Ciara's Jacqueline Carey scoop!

Ciara of Ciaralira has a very engaging and lively report on Carey's appearance at a Seattle bookstore, plus a recounted Q & A session, and news on Carey's upcoming projects!

In the meantime, I found a USED copy of Lover Enshrined. 

I wasn't sure if I was going to buy it, but the Scribe Virgin must have wanted me to read it, because it magically appeared at my UBS.  In perfect condition! Now we will see about this Rhev!

Heroines who remind me of girls I knew in high school, Part ONE

I recently made a list of heroines I identify with in a comfortingly seamless way during the act of reading--like they’re an other me.

This made me think about heroines I love reading about just as much, but don’t identify with as completely. I have decided this happens when the heroine isn’t A) vulnerable enough in a way that resonates with me, or B) she is vulnerable enough, but way too different than me, like a different animal.

Sometimes I prefer that. Reading about heroines like these is like having an adventure with a friend who is fascinating or admirable in some way, rather than a comforting proxy self. Reading should take a person to new places and new realities.

On my heroines I totally identify with list, some people mentioned Sookie as a heroine they identify with, and I really thought about putting her on that list, because I am CRAZY about those books, and I love her and I enjoy being in that wonderful world she inhabits. Especially if Eric is hanging around. (I may even splurge on the new book coming out in May, even though it’s in hardcover. Please, don’t ask me why I can’t show my face in the library anymore. That’s a topic for another day.) However, while I identify with Sookie often, she is often an othergirl to me—in a good way.

Anyway, thinking about all this, I realized this weird thing: when I think about heroines I love reading about but don’t 100% identify with, I think about girls I knew in high school and I put them in categories from high school. I don’t know why, as I am MANY years past high school. Maybe I’m just not over it. Without further ado:

Sookie: (Southern Vampire mysteries by Charlaine Harris)
I had a best friend like Sookie - sweet, sexy, blonde, smart, her own easy fashion sense, all the boys loved her. (I know supposedly boys don’t like Sookie because of her telepathy, but you know. I think they sort of would.) Sookie is also vulnerable and her world is delightful to dwell in, but she is so the opposite of my high school self—I was not pretty, smart but not a high performer, and a total moron when it came to boys, hair and fashion. So while I identify with Sookie in a pleasurable way while reading, I identify with her as a best friend rather than a proxy self.

Phedre: (Kushiel’s Series by Jacqueline Carey)
Phedre is the mysterious girl I would’ve admired from afar and been in awe of. I would’ve wanted to be friends with her, but she would’ve run with a cooler group and taken more obscure classes. Her cleverness with guys would’ve mystified me, too. And if I’d ever talked to her, like at parties, I would’ve said stupid things, being so in awe of her. I would’ve wished desperately to be her, just for one day. Though I frequently identify with her during the act of reading, Phedre is very othergirl.

Riley Jensen: (Riley Jensen Guardian Series by Keri Arthur)
Riley’s kind of a wild girl, and she loves to have fun. I had groups of friends that contained wild girls like her, and every once in a while, a Riley would befriend me for some inexplicable reason, and we would drive with the music too loud, and she would rampage around at the Walgreen’s, maybe get us kicked out of the A & W and it would seem like an incredible adventure to me. Eventually our friendship would fizzle, because I could never keep up with a Riley. Not that I didn’t long to.

Tomorrow: Anita Blake, Margrit Knight, Jezebel, Savi Murray

Cunning poets and deadly courtiers gone wild

I think, as a writer, there's a certain perverse excitement in working with an unlikely or outrageously inappropriate heroine - maybe it's a challenge thing. That's my theory on what would've made Jacqueline Carey decide to have her heroine/spy/save-the-day-gal, Phedre, be a masochistic courtesan in Kushiel's Dart. I mean, really, what's the spy/heroine value in the ability to handle and get off on pain, delivered in ever the bawdiest ways? I doubt there's a check-off box for it on the CIA application. Which is a lot of the reason I read this. I just didn't know how it could be pulled off.

But oh, man, does Carey ever pull this off brilliantly. I would say this is one of the top three books I read this year. The language is amazing--just the naming alone is great; Phedre, for example, is an 'anguisette.' Exotic yet familiar. All the made up words here feel real that way, due to their recognizable roots. They read like they've existed forever.

The world building is rich, downright dazzling in scope, sort of an alternate, mixed up medieval Europe where France (Terre d'Ange) is way more learned and courtly than those Iron Age freaks from Skaldia, which looks a lot Germany and Poland, maybe Russia, from the map, which looks like a map of Europe that's been slightly melted.

And then there's the whole pain-pleasure courtesan aspect, which operates in a really interesting way. Thanks to this unusual path of hers, along with extensive scholarship (overseen by mentor Delauney) Phedre becomes a keen observer of human nature, as well as the details of rooms and conversations. I think when you are victimized, even willingly, it heightens your powers of observation. In this way the book a highly psychological one. People get into powerplays with her or they divulge secrets or let her see and hear things she shouldn't, and generally reveal their inner natures in a variety of interesting ways.

That said, such scenes really are a minor part of the book. It's way more sword fights and court politics and obscure learnings and romantic intrigue and barbarian hordes, and then every once in a while you have Phedre at the mercy of some nobleman or woman--everybody here has wildly colorful sexual proclivities, and they don't keep them secret--and, oh, Phedre is gasping in pain and pleasure, and things swim before her eyes and she outsmarts all these people. Is it an HEA romance? Yes, it is that too. Looking back, I find this book astonishing on so many levels.

I'm one of those lucky people who fall asleep instantly. This book was one of the few in history that I had to stop reading in bed because it was so exciting and I couldn't sleep after reading it.