I first heard of the Kushiel series by seeing some of my poly/sacred sexuality friends mention that they’re reading it through Twitter and Facebook. It didn’t register strongly at the time except to have the name “Kushiel” tagged in my head with these friends.
When I was at the airport last month flying out to see my fiancee in Florida I was killing time in the bookstore at SeaTac and I happened on the Kushiel section in the fantasy/SciFi aisle. I say “section” because there are enough books in the series now and they’re big enough that they took up a decent amount of shelf space. The tagging of the name “Kushiel” from before kicked in and so I paused and started reading the back cover.
It looked interesting but I passed on it then. I think I was worried that it was a bit too romance novel-y for me. I did read up on the series in Wikipedia later and I became concerned as well that while it seemed like it might be sex positive by being a positive story about a courtesan it sounded like it might have a fundamentally Christian basis.
That was that except I stumbled on the book a couple of times after that and found myself drawn to it, wondering. After all, my friends who have read it aren’t Christian at all. And, too, I thought, if it is sex positive, that alone should merit some degree of support, shouldn’t it?
So, two weeks ago I finally relented and decided that, even if I hate it and don’t finish it, it’s worth $8 to support something potentially sex positive.
I’ve started reading it this weekend and I can report so far, it’s rather interesting. It’s a bit like Guy Gavriel Key in that it’s a fantasized alternate history, centered mainly in pseudo-Medieval France. So far, too, it gets high marks for sex positivity and kink, by having the main character be a woman who naturally feels pleasure in pain who is training to be a courtesan. Most importantly, the elements that I thought were Christian really aren’t. If anything, the best analogy I can make is that it’s an interesting fusion of Christianity, Orphism and the cult of Sol Invictus of the later Empire. Of these, the Christianity is the smallest piece.
We shall see how it goes, but it’s at least more interesting so far than I had suspected.
4 Comments
14 June 2009 at 12:15 pm
I’ll be interested to hear your final thoughts on this. I’ve been picking these books up and starting them and leaving them for a long while now. For some reason I’ve never managed to finish one, don’t know why.
17 June 2009 at 8:59 am
I’m with rustmoon on this, will be very interested to get your final take on it.
17 June 2009 at 5:09 pm
I absolutely love the series … so it will be interesting to se what you think. I admit that the sex is more …. descriptive in the second series.
18 June 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] of Perpetual Love and Suffering Jump to Comments Following on my posting about Inanna and Kushiel this week, I find myself turning over in my mind the ideas of Goddesses, Erotica, Kink, pain, and [...]