Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey **1/2

It's pretty good. Within the mediocre landscape of epic fantasy, it's definitely on the better side. The scope is big, there's genuine emotion involved, the tone is not childish, and there are some good characters. I would even say there are a couple of decent concepts. But it's just not special.

One important issue is that the first person perspective doesn't help here. I like the first person when you get interesting insights from the character, but there aren't many in this case. She's just telling her story, and sometimes it's annoying because she drops these little hints (it's kind of a memoir vibe) that pissed me off because they don't really build suspense - they're just there to be cloudy and frustrating. And then of course so the author can later have her "reveal." But they didn't feel earned to me. Also - the author spends too much time setting things up, and I think she knows it, which is why she drops in these hints about the future that don't really mean much. Kay would have told this same tale much better with his 3rd person narrative approach, because we wouldn't have been forced to experience the tale from the narrator's perspective at the beginning when things were really happening with other characters. Additionally, there's a bit too much reliance on prophecy, though ultimately this doesn't define the book as it does when some authors use prophecy, which is good.

Really, the book breaks down into four segments:
1) slow getting started, as explained above
2) decent development once the story gets going
3) overdone use of prophecy to move along the plot
4) fine enough ending, in which I found I cared about the main character, though I was a bit annoyed by the male lead.

This makes for a pretty good read, but not a strong recommendation from me, partly because it's quite long (over 900 pages). I think this would be a good book for people who like to consume large, high fantasy epics, but not for people who only occasionally dip into that genre. As I've gradually become less of a traditional high fantasy guy, this took a bit too much time for me to get through it without as much payoff in terms of quality for it to be worth my while. If that seems like a pretty weak endorsement, I guess it is, but I give credit to Carey for the effort, because so much of what I've read in that genre is quite poor.
(Spring 2007)

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