Finished It

Stayed up a little later than I should've, but I finished Kushiel's Dart last night. That was a damn good book. I'll have to bide my time getting the next too, though. Cashflow and reading time are issues. And I have this wierd feeling that having that book unfinished was keeping me from sleeping too well. I really can't say why, but I did just realize that I've been sleeping poorly since I started reading that book. And today is the first day in a while I haven't felt bone tired. It's probably coincidence, but it's an odd one. So the remaining two books in Carey's trilogy will just have to wait a month or so. By then I should be done with HD, so I'll have a tad bit more time as I recover.

The book didn't make me squirm nearly so much as I expected, given all the billing as "erotic" and descriptions of it as the life of a consort. But it did make me squirm, and I really care about the main characters. I have two very teeny tiny gripes: word choice got repettitive (it always happens...you use the word "pontificate" and remember how much you like it, and damned if that sucker doesn't show up a good three more times before the end of the chapter, etc) and Phedre was a bit too modest and humble toward the end - nothing too much, but I wanted her at some point to go "Yeah, and I bloody well deserve your thanks too", or at least think it. Those two niggles were so miniscule though.

Be forewarned - this book is an alternate history set in Europe of a sort. I usually don't like that kind of book, my only experience being The Golden Key - and I had no idea that was supposed to be alternate history until the last hundred or so pages of the book and was extremely miffed. KD tells you right in the first five or ten pages that it's based in this world. And that worked for me.

I think the reason I didn't sleep well while reading the book is that my subconscious sat down with my muse to see if they could figure out how to write such multi-dimensional, gripping characters. I still can't believe this is Carey's first novel - and that she was able to sell it as a 900 page doorstop. It does much to keep my own dreams alive.