Following hard on the heels of Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey’s
spectacular debut novel, comes Kushiel’s Chosen, a glittering and
riveting historical fantasy.
The land of Terre d’Ange is a place
of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that the angels found the
land and saw it was good, and the ensuing race that rose from the seed
of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.
Phèdre
nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her
left eye and sold into indentured servitude as a child. Her bond was
purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with a very special
mission–and the first to recognize her for who and what she is: one
pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and
pleasure as one.
Phèdre has trained in the courtly arts and the
talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe,
remember, and analyze. Having stumbled upon a plot that threatened the
very foundations of her homeland, she gave up almost everything she held
dear to save it. She survived, and lived to have others tell her story,
and if they embellished the tale with fabric of mythical splendor, they
weren’t far off the mark.
The hands of the gods weigh heavily
upon Phèdre’s brow, and they are not yet done with their charge–for
while the young queen who sits upon the throne is well loved by the
people, there are those who believe that other heads should wear the
crown. And those who escaped the wrath of the mighty are not yet done
with their schemes for power and revenge. To protect and serve, Phèdre
will once again leave her beloved homeland.
From the
sun-drenched villas of La Serenissima to the wilds of old Hellas, from a
prison designed to drive the very gods mad to an island of immutable
joy. Phèdre will meet old friends and new enemies and discover a plot so
dreadful as to make the earth tremble, masterminded by the one person
she cannot turn away from.