Kushiel's Dart
Ratings148
Average rating3.9
I received this book as a gift. It's not one I would have picked out for myself.
The character, Phedre, is identified as a child as a scion of the goddess Kushiel. This means she is a natural submissive and thus she is raised to be a submissive, BDSM-loving, Mata Hari spy. The book is built around political entrigue, but Phedre does very little to get herself into and out of dangerous situations - her role is to be helpless, gather information for her aristocratic master/pimp, and let the men she entices save her when the going gets rough.
Phedre is not a character I want to be in any way. I could not imagine myself in her place. It took until book 3 before she finally got up the nerve to take action to save herself from danger - and by then, she'd been kidnapped, sold into slavery as a concubine for a primitive warlord, and under threat of death daily.
Complete review:
http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2009/02/review-of-kushiels-dart.html
Kinduva cheesy looking cover on this one, eh? But mind the old maxim!* This was a good read! And at 901 pages, one would sure hope so. Kushiel's Dart is an epic fantasy story set in an alternate medieval Europe in which “Terre D'Ange” is substituted for France, “Alba” for England, “Skaldia” for Scandinavia/Russia, etc. Out heroine is Phèdre nó Delaunay, sold to a respectable brothel at the age of four and tutored in the arts of the courtesan. But Phèdre is no ordinary girl, she is marked by a scarlet mote in her left eye, a.k.a. Kushiel's Dart (a reference from the story's religious background mythology.) What Kushiel's Dart signifies is that Phèdre is an anguisette. Whuh? ...
an anguissette is one of Kushiel's chosen mortals, picked to “balance the scales” against those who impart suffering without compassion. Anguisettes feel pain and pleasure as one. Additionally, the wounds of those who bear Kushiel's Dart never fail to heal clean. Those who have been chosen by Kushiel have a scarlet mote in their left eye, referred to poetically as Kushiel's Dart. (see http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Anguissette)
rotten
whistle
whoa
Kushiel's Chosen
