I fell in love with the way she writes, including her books not set in the same world as the Kushiel trilogies. Another writer I'm very fond of who hasn't been enough of a superstar to get a TV show or movie is Tad Williams - I wasn't familiar with Brandon Sanderson until after he finished The Wheel of Time when Robert Jordan died and he did a good job, but Tad Williams would have been the writer I would have picked to finish it.
I read a bunch of the Tad Williams books years ago. I don’t remember being particularly struck by his or Carey’s writing style - it was good but not the sort of style that stuck with me for decades.
For me the striking thing about Carey was her subject in the first few Kushiel books, which was unusual - the main character is a BDSM submissive who has been chosen/blessed by the gods to be a kind of “super masochist,” and she is trained as a courtesan and goes on adventures. At the time I read it I found it sort of “obvious.” I had a lot of critiques, particularly the fact that her main sadistic lover is also her nemesis, and she ends up marrying a vanilla guy who she doesn’t do BDSM with, implying that her sexuality is somehow suspect (despite the fact that it’s central to her character and to the entire plot of the book!!). This annoyed me so much that I sent an inquiring email to Carey, to which Carey responded dismissively. lol.
But I suspect the “obviousness” of those books may only exist for someone like me who was very entwined in the BDSM scene and everything.
Yeah, it's probably different if it's your personal area of expertise. (I remember "Clarisse Thorne" from when feminism blogging was big.) I do recall the second book havinv a small nod to her husband not being a natural at being a BDSM top, though, with Phedre saying something like "he learned how to make a torment of gentleness" in the narration.
I don't quite know if it was Carey's style as such, but there was something about it that carried over into her "The Sundering" duology and "Santa Olivia".
I read an awful lot of SF&F when I was in high school in the 1990s - I literally carried a book with me everywhere I went and read it while walking through the hallways at school between classes - so hopefully I've managed to develop some taste with all that experience.
Another author of note is Stephen R. Donaldson; he loves torturing his characters and watching them suffer before allowing them to have their happy ending, and the books end up being very emotionally intense. It's definitely "feel bad" literature during the bulk of the story, but I found it to be powerful stuff. (Note: Lord Foul's Bane, Donaldson's first novel, is actually pretty terrible and I would suggest skipping it entirely.)
Yeah, a lot of people have that same reaction. I found "The Illearth War" to be a huge step up from it - Covenant the character is still very much the walking pile of flaws he was in Lord Foul's Bane, but the story goes from boring to gripping and he's easier to tolerate as a protagonist.
Someone left a comment on another platform suggesting that it’s incorrect to refer to Cyteen as three separate novels, so I checked Wikipedia and it turns out that Cherryh prefers that Cyteen be published and viewed as a self-contained novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyteen
“In 1989 the novel was published in a three-volume edition:
Cyteen: The Betrayal
Cyteen: The Rebirth
Cyteen: The Vindication
Cherryh has expressed her disapproval of this edition, writing, "by my wishes, all future publications, will have Cyteen as one unified book."”
I like this list! I've read a number of things on it and haven't read others.
Do you like Jacqueline Carey?
I think her work is very interesting. I’m not sure if “like” is the right word. I read all the Kushiel books of course.
I fell in love with the way she writes, including her books not set in the same world as the Kushiel trilogies. Another writer I'm very fond of who hasn't been enough of a superstar to get a TV show or movie is Tad Williams - I wasn't familiar with Brandon Sanderson until after he finished The Wheel of Time when Robert Jordan died and he did a good job, but Tad Williams would have been the writer I would have picked to finish it.
I read a bunch of the Tad Williams books years ago. I don’t remember being particularly struck by his or Carey’s writing style - it was good but not the sort of style that stuck with me for decades.
For me the striking thing about Carey was her subject in the first few Kushiel books, which was unusual - the main character is a BDSM submissive who has been chosen/blessed by the gods to be a kind of “super masochist,” and she is trained as a courtesan and goes on adventures. At the time I read it I found it sort of “obvious.” I had a lot of critiques, particularly the fact that her main sadistic lover is also her nemesis, and she ends up marrying a vanilla guy who she doesn’t do BDSM with, implying that her sexuality is somehow suspect (despite the fact that it’s central to her character and to the entire plot of the book!!). This annoyed me so much that I sent an inquiring email to Carey, to which Carey responded dismissively. lol.
But I suspect the “obviousness” of those books may only exist for someone like me who was very entwined in the BDSM scene and everything.
Yeah, it's probably different if it's your personal area of expertise. (I remember "Clarisse Thorne" from when feminism blogging was big.) I do recall the second book havinv a small nod to her husband not being a natural at being a BDSM top, though, with Phedre saying something like "he learned how to make a torment of gentleness" in the narration.
I don't quite know if it was Carey's style as such, but there was something about it that carried over into her "The Sundering" duology and "Santa Olivia".
(Another person impressed by Carey: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBgozHEv7J72NCEPB/my-way if perhaps for different reasons than I was.)
I read an awful lot of SF&F when I was in high school in the 1990s - I literally carried a book with me everywhere I went and read it while walking through the hallways at school between classes - so hopefully I've managed to develop some taste with all that experience.
Another author of note is Stephen R. Donaldson; he loves torturing his characters and watching them suffer before allowing them to have their happy ending, and the books end up being very emotionally intense. It's definitely "feel bad" literature during the bulk of the story, but I found it to be powerful stuff. (Note: Lord Foul's Bane, Donaldson's first novel, is actually pretty terrible and I would suggest skipping it