Have I mentioned how frustrated I am by my inability to find the place on an Amazon product page where I can click that I own it and then rate it? It used to be invisible just from some browsers, but now it’s invisible from basically all of them[1] (unless it’s actually gone), and either way, I like them being able to take my ownership and tastes into account when recommending things, and how can they take them into account if they will not let me show said tastes and ownerships them?[2] Not, tragically, that I would be giving Naamah’s Curse a particularly high rating.

I mean, throughout the long life of the series, it has been exactly the kind of thing I go for. Travelogue fantasy in which the heroes go from place to place, exploring new cultures and solving new puzzles: I’ve been reading it since David Eddings first launched the quest for a blue rock, and despite intra-authorial repetitiveness and the increasingly rare inter-authorial ability to provide a unique new take on the genre, I’ve never not enjoyed myself. Which, lest you take me the wrong way, applies here too. It’s just getting harder to enjoy myself in this particular case when it feels less like travelogue fantasy and more like authorial insertion in order to decry the evils of fundamentalist Christianity and the Hindi caste system. Still, it’s not entirely bad by any means, and none of the bad parts were screed-like; the anvils were just a little too heavy as they landed upon my head, is all. Still, I think Moirin may go to America in the next book, and maybe that will be pretty cool?

[1] I have admittedly not checked Opera or, um, the text-based one whose name I forget.
[2] Oh LOL-cat constructed speech, why must you be so awkward to adapt to conversational English?

Jacqueline Carey returns to the world of Terre d’Ange in Naamah’s Kiss, set a century after the events of her previous books. The magically modified historical Europe has progressed into the 16th Century, with tales of a new world away west across the sea, but not-France seems content to rest upon her laurels as a center of love and decadence. Into this more superficial version of a country already obsessed with beauty and fame is thrust Moirin, a half-Alban[1] girl with a capital-d Destiny, descended from the same magical small folk that gave Prince Imriel such trouble during the previous trilogy. Of course, as the other half of her descent is a d’Angeline priest of Naamah, the goddess of Love, it can be no surprise that her parentage and uncivilized mien make her an instant success. Unfortunately, she spends the first two thirds of the book on that, laying groundwork for events in future unwritten books before actually engaging in the plot of this one.

On the bright side, once that plot gets a move on, it’s really quite pleasant, racing to the far corner of the world to rescue a not-Chinese princess from a demon. If you can leave aside the iffy pacing, the book has a lot of things to like. A circle of demon-summoners, ancient Ch’in wisdom, cliff-diving, an implausible amount of lipstick lesbianism, chases, escapes, true love… y’know. Stuff a sick kid would want his grandfather to read to him. But, okay, even if it’s clearly not that funny, it did feel like something out of a storybook. If that sounds ridiculous, take it as me having accepted the characters that thoroughly, by the end. Pacing issues or not, I care about these characters and want to know what happens to them next.

[1] not-England, don’t you know

Something more than a year went by after I read Kushiel’s Scion, mostly because I read it so close to publication and that’s the approximate schedule for these books, before I found Kushiel’s Justice in the used bookstore. It had no cover, which has been a constant source of annoyance since; and in fact, if I’d known I would wait this damn long to actually read it, I would have left that copy sitting on the shelf. In further fact, while reading this one I learned that a friend was slightly further into the third one than I was into the second. Which was a little bit embarrassing, but I at least avoided big-huge spoilers, so yay! Anyway, though, I actually did read it, so you may be expecting a review?

Now that he’s home from college, Imriel is forced to face the truth that sent him fleeing to alternate-Italy in the first place: he’s in love with the heir to Terre d’Ange’s throne. Which doesn’t sound so bad, as he’s a prince of the realm himself, and in any event the only law laid down by their god, Elua, is “Love as thou wilt.” Things are always a little more complicated than that for Carey’s characters, though: Imriel’s birth parents (one of whom yet lives in hidden exile) hatched a plot before he was born to steal the throne for him outright. So naturally, there are a number of people who would not look kindly on his winning it through marriage.

So he and Princess Sidonie keep their infatuation secret and do their best to quell it, now that Imriel has been promised in a political marriage to an Alban princess (alternate-England, that is). This seems like the right thing to do, except that in being sensible, are they violating that self-same lone law to which they should be bound? The rest of the book is an examination of the repercussions of love, future foreknowledge, and bloody revenge, with more focus on Alba than has been provided in previous books, as well as new travels across northern alternate-Europe. It runs slow at the beginning, but I devoured the second half of the book around work in two short days: the moment past which stopping is impossible came barely halfway in, which is a pretty neat trick.

One spoiler after the cut. Continue reading →