the best books are the ones that are completely beyond me to say anything about. I can write about what Carey does in Kushiel’s Dart, but it will be a hollow approximation of the impact it had on me. outside of philosophy, I think sci-fi/fantasy is the home of contemporary scholars on par with those from antiquity. Carey is impossibly well-read. she has taken in the world and miraculously reassembled it into a giant spell. she is in total command of academia, spycraft, violence, fucking, geography, poetry, the wind and earth and the horizon of time. the one glaring weakness in Kushiel’s Dart is Joscelin, who feels like he was written by a different (worse) author. everyone else is rich and deep, whether they’re part of the narrative for hundreds or a handful of pages. as much as it hurts at times my heart belongs to this world, to Phèdre and Melisande and Hyacinthe and Alcuin and Delaunay and Drustan and Grainne. this is what it means to be human; this is everything latent in us that we are struggling to retain hold of.