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Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Further adventures of fantasy!France’s most beautiful traveling courtesan who is marked by the gods to have a lot of kinky sex.

I have a lot of thoughts about this series suddenly. Funny, since in the past it was my go to law school exams reading choice.

Thing 1: I really like how this series talks about women’s power – political, sexual, subversive. And how the thrust of the whole thing revolves around the love/hate of two extraordinary and powerful women. How often do you see that?

Thing 2: The shape of the book is a bit . . . something. It can best be summarized as ‘our heroine travels to an isolated place and frees the people there by being braver or smarter or specialer than they are.’ This was pretty interesting when she was lifting the harem of a psychopath into revolt. A lot less interesting and a lot more eyebrow-raising when she starts doing it to other cultures.

Thing 3: It’s funny just how unengaging I found so much of this. Heroine is literally marked by a god to suffer, to be able to bear it so other people don’t have to. It’s a literalization of the implicit shape of a lot of epic fantasy, and of course a pretty good metaphor for the relationship of writer to character. You, my creation, carry this hurt, walk this dark path so I don’t have to. Yeah, I’ve written that. And I should like it, but I just . . . eh. Tepid. Perhaps it’s too literal?

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