Again, if you haven't read Kushiel's Chosen and don't like spoilers, you're going to want to wait on reading this one. Plot developments from previous books come up from the get-go here. Continued below... spoilers start after this point...
Phedre no Delaunay de Montreve's managed to accomplish a lot in her life. She's negotiated a truce in her love life, become a peer, she's saved her country and her Queen (twice), she's gotten the loyalty of people all over the continent... and yet, there are two things she has failed to do in the last ten years: find the missing son of her beloved enemy Melisande Shahrizai, and figure out how to save her friend Hyacinthe from the curse he's under.
In this book, these two things finally come together. Melisande's son is kidnapped to a very far away, very very horrible place, and she bribes Phedre to look for him by offering her a way to find out how to set Hyacinthe free. And Phedre goes way above and beyond the call of duty. Even the gods themselves ask her to do for them what they cannot do themselves...and it's an incredibly hard task.
I should warn you here that this book is the darkest of the trilogy- the middle section is well, worse than any hell dimension you ever saw on Buffy, I'll put it that way. People go through things that will make you shudder and worse. I said before when reviewing the first book that the S&M wasn't nearly as bad as you'd think? Well, here it's incredibly bad...but yes, for a plot purpose. And things do improve from there, really.
I think Phedre manages to turn herself into a superhero of sorts by the end of this book. She doesn't have any particular special powers beyond a better ability to take pain than anyone else, major linguistic skills (she's learned 13 languages?!) and the arts of diplomacy, and yet she pulls off amazing feats. I think at this point the series is a trilogy just because what else more could she do?
I am hoping, however, that Carey will do a new trilogy after this one, featuring Imriel. Because I am dying to know how that kid turns out.
Posted by Jenmoon at June 12, 2003 09:57 PM