Well, since Kushiel's Justice is now one of my top three favorite books ever, this one had a lot to live up to. It does a good job of that. Though I will warn you: it's NOT the book you thought you were going to be reading, not by a long shot.
I'm having a hard time writing this because I generally like to spoil plotwise until around the halfway mark of a book (I think that's fair to judge as to whether or not you'd be interested in reading it), but with this book I kind of want to stop around the first hundred pages because the turn it takes is SO dramatically different. It becomes a different book to me altogether, and keeps having twists and turns aplenty.
So....what to say?
Things start slowly as Imriel and Sidonie return to Terre d'Ange. The populace is in an uproar at the two of them being romantically involved, and the queen herself is divided. She eventually makes a decree: Imriel and Sidonie can continue to be romantically involved, but she will disinherit Sidonie if they wed or she makes Imriel her consort. Unless Imriel hunts down his missing mother and brings her back to Terre d'Ange for her long-awaited execution. Imriel isn't exactly feeling yippie-skippie about bringing his mother to her death, but (a) he's barely met her, (b) she is guilty, and (c) when compared to his beloved having to lose her inheritance, well... But Sidonie doesn't want him to go away again quite yet, so he gets a restful period of time to search via proxy, and get laid a lot :)
Meanwhile, political intrigues continue to abound, with the ruler of Carthage being very obvious about wanting to conquer Terre d'Ange's ally country (where some of the Queen's family lives) Aragonia. Imriel finds out that if he wants to find out his mother's whereabouts, they should let a Carthaginian delegation, led by General Astegal, in and accept their tribute. General Astegal is perfectly courtly and polite, and pays his tribute, and indicates that he'd like Terre d'Ange's alliance and a wedding to Sidonie. Terre d'Ange politely turns him down. And Imriel discovers his mother's whereabouts- but soon after that, everything goes to hell. And I mean that fairly literally.* The game changes, the goals change, and Imriel soon finds himself very alone in a very bad situation. His quest changes....
(At this point I'm going to talk about what else goes on below the spoiler cut, and leave spaces between that section and the usual "spoiler" cutoff discussion point.)
This is an epic book. It may be the most epic of all to me (and that's saying a lot having read the Phedre books). The parallels between many old and new plot elements add a certain symmetry as the series winds up. Imriel and Sidonie are an awesome pairing, and happily I still got a lot of them in this one, which I had my doubts was going to happen. I was rather sad that a lot of our old favorite characters, for reasons of plot, aren't seen on screen for most of the novel and are having major issues when we do see them. I also wish that the Melisande plot had been in it more, though it's understandable why this isn't a major plot point. But given the story she's telling, all of that is necessary.
I am very sad to bid this age of Terre d'Ange (the author plans to write in the world still, but a few hundred years in its future**) a final farewell. Sigh.
Five stars. Very, very well done.
* On the night of an eclipse where the Carthaginian horologist puts on a show, Imriel gets stuck with a needle that makes him completely insane for a month. When he comes out of it, the world has changed. Terre d'Ange is now Carthage's ally, and Sidonie has sailed off with Astegal to marry him, and nobody remembers that she ever loved Imriel at all! Imriel soon figures out that a massive spell was cast on the city and only those out of it are immune. Anyone but Imriel that leaves the city will lose the spell, but have it cast upon them again if they return. This leads him to make an alliance with his lifelong enemy Barquiel L'Envers (who was out of town for the spell), and he's secreted out of Terre d'Ange.
Ironically, Imriel has to go find his mother and ask for her help...because she's the mistress of the governor of Cythera, a learned man who's the only one capable of figuring out how to undo the spell that Carthage made.
And then yay, Melisande is back!, though all too briefly. She and Imriel get to know each other, and she seems to be doing well and improved (for her, anyway). Her lover Ptolemy Solon figures out the deep magics cast- there's a separate binding spell on Sidonie when she's away from the city, and there's a demon gem and a code word that will free the city of Elua itself. In order to find these things, the book takes a narrative change akin to Nightlife when Imriel himself is bewitched to think himself someone else before he goes into Carthage to rescue Sidonie.
I could go on, but I won't. While we don't see so many old characters, we do meet some interesting new ones, some of which I wish were in the book more. And I'm happy to see that things get wrapped up well, with at least sightings of folks that we don't see much in this one.
Major spoiler space starts here.
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** I do wonder if Imriel and Sidonie's proposed magic school will be a big factor in the books to come in the far future. After Terre d'Ange (and Imriel even before that) got whammo'd up the head by magic a few times, it definitely behooves them to make a study of things and make sure that doesn't happen again. I will be curious to see how things have changed with regards to that...you know, in three years or so when the author finishes book #1 of that.
Off-topic: I wonder how many of the fans at jacquelinecarey.com are now going to get Sidonie's tattoo. That would be pretty cool to see.
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