15 October 2002

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
Tor Books, 2001
Reviewed by Amy Harlib
www.rambles.net/amy_harlib.html

Amy Harlib, an avid and lifelong reader of SF & F literature, is retired with plenty of time to indulge in her passion for reading. She lives in New York City and welcomes intelligent feedback and discussion about the genre. Other enthusiasms include cats, archeology/anthropology/paleontology, folklore and mythology, genre films, science for intelligent laypersons, and memoirs/narratives as literature.

Jacqueline Carey has produced an amazing first fantasy aptly subtitled "a novel of passion, magic and betrayal" in Kushiel's Dart, set in a meticulously conceived parallel version of Renaissance Europe. In a Mediterranean-like country called Terre d'Ange, the inhabitants believe themselves descended from angels born from the mingling of the tears of the Magdalene, who is weeping over the sacrifice of a Christ-like figure, with the blood in the earth below him. The great Earth Mother used the stained soil to form Blessed Elua, the most beloved of Angels and eight followers who embody various aspects of his sacred precept, "Love as Thou Wilt." The D'Angelines believe they descended from these demi-gods, (or so our heroine Phedre informs us), and interpret this message quite literally and regard all forms of intimacy as holy acts of worship, including those that would be anathema to our culture.

Phedre, "a whore's unwanted get," is sold at a young age to one of the Houses of the Night Court where the highly developed arts of sexual expression serve simultaneously to bring pleasure and to honor the higher powers. Phedre possesses Kushiel's Dart, a red pinprick mote in one eye that is seen as the mark of the angel Kushiel, whose gift is the enjoyment of all types of sensual stimulation including pain.

When the noble Anafiel Delauney buys Phedre's bond, he treats her like a favored daughter, training her to be literate in several languages, and knowledgeable about politics, history, philosophy and the arts of pleasure. He encourages her to hone her observational and critical abilities so she can become a spy as well as a courtesan. Allowed to accept only those clients she chooses, Phedre receives payment in the form of rich gifts and gathers information for Delauney. Eventually, Phedre becomes the unwitting victim of Delauney's former partner, Melisande Shahrizal, a cunning and ruthless antagonist whose Machiavellian machinations include not only Delauney's destruction, but also the rule of Terre d'Ange. Unable to stop Delauney's downfall or to resist Melisande, Phedre is betrayed. Along with her sworn companion/bodyguard, a warrior-priest named Jocelyn, Phedre is sold into slavery among the Viking-like Skaldi. Eventually, Phedre and Jocelyn make a grueling escape and journey back to their homeland to deliver a warning of immanent invasion. Along the way, their adventures involve banned poets, scheming courtiers, deposed royalty, daring sea voyagers, fascinating Albans (analogous to Celts), gypsyesque Tsingani (including a reunion with a childhood friend), unexpectedly heroic traitors, an embattled queen, and the supernatural.

Reminiscent of masterful works of Guy Gavriel Kay and Richard Adams' Shardik and Maia, Carey's Kushiel's Dart maintains a distinct voice in its narrator/heroine who, like all the characters, leading and supporting, possesses complexity and believable motivations. With her perceptive, unsparing gaze and wry wit, Phedre records her adventures and personal growth as she comes to see her 'gifts' as both a curse and a blessing while never losing her religious zeal. Carey manages to convey a sense of a rich and varied world full of layers of history, tradition and cultural diversity. Most fascinating and potentially controversial are the descriptions of a wide variety of sexual practices with partners of every gender and persuasion. These are never gratuitous and are always tinged with the sacred potential the D'Angelines believe is present in every such encounter.

Kushiel's Dart, despite its length, offers such a riveting yarn of intense emotions, intriguing background, compelling personalities, provocative blends of Christianity and Paganism and spiritual sensuality that readers will finish it satisfied and ready to turn to the next volume in the planned trilogy, Kushiel's Chosen, which was published by Tor this spring. Recommended for a mature, non-judgmental audience, Kushiel's Dart brilliantly presents its non-standard notions of magic and morality. By turns grandiose and intimate, the book pierces to the core and resounds long in the memory.