Kushiel's Justice

Kushiel’s Justice- Jacqueline Carey

How I found this book: When I purchased Kushiel’s Scion, I saw it on the shelf. Being a hardback, I had to wait a week to get it though! Thank God for Border’s coupons.

Setting: Terre D’Ange and Alba, immediately after the events of Kushiel’s Scion.

Main Characters:

Prince Imriel de la Courcel no Montreve: Returning from Tiberium, Imriel decides to face his duty and marry Drustan’s niece, Dorelei. But his heart belongs to someone else, the Dauphine of Terre D’Ange. Though he loves Sidonie, he marries Dorelei, feeling that by doing this he is doing the good and right thing, even if it is against Elua’s precepts, and even if he is sulky about it. But his passions are turned against him with dire consequences, forcing Imriel to test his endurance and his love to see that as a scion of Kushiel, that Kushiel’s justice is carried out.

Princess Sidonie de la Courcel, Dauphine of Terre D’Ange: The eldest daughter of Ysandre and Drustan, she is the heir to the D’Angeline throne. She is in love with Imriel and he with her, but they realize the scandal and political schism this will create, and attempts to keep their affair secret, hoping it will go the wayside of all such young romances. While in public she has the same cool, blonde beauty of her mother, in private she is very different, and with a wit and humor that enchants Imriel.

Princess Alais de la Courcel: The younger daughter of Ysandre and Drustan, she is promised to Talorcan, her cousin and Drustan’s heir. She is more Cruithne than her D’Angeline looking sister, and feels more at home in Alba, her father’s homeland. She is a favorite of Imriel, and is much like his younger sister, accompanying him to Alba when he finally marries Dorelei.

Drustan mab Necthana: The Cruarch of Alba, and husband to Ysandre de la Courcel, Queen of Terre D'Ange, and father to Sidonie and Alais. He is a wise leader and tested warrior, who is trying to both hold his clannish country together, as well as open in to the wider world that through its connection to Terre D'Ange. He knows that many resent the influence of the D'Angelines in Alba, and that many in Terre D'Ange resent the Alban influence there, especially the fact that their future queen is half Cruithne herself. He hopes to calm some of those fears by marrying Imriel to his niece, Dorelei, who is the future mother of the potential heir, and by promising his own daughter, Alais, to Dorelei's brother and Drustan's direct heir, Talorcan.

Dorelei mab Breidaia: The only daughter of Drustan’s sister Breidaia, she is supposed to produce the next heir to the Cruarchy of Alba. She is asked to marry Imriel in an arranged marriage on the part of her uncle and aunt to ensure that D’Angeline interests remained tied to the Alban throne. She is unsure of this arrangement with her handsome, yet sulking D’Angeline prince, but comes to love Imriel in her own way, as he comes to care for her.

Maislon de Lombelon: The leader of Sidonie’s personal guard and her lover after Imriel’s marriage, he manages to shoot off his mouth, and finds himself haking Imriel the most unlikely of allies.

Urist: One of the men of Imriel’s Alban estates, he is like a father to Dorelei. When the unthinkable happens, he aids Imriel in his quest to seek Kushiel’s Justice.

Morwen: A witch of the Maghuir Dhonn clan, she uses Imriel’s passions to bind him with her magic, and in so doing causes more trouble than she intended for her people.

Berlick: A male witch of the Mahuir Dhonn, he follows Morwen’s lead in her fears, and commits an awful crime, causing him both to threaten the line of succession for Alba, but bring down the wrath of Kushiel on himself for his crimes.

Micah ben Ximon: A Yeshuite warrior who had been trained by none other than Joscelin Verrieul, he is now the war leader of the armies of Taseuz Vral in Vralia, and Imriel’s only contact in the strange, foreign land.

Tadeuz Vral: The king of Vralia, he has formed a nation out of sheer force and the power of the Yeshuite faith. He is seeking to create a new Yeshuite kingdom to the East, one that would rival the other great nations in power and prestige, built under the standard of Yeshua ben Yosef.

Avraham ben David: A respected Rebbi in Vral, he both befriends Berlik and assists Imriel in his search for the Cruithne male witch.

Plot: Imriel de la Courcel no Montreve returns from Tiberium prepared to do his duty and marry the niece of Drustan mab Necthana. But he never expected to fall so completely and passionately in love with Drustan’s oldest daughter, the heir to the D’Angeline throne, Sidonie de la Courcel, or that she would return the affection. While they dabble with forbidden fire, Imriel knows that his duty lay elsewhere, and despite Elua’s only precept, “Love as thou wilt”, he defies that and goes with his arranged bride to Alba. But his ignored passions get him in trouble, and place himself and his wife Dorelei in danger. When the unthinkable happens, Imriel is forced to face his crimes, and to mete out Kushiel’s Justice, both on those who dared to break their oaths, as well as on himself and Sidonie.

