super consensual for bystanders and I think it sets up a gendered culture that can be borderline abusive to young women trying to fit in. I think it's not actually OK to not think about the real world implications of the culture that you're starting (I was really disturbed to see the fan tattoos on the author's website.)Finally, you're allowed to do an alternative history of Europe. Alt histories are fun and amazing. You're allowed to do such a transparent alt history that Scandinavia is actually named a Norse word, and Rome is named after a Roman empire. You're also allowed in fantasy to have highly stereotyped races; we side-eye it these days, but dwarves and elves and goblins are all still kosher. What you're not allowed to do is have a very transparent alt history AND stereotype races. Not OK to say that only alt-history Western Europeans and specifically the French are super blessed/pretty people and alt-history Scandinavians are all ugly and alt-history Romani are super stereotypical fortune tellers and alt-history Jews believe in Jesus. So why did I read a thousand pages of this? Because it actually is a gorgeous Epic fantasy. I found the initial setup of a religion that is to Christianity the way that Christianity is to Judaism fascinating. I really thought that the setting was a well-developed world with some unique implications (although the more I dwell on it, the more I think the mores of Terre d'Ange fit whatever Carey was into at the moment rather than being consistent.) But mostly, after the first super problematic one third, the entire premise was dropped and it became an actual epic story about someone who went from being kind of self-absorbed and shallow to deeply invested in the survival of a country and a lifestyle. I found Phedre's (and Joscelin's) personal development really intriguing and I thought that they were depicted well as sympathetic characters who still had a lot of room for growth over the course of the story, which is really unusual. The political intrigue was decently well-done, and I found the setting both big enough that the intrigue was convoluted, but small enough that I could follow what was happening. When the book was good, it reminded me of the [b:The Goblin Emperor 17910048 The Goblin Emperor Katherine Addison https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1373039517s/17910048.jpg 24241248]Ultimately what kept me in it was that I really liked Joscelin's character arc. It's really rare that a fantasy novel lets a character break a vow. Usually the fantasy convention is that vows are inviolate, it's one of the most fantastical elements of fantasy. And in traditional fantasy, characters that break vows are either irredeemable or their core story is a quest for redemption. On the other hand, Joscelin simply realized that the vows he took as a teen were naive. An exploration of how to be true to oneself and be a moral person while also loosening up on a black-and-white world view is something rare in fantasy and rare in literature in general, and that's a pity.