scandal, sin & zen

The nicest thing about rereading a favourite book series you started reading when you were thirteen is how much less thirteen you are twenty+ years later. I can't remember when I last read it all through myself, but I read Cassiel's Servant a couple of years ago, and last experienced the series starting around late 2012 when my wife read it for the first time.

Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey is a formative set of texts for me. It helped me start learning compassion for the concept of weakness; I grew up under high expectations and transmuted a presumed need for achievement or success into a depression that insisted I should be a robot because then a) wouldn't feel anything and b) would be perfect.

Depression's still here, but so is compassion and empathy, so I take that as a win.

It also introduced me to the concept of sexual pleasure being positive, and the broader concept of all consenting love being positive. My parents came from conservative backgrounds (British colonials and small-town Manitoban farming) and raised me within a conservative context. I learned about 'gay' from the internet. It wasn't in the book I got to read to learn about puberty.

Also: bisexual leads! Phèdre was my first and she remains stunning. Bless you for trying, Imriel. Moirin, you are a beautiful flavour all your own.

... Embarrassingly, the series did not teach me geography! I am still ashamed thirteen-year-old me didn't realise the setting was fantasy Europe. Actual the-map-and-cultures-roughly-align fantasy Europe, not something playing with fantastic-Europe concepts. Look I can still name all thirteen provincial and territorial Canadian capitals, leave me alone.

With the state of queer publishing being what it is today, I think a lot of these experiences seem minimal or, like, they could've come from 'a better source', whatever that might be. Frankly, I don't care. They're my experiences, and not only the internet, but the whole political and social landscape was different then. Twenty years is long enough.

So I recommend these books and I strongly recommend not reading their marketing taglines, because those are (unfortunately) set up to align it with the algorhythm and Fifty Shades of Grey and romantasy and other metric-based marketing nonsense that it was written prior to.

And hey, if you're unsure? Check out Starless instead. Starless distills all the strongest parts of Kushiel's Legacy down into one standalone story, and Khai and Zariya stand proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with every other Carey protagonist.