Themes:

One cannot cut themselves off from who they are: Imriel’s journey has been that of accepting who and what he is, as Melisande Sharhazai’s son, as Phedre’s foster son, as a Prince of the realm, and now as Sidonie’s lover and Dorelei’s husband and father to his unborn child. It is a learning process for Imriel, shown most explicitly when he is forced to wear special charms that protect him from the magic of the Maghuin Dhonn, the strange clan who have taken some dislike to Imriel. When they use his own passions for Sidonie against him for their own ends, he is literally divided from himself by the charms used to keep him from their control. All his senses are muted, and while he does this willingly to protect his wife and to try to do what is right by her, he isn’t being true to himself at all. In the end, the price would be far to high, especially for Dorelei who was an innocent in most of this. Imriel learns that it isn’t worth it to ignore or to separate you from who and what you are; no matter if you believe you are being ‘good’ by it. Often times the good is outweighed by a greater evil at the end of it, and more hurt and pain than if you had just been honest from the start.

Love as thou wilt: Elua’s precept is sacred in Terre D’Ange, and both Imriel and Sidonie ignore it when they feel duty calls. Instead of staying true to that love and leaving it in the hands of Blessed Elua, they circumvented it, believing they were doing what was best. Much as the above example, things didn’t work out that way, and in the end more hurt and pain was caused by neither of them being honest about the situation and working it out. Because of this, both Sidonie and Imriel feel a great since of guilt over the events that happen and feel that their needs to be an atonement, for Imriel it is chasing down the one who committed the wrong and bringing him to justice…but there is justice in it as well for Imriel. However, there is mercy to Kushiel as well, and perhaps the two young lovers have learned their lesson and will not let politics enter into how they feel again. As Melisande put it once, and it was repeated by Sidonie, “Elua cared not for thrones and crowns…”

Don’t take out you irritation with others: While Imriel may love Sidonie hopelessly, that isn’t to say he doesn’t love Dorelei, and that she didn’t love him. In Dorelei’s quite way, she puts up with the temper tantrums of her young husband, who is unhappy to be leaving Sidonie, and teaches him that it isn’t her fault that any of this is happening, so please stop acting that way. When she comes down on him like that, Imriel begins to grow up, and to treat Dorelei as a person, a good person, who cares for him. It’s an important step into adulthood for Imriel, and something that he will forever be thankful for from his young wife.

You can’t outrun the crimes you have committed: Berlik tries to run from Alba and from Imriel in the hopes that he can draw away the pressure from his people and the awful crime he committed. In doing so, he falls into the company of the Yeshuite pilgrims to Vralia, and he too learns important lessons about accepting ones sins and forgiveness. Rather than continuing to run and hide from his crimes, he accepts it when justice finally comes, and he accepts it with peace and dignity, confident that he has finally paid the price for the things that he has done.

Tadeuz Vral as Constantine: Unless you completely ignored your World History course in high school, there’s no way of missing the Constantine the Great/Tadeuz Vral angle, (Constantine was the Roman Emperor who made it suddenly cool to worship Jesus). Tadeuz Vral, similar to the real life Constantine, decides that Yeshua ben Yosef, (Jesus), would be a really cool way to a) unite the Vralians and new Yeshuite immigrants and b) have one standard with which to kick is brother’s ass. The effect worked, and now Yeshua, like in real life, becomes a warrior god who is out to convert through massive use of force, and using religion to control everyone. No biggie, I figured this was coming at some point with the Yeshuite angle; I just wasn’t sure HOW when I was reading Kushiel’s Chosen.


Every book sucks somewhere: This book, despite its scope and length, had surprisingly few sucky parts. Perhaps I could have done without the graphic descriptions of how to boil someone’s head, and the endless trooping through the Vralian, snow covered hinterland, but on the whole the story was great. I actually had very few complaints about this book.

What did I like: Everything, but especially the romance of Sidonie and Imriel. I know, some people are squicked when they start doing mental family trees in their head, (Imriel is Ysandre’s cousin, that makes Sidonie his second cousin I believe…I get so confused with the ‘once removed’.) Frankly, it didn’t squick me that much. I thought they were a perfect match together, and I think Carey did a really good job of trying to explain that first, and letting that over-ride the whole ‘cousin’ thing. And I love the political quagmire this is creating and how Sidonie handles it so deftly, even putting Barquiel L’Envers firmly in his place. It shows that Sidonie herself will make a great queen and great leader someday.

I also liked the marriage of Dorelei and Imriel as well. I think it could have been so easy to make it miserable, but I think Carey did it very well by portraying a couple of kids thrown into a political marriage, trying as they might to be tender and caring towards one another, knowing that it wasn’t as much about love but duty for them. I think in the end Imriel really did love Dorelei, and perhaps would have tried as he could to make things work, but it wasn’t good for either of them. And perhaps the hand of fate knew what it was doing after all.

And surprisingly, I liked that Phedre and Joscelin only had a limited appearance in this book. It would have seemed a bit silly for a book that was focusing on Imriel to constantly be referring to those two, as if Imriel couldn’t stand on his own two feet. Rather, they are shown as just what they are in Imriel’s life, his parental figures, who are there to try and help him when his life goes to hell, but wise enough to know that he is a man now who can solve his own problems, (something Phedre, admittedly, has a bit of a problem with, as all mothers usually would.)

How would I rate this wormy book: This is a MONSTER worm, if you have read this series, read this book, I think it is my favorite of the lot. Adventurous and romantic, torrid and sweet, it has a bit of everything, and I think that this book more than it’s predecessor really shows us the worth and potential of Imriel, and how he is developing outside of the concept of being ‘Melisande Sharhazai’s son.’