Carey, J. (2007). Kushiel's justice. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

06/23/08 to 07/01/08
****

Your flesh, a part of mine, now separate. The veins beneath your skin where my blood flowed, the impossible tenderness of it all. In the privacy of my chambers, I held you close to my breast and said all the foolish things mothers say.

Carey is fantastic. Each of these Terre d'Ange novels rollicks through a series of adventures that are both breathtaking and relentless. This most recent is no exception. The main character, Imriel continues our outward exploration of the lands surrounding Terre d'Ange and each place is more vividly colorful and fantastically distinct than the last. I do find myself becoming just a little tired of it though. It's all great, but the pacing and the formula of how she whisks the characters from one near-death situation to another feels almost too predictable in it's excitement at this point. And another thing. One of the great things about these novels has been their undiluted bondage oriented sex. In this novel it starts to go conventionally squishily romantic. It's not too bad yet, but still.... Somehow I'm vaguely reminded of my initial excitement with Lackey's Valdemar series, and how they stayed good, but never quite as surprising and wonderful as that first series I read.