In a short time I’ve really become quite devoted to this series. As I’ve said in my earlier reviews of Kushiel’s Avatar‘s predecessors, these books encapsulate everything that I want in a fantasy series. Balanced on the shoulders of an incomparable heroine, the story is both epic and personal. With every installment, Carey takes the opportunity to expand the world building out into foreign countries that are recognizably rooted in real-life analogs. So far we’d seen Scotland, Scandanavia, Italy, and now this book gets into […]
Miranda and Caliban – what came before the tempest
Jacqueline Carey has been one of my favorite authors for almost 16 years now, since the publishing of her first novel, “Kushiel’s Dart”. Full disclosure; I am a full on fan girl who named my eldest daughter after one of Jacqueline’s characters. I always get excited when she shares on her blog her current writing project. In 2015 she announced that she had written a new book that would be a retelling of “The Tempest” but told from Miranda and Caliban’s perspective. However, due to […]
Still great
After finishing the phenomenal Kushiel’s Dart, I was in a hurry to continue with the series. Nonetheless, I approached Kushiel’s Chosen with caution, because how often is it really that a sequel makes good on the promise of a first book that I had loved so thoroughly? In this case, my fears were unfounded. Jacqueline Carey delivered all of the complexity, intrigue, sensuality, and magic from the first book while engrossing me in the unique culture of yet another of Terre D’Ange’s neighboring countries. While […]
Love as thou wilt, and I love this book
All in 2016 I was going on and on about Captive Prince (and one of the things that I’ve been going on about is how I am just going to have to change my rating for the series, because they are one of my top 3 most favorably remembered books/series of that year and 3/5 stars for any of them just seems unreasonable) and how, along with probably every other modern day epic fantasy series, it’s a wonderful spiritual successor to A Song of Ice […]
Kushiel’s Dart May Strike True, But It Takes a Damn Long Time to Get There
I had some weird, odd deja vu going on reading this one. It tripped a bunch of nostalgia centers in my brain, but since I’m positive I’ve never read it before, I’m going to chalk it up to this being a book I would have LOVED in high school. (Not that that’s a slight on the book or anything, but it totally would have fit right into my geometry book once I finished reading about the vampire Lestat during class instead of memorizing the Pythagorean […]
And Just Like the Prodigal Son I’ve Returned
Yes, that is a House Of Pain lyric in the title but I have been out of the Cannonball Read for over a year, and if it makes sense to reference House of Pain in any review, it might be Kushiel’s Dart with its protagonist. Just when I had decided that a full back tattoo really wouldn’t make sense for me given my fashion choices and my preference to be able to cover up tattoos, I read Kushiel’s Dart, and am now back to thinking, […]