The Burkshelf

Starting a piece of writing can sometimes be one of the hardest parts of writing it, even for a book review, and especially for this one. I’ve been reading Jacqueline Carey’s adventures in Terre d’Ange for years now, starting with Kushiel’s Dart and just recently wrapping up Naamah’s Blessing. And I can honestly say that the nine books that comprise these three trilogies are among the best fantasy available today as well as nine of my all-time favorite books I’ve ever read. Ask me a question about some aspect of them and I can start rambling for an hour, but how do you pick a spot to begin at with this much to talk about?

I’ve been meaning to review the Kushiel and Naamah books since I started this blog, but covering just one book on its own is no good – by now, they’ve all melted into one massive and epic storyline in my head spanning multiple generations of characters. Also, it’s been a while since I finished Kushiel’s Dart, and like most series, you have to start at the beginning to fully appreciate what comes afterward.

So instead of talking about a single book in the series or each one individually, I’ve decided instead to write one big ass review to cover my thoughts on the series as a whole. Call it a bittersweet celebration for my finally having finished the last book, a going away party as I finally leave Terre d’Ange behind. Also, seeing as how Ms. Carey herself recently sounded off on the feasibility of the whole shebang being adapted for screen, it’s almost timely.

The Spoiler-Free Overview

If you want the shorter, less spoilery answer for what I think of these books: holy crap, yes, they’re as good as everyone says they are. Jacqueline Carey has a way of making me just…feel stuff like no other author can. Plenty of books have caught and held my interest enough that I didn’t want to put them down, but few have made the act of putting them down anyway so torturous. More than once, I hit a point in these stories where I had to drop whatever else I was gonna do that day (that I could realistically drop) just because I had to keep reading to make sure the characters were going to be okay.

This is character-driven fiction at its finest, with people in the pages who come alive and subtly win your heart. More than once, I’ve found reading about their ordeals to be worrying, a little bit painful, and a little bit infuriating (all in a good way, though), and I had to stop and remind myself that these weren’t real people that I was so concerned over and angry for. So if you ever wanted to be really, really invested in the story you’re reading and the people in it, Terre d’Ange is the place to go. All of the eroticism that everyone talks about is just a really nice bonus.

If you want an even shorter answer: do you watch Game of Thrones? Have you read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books? Have you at least heard of the fan hype around these stories? The Kushiel and Naamah books are like that, except sexier and with deeper court intrigue. And a lot less incest.

If you want the long answer…

A Dizzying Amount of Adventure Mileage

One thing that has to be said for Kushiel’s Legacy and the Naamah trilogy is that you definitely get your money’s worth of story out of each book. There’s a pattern that I’ve noticed with each of them, which is that you’ll follow the heroine/hero through a massive tribulation, see them endure their hardships and take their small victories where they can, then finally watch matters come to a crux, a climax, and a satisfying resolution…only to realize that you’re only a third of the way through the full page count.

Where most books are content to have one major conflict, Carey packs hers with about three each. The best part is that they’re not laid out in rigid sequence like a series of video game side quests – fight this problem, win, check it off the list, leave it behind and find a new one to fill the word count. No, each new adventure in the same book arises completely organically from the story overall. It makes you realize just how huge a scope these characters’ destinies really are, and just how incredibly wearying it can be and how much seemingly inhuman endurance it takes to be one of the gods’ chosen.

For instance, the first book to kick everything off, Kushiel’s Dart, begins slowly and simply enough. Phedre is an unwanted child who is basically sold into indentured servitude, then trained to be a spy and courtesan while we’re introduced to Terre d’Ange through her eyes over the next couple hundred pages, learning more about the politics and the players in time to watch the drama around them steadily unfold and escalate.

And then her wise mentor gets killed (as wise mentors tend to do), she and her bodyguard companion are betrayed, and the both of them get sold into full-on slavery to the vikings of Skaldia. Plenty of conflict and hardship and planning later, they make their escape and flee into harsh, snowy mountain terrain, falling in love for good measure while they fend off the deadly cold and the pursuit from their enemies. Finally, they make it back to their homeland and clear their names.

This is where most books would be content to stop and maybe leave further contentions for a sequel. Kushiel’s Dart would have been well within its rights to do so as well, and I wouldn’t have complained if it did. But no, it reminds readers, we’re not done yet. There’s a war coming, remember? We talked about this. Catch your breath for a moment, but then we gotta go rally our armies.

So Phedre and Joscelin set off to the wild and secluded island nation of Alba on the other side of an enchanted strait, a body of water where a vengeful, divine power known as the Master of the Straits lives and for some reason prevents almost all contact between the two nations. Arriving safely enough, they find that Alba is also war-torn at the moment, and the armies they had hoped to rally are busy defending their land from another foe. More plotting and intrigue ensues, alliances and promises are made, and with our heroes’ help, the two sides clash in a decisive battle that gains the side we’re rooting for victory as well as gives them their rightful sovereignty back. Now Phedre has the army she needs. After a sudden and unexpected stop at the Master of the Straits’ island, where they learn the secret of his power and guarantee indefinite safe passage between the nations in return for Phedre losing her closest friend, our heroes finally make it back to their homeland again with their army in tow.

Finally! After all of that struggle, we get a happy ending after all. But wait, not yet you don’t, the chunk of pages left at the end remind you. All you did was get your forces together. Good for you. Now you still gotta go actually fight the war with the Skaldi invaders to determine the fate of your entire nation.

So they do. And only after an awesome last-stand battle (the excitement and careful strategy of which will take you completely by surprise if you first entered this book expecting little more than kinky sex scenes) is the story allowed to wrap up in earnest, our heroes finally earning their long-deserved rest. The dangerous and cunning warlord is defeated, the invading army has been pushed back, the new Queen has ascended the throne, Terre d’Ange has been saved, and Phedre and Joscelin are free to finally be together – with the only little niggle being that the real mastermind behind all of their problems is still loose and taunting them. But we can get to that in the next book. Or five.

I found the same thing happening again most notably in Naamah’s Curse. Moirin sets out across a dangerous wilderness all alone to find her errant love Bao, who also just happens to hold the other half of her soul. Much conflict later, after a life-threatening winter journey and some pleasant culture shock, she finds him accidentally wed to the daughter of the Great Khan. Cue more conflict, including some much deserved sexy times and a tense archery contest, and now the two can finally be together. Or they could if Moirin weren’t betrayed by Bao’s angry father-in-law into the hands of an infuriatingly zealous cult of Yeshuites who spirit her away to distant Vralia in order to either forcibly convert her or stone her to death for being a heathen.

After one of the most difficult and painful chunks of reading I’ve ever read in my life (but in a good way – real high quality feels, just not happy ones), she escapes with the help of unexpected allies, destroys the (absolutely horrible) Patriarch’s dream of bringing holy war across the land, and sets off once again to find this boy that’s so hard to keep track of. Turns out he’s now being held in thrall by a terrible witch on the other side of the continent, also as part of the Great Khan’s masterfully dickish plan to keep them apart. So she crosses a continent worth of even more hardships and struggle, picks up another culture-saving mission along the way, saves herself from a rape attempt or two, finds the land that Bao’s in, finds the forbidding mountain fortress where he’s been living, meets the witch who ensorceled him along with her warrior husband and his army of assassins, and, against all odds, manages to break her true love free of their hold.

Now they finally, finally are together at last. All that remains is to topple the most dangerous cabal of killers in the known world at present, save the reincarnation of an Enlightened One from their captivity, and wrench a powerful, magical, and tainted artifact of the gods out of the witch’s hands in the process, all before helping to usher in an age of enlightenment and tolerance by uplifting the casteless from the previously unmerciful caste system of the nation where all of this is happening. No sweat.

Look, I don’t like a lot of inconsequential padding in my stories. I don’t want my books to stretch 100 pages of story into 600 pages of actual book just for the sake of not ending too soon. I actually did a whole lot of skimming when I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy just because I got bored reading about every little detail of the protagonists’ long walk through the woods where not much happened. But that is most certainly not the case with any of Jacqueline Carey’s books. If one of her stories is 900 pages long (and it probably is), it’s because there’s 900 pages worth of stuff to get through, dammit. The story isn’t stretched thin, it’s dense and meaty and complex, full of a myriad interwoven threads, each thread a full story in its own right, each coming together to weave something epic and incredibly impressive.

Am I saying that the Kushiel and Naamah books are better than Lord of the Rings? I’m not stupid enough to do that on the internet. But, hey, speaking of changing the subject…

So Let’s Talk About the Sex Stuff

I first heard about Kushiel’s Dart through my then-girlfriend-now-wife, who hadn’t read it but had heard about it in turn from a guy she knew from school. I believe her description of it went something like, “It’s like this medieval drama, but full of just kinky, painful sex.” Her only exposure to it had been this guy she knew showing her the scene where the main character is bent over a table and apparently raped in the middle of dinner, then strapped to a wheel and tortured. Or something like that. That’s not how the scene really goes, as you probably know already, but that was the glancing impression that it left.

In short, she thought it would be too much hardcore S&M for her tastes, with the surrounding story a loose excuse to write graphic sex scenes. Having only her limited word for it to go on, I assumed the same, though I kept a faint memory of what my brain labeled “her friend’s kinky sex book” in the back of my mind just in case it ever came up – because, as I’ve mentioned before, I am a warm-blooded human being with a pulse, and I was not entirely averse to the idea of reading a book that was just a loose string of kinky sex scenes.

Neither of us remembered the title other than remembering that it was something weird about a dart, so I don’t know how I found it in a book store one day. But I did, and I read the back of it, and I thought that it looked like there was actually more plot involved than maybe my girlfriend’s friend had led her to believe. And if it wasn’t, worst case scenario, I was out seven bucks or so for a 900-page paperback of kinky sex stuff. I could live with that. So I went ahead and bought Kushiel’s Dart, and one day when I had nothing else in particular that I wanted to read, I gave it a try.

If you’ve read this far, I assume you’re already a fan of the series, so I don’t need to tell you how misinformed all of my expectations were. In fact I distinctly remember reading the scene of the decisive battle for Terre d’Ange at Troyes-Le-Mont, specifically the part where Phedre watches from the walls as the Duc d’Aiglemort appears in the distance, spears his forces through the Skaldi army, and rides down hellbent on Waldemar Selig to redeem himself for his treachery and die a bittersweet hero’s death. It was at that point that I came up out of the story for a moment to realize what an incredibly epic and pulse-pounding battle scene this was nestled near the back of what I thought would just be a string of sordid sex fantasies connected by a confusing plot. How did this war get into my erotica? How was a sex book holding my attention so adamantly when the only thing that anybody had stuck into anybody else for a hundred pages had been swords and spears?

I’m sorry, now that I write that sentence out, that’s a silly question, isn’t it?

What I’m trying to say with my fanboy rambling here is that the Kushiel and Naamah books are so much more than just the sex stuff. Yes, sex, desire, and the many different ways that people express that desire and take their pleasure is a very big part of these books. And maybe Carey did start writing these stories primarily as a vehicle to explore all the many facets of sensuality that a lot of polite society would consider taboo, I dunno. But if you came to these stories expecting a few cheap erotic thrills, like I admittedly did, then the sheer depth and scope and level of storytelling mastery likely blindsided you, like it admittedly did to me.

That said, I love that sex, desire, and the sometimes taboo things associated with them are such a central, inextricable facet of these stories. Not just because it makes for plenty of steamy, incredibly well-written scenes that would put most harlequin romances to shame, but because it takes such an open-minded and practical approach to a topic that a lot of people apparently don’t want to talk about or oftentimes even admit exists.

Blessed Elua bid the people of Terre d’Ange to “love as thou wilt.” This is not only a highly topical and relevant message now that society’s acceptance of things like homosexuality and transgender issues has gotten closer to where it needs to be; it’s also an incredibly enlightened and forward-thinking one that needs to be heard more often. If someone likes something, and all parties involved are consenting and enjoying themselves, what’s so taboo about that? If strapping Phedre to some intricate wheel thing and smacking her with a whip a few times makes her feel good, hey, why not? If Imriel really wants to tie Sidonie up and “do wonderful, horrible things to [her] helpless body,” and she wants to let him, then why should he feel so guilty about it? And if Moirin would rather take whoever she feels like to bed rather than chain herself to a single, overly jealous man, why shouldn’t she? They’re all loving as they wouldst, and it’s not hurting anybody (who doesn’t want to be hurt).

So Terre d’Ange has something to tickle just about anyone’s intimate fancies, and while the stories don’t get sanctimonious about their messages on the matters of love and sex, those messages are still there. It’s kinky erotica of the highest quality, but it’s more than skin deep. It’s smart erotica, trying to teach readers a positive and important lesson about their own desires every time the characters involved indulge in theirs.

Boiled down, that message is that, whatever you like, whatever sordid or out-there (or tame and prudish) thing you’re into, it doesn’t make you less moral, and it doesn’t have to define you either. Your sexuality, wherever it lies and however strong it is, doesn’t make you a bad person. Lacking basic human compassion makes you a bad person. Everything else is just personal taste.

That said, of course, nothing’s perfect. Even the sexiest, dramaticalest, adventuriest, emotionalest stories have the occasional bit that might turn a reader off of them. So for the sake of what objectivity I can muster, let’s briefly discuss…

The Lil Bit O’ Nitpicky Stuff

There isn’t much, but there’s some, and I wanna be fair. So let’s start at the beginning, which is where the closest thing to a flaw that I can think of resides – Kushiel’s Dart starts out really heavy with the name-dropping political intrigue, and the story takes a while to get up to speed. Like, over 100 pages of a while.

