Publisher: Tor Books

Author: Jacqueline Carey

Release Date: 3/15/2002

Pages: 912

MSRP: $7.99

Recommended Audience: Adult

Being a successful author these days is hard because of the sea of wannabe authors, have-beens, and have-nots, but the few that stick out do so for a reason, as Jacqueline Carey does with this erotic book of adventure and gripping characters. The story has a huge backstory and is all about politics and religion, and it just goes on and on and would take me forever to explain it all. The synopsis is that the main character, Phedre, is pricked with Kushiel’s dart, and she is his chosen scion and has a red mote in her eye. Her parents sell her to one of the Thirteen Houses of Naamah, and she becomes a high-end courtesan who learns this skill at age 10. Yes, this book isn’t for the lighthearted and really challenges your moral views. However, the book is very tasteful, and she uses her skills in the art of making it.

She gets her marque bought by a man named Anafiel no Dalaunay and his pupil Alciun to use her love-making skills to get information out of lords and kings. There’s a lot more to this, and Phedre’s character as well as all the others is very strong, but the book itself is an epic on its own, and you go through 20 years of her life. The book is heavy on politics, and there are a ton of weird, almost unpronounceable names she throws at you in just a few chapters, and I felt this was the weak part of the book. There are too many politics at once, which makes it hard to keep track of everyone, which name rules what land, etc. The politics are deep and eventually come out in the end and untangle, but 900 pages of trying to figure it out is a chore. The book has some bad pacing and doesn’t get truly exciting until past chapter 40.

This book tests your patience, but if you wait, you will be rewarded with amazing and lovable characters that you really get to care for and admire. I can name a whole list of names, but you have to really read the book to know what I am talking about. Not since The Lord of the Rings and The Night Angel Trilogy have I read such amazing characters. There’s a lot packed into this one book, with a sad and amazing journey that she and Joscelin (her Cassiline Brotherhood bodyguard) had. They go through so much horrible stuff that it really hits you hard. My only gripe about the characters is that Phedre seems to get through the most inhumane things without much of a scratch, which makes her seem a little unrealistic. If you can look past this, the characters are something you will remember and think about weeks after finishing the book.

The world is made up kind of like Lord of the Rings, and she explains the entire epic journey very well, but the best part of the book is the last third because that’s when the politics die down and the two go on this impossible journey to save the realm from the Skaldic barbarians slaughtering everyone. Not often is a book too big and full of too much content to explain it all because there is an unreal amount of detail in the book. Day-by-day events, and she rarely skips these, so the whole book flows and feels like an amazing tale.

If you have the patience to stomach the heavy politics and tons of detail leading up to the epic adventure, then I promise you this will be one of the best books you will ever read. The book does have some graphic sex scenes, but Carey writes them in taste and makes it very erotic and steamy, but they are spared, and the scenes are actually part of the whole story and not just there to get guys to read it. There are a few unbelievable parts when she starts introducing myth and fantasy, because this book seems very realistic until those points. Other than that, this is probably one of the best books of the new generation and shouldn’t be missed.