Bookish Thoughts

I wasn't quite as enamored of Kushiel's Chosen  as I was of Kushiel's Dart . And I'm not entirely sure why that is. By all rights, I should have enjoyed this book just as much as the first one. It has all the fancy dresses, political intrigue, dastardly plots, and exquisite world-building of the first one. Unfortunately it's also missing some things. Hyacinthe isn't in it at all and Joscelin is missing for half the book as well. There isn't nearly as much sex, especially in the back half of the book. Phedre is much more isolated in this book than she was in the first one. There's an intriguing mystery here. Mellisande escaped at the end of the first book, and Phedre is determined to find her and bring her to justice. The question is where is she and what is she planning? It was great fun, running through possibilities and watching everything come together. But then the mystery is solved before the halfway point and Phedre is captured. She spends th...

Kushiel's Dart could essentially be summed up thus: Joscelin: You can't solve all your problems with sex Phèdre: Watch me That hides away a lot of the complexity and intrigue in this story, and glosses over the fact that Joscelin doesn't even show up until 1/3 of the way through, but it does get at the heart of what makes this book so fun and the reason I loved it as much as I did. Phèdre is a courtesan, trained to it from the age of ten. She lives in a world that holds to the doctrine "Love as thou wilt", which means that free love abounds. Everyone is aggressively bisexual, sex is both casual and an act of worship, and monogamous partnerships are formed mostly for political purposes. Phèdre herself has been cursed by one of the gods to experience pain and pleasure as one, meaning that there's also a heavy BDSM component. But Phèdre is also a spy, working in secret for her adoptive father as he attempts to unravel a plot against the throne and prote...