I’m going to make another confession: the first time I read Kushiel’s Dart, I skimmed a bit in the beginning. Coming brand new into Terre d’Ange, there’s a lot a reader needs to know to really appreciate the society, politics, and so on so that the intrigue that develops therein is understood with the correct amount of weight. The first book does an admirable job of easing you in, but there’s so much to ease into, you might begin to wonder if you’ll ever touch the bottom.

The story definitely eschews the in media res mode of storytelling to instead start readers off in Phedre’s early childhood with the very first interesting and important thing that ever happened to her. From there, we follow her all the way until she comes of age and the main adventure of the book actually begins, and it seems like we’re expected to learn and retain the names, titles, and personal relationships of everyone that she’s ever known or met along the way. In the beginning, whenever a character or the narration began talking about “Duc This Guy, who is married to Lady This Girl, who is the cousin of Comte Whoever, who doesn’t like her because Lord So-And-So once bedded Lady Someone else, and she said that…” and so on, I’d start skimming. It was a lot of names to take in and a lot of drama to follow, and back then, I didn’t care about the dramatic tension between parties. I was just looking for the sexy bits or, barring those, a fight scene.

It helps, though, that Phedre is in much the same boat as the first-time reader. She’s learning and retaining all of this stuff because her master Delaunay has instructed her to, but she’d much rather skip it all and get to the sexy bits herself. It makes the initial slog through court intrigue easier for a reader when the narrator is more or less agreeing with them that, yes, this isn’t terribly exciting yet, but if we put in the effort now we can get naked later.

Of course, a few hundred pages in, all of that intrigue comes to a head and spills over, and then people that you and Phedre do know and care about start to die. And from there, the excitement doesn’t really settle down again until the book’s over. By the time you hit book two, Kushiel’s Chosen, you already know most of the names that you need to know and how they relate. And if someone introduces you to a new one, by Elua, you pay attention – partially so that new treachery doesn’t take you entirely by surprise again, and partly because now you’re finally familiar with and invested in the politics enough to follow along.

Other than that minor, initial hiccup for the newbies, there really isn’t much else about the Kushiel or Naamah books that jumps immediately to mind as something to criticize. I’ve heard it said before that the relationship between Phedre and Melisande, the central antagonist for most of the story, can be a bit annoying in that Phedre always becomes useless and weak whenever she’s around, no matter the circumstances. God-bound connection and sexual chemistry aside, this isn’t an invalid point, but it never felt like an unbelievable obstacle to the story for me. And while the episodic nature of each book that I already mentioned way back at the beginning of this review (there are always about two more major conflicts hiding behind the obvious first one) definitely becomes noticeable eight or nine books in, it’s not an unwelcoming or distracting pattern.

I did notice that pretty much the whole last half of Naamah’s Blessing, the last book in the Moirin trilogy, went by with nary an erotic scene to be had; but by that point, there’s so much going on in the plot and so much tension to deal with that it gets a pass. It would have been a bit too unrealistic anyway, trying to make a perilous trek through deadly, uncharted rainforests for months on end seem in any way sexy at any point during its happening.

In Conclusion

Technically, I already concluded my points in the opening, spoiler-free summary. Still, I can do it again.

Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, Kushiel’s Mercy, Naamah’s Kiss, Naamah’s Curse, and Naamah’s Blessing are nine of the best books available for anyone interested in light fantasy, medieval drama, romance, epic adventure, unapologetic erotica, court intrigue, and/or deep and moving character arcs. If you can wade through the slow deluge of exposition in the first book (and you can; it’s easier than I probably made it sound), then Terre d’Ange will keep you enthralled for upwards of a month or so if you read them all back-to-back. Which you probably already know if you read through all of the spoilers to get here.

Still, Imriel is one of my favorite fictional characters ever, his relationship with Sidonie is one of the most moving romances I’ve ever encountered, Moirin going up against the Patriarch had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, and Melisande Shahrizai is a consummate literary Magnificent Bastard if ever there was one. I had to say something online.

Thank you, Ms. Carey, for taking us all to Terre d’Ange over the course of a few generations. I earnestly hope that someone turns it into a Game of Thrones-esque TV show or movie miniseries or something sometime soon, maybe when Game of Thrones is over.

Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to go hide whatever book my wife’s currently reading and replace it with Kushiel’s Dart. She’ll thank me later, I’m sure.