2013 read #151: Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey.

Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey
702 pages
Published 2003
Read from December 10 to December 20
Rating: ★★ out of 5

Eleven days without finishing a book. This might be a 2013 record. Part of the blame is mine: I've largely given up on waking up early to go to the gym, using my customary evening reading time for working out instead; when I've had the time, I've used it to play Civilization or plan hiking adventures or veg out. But a lot of the blame goes to this book. I'm stubborn; Kushiel's Avatar is the conclusion of a trilogy, and I was going to see this series through no matter how rough it got. But it got pretty damn rough, and the gym and Civilization both felt like better uses of my time.

Spoilers ahead, brief mention of fictional sexual assault, etc.

My main problem with this book was structural, though thematic and prose elements contributed much to my dislike. Structurally speaking, Avatar read like assorted B-plots got scraped together to fill up the expected 700 pages of running time. For the first 200 pages or so, it looks like we're heading into a romantic fantasy Raiders of the Lost Ark -- Phèdre is off to find a lost tribe of Israel in the wilds of Ethiopia, rumored to have taken the Ark of the Covenant, through which she hopes to learn the Name of God and thereby free her friend from an angel's curse. But then for the next 200 pages we get detoured into a grimdark and not especially interesting Temple of Doom sequence, as Phèdre remands herself into sex slavery, infiltrating the seraglio of some two-bit Dark and Crazy Fantasy Villain to rescue the son of her enemy/lover. Trading in romantic fiction cliches for fantasy cliches was not a wise move, to my mind. I would rather Carey trot out yet another barbarian prince (or princess, if we need some variety), rather than a tedious evil sadistic king who leads a literal dark-worshiping cult and plans to Take Over the Wooooorrrld. That whole act of the novel was a huge misfire, and brought down an otherwise middling and unremarkable book to something below average. The potentially interesting opportunity to examine how various characters might move on from sexual degradation, assault, and slavery is resolved much too simply, and the whole thing felt problematic and ill-considered.

The rest of the book, before and after the sex dungeon, reads like an overly detailed fantasy travel guide, listing the accommodations and foodstuffs and means of transportation as if Carey's narrator was hired by a travel agency to advise potential customers. The prose was bland and standoffish, lacking affect for all but a few of those 702 pages. The opportunity to spend some time in a fantasy version of Africa, always a rare treat, was nice, but kind of spoiled by the travelogue nature of Carey's depiction, and the easy inevitability of what's supposed to be a climactic victory. (Come to think of it, Phèdre's defeat of the Evil Dark Lord and his Dark Cult of Darkness was ridiculously easy, too, as was the confrontation with Rahab. And as soon as Phèdre began musing on children and her reluctance to bring any into the world, I knew Imriel would become her surrogate son and teach her What It Really Means to Love and all that. Terribly predictable.)

So, now 2100 pages of this series are behind me -- more time than I've spent in any other fictional universe, aside from A Song of Ice and Fire and possibly The Wheel of Time. But I think I'm done with it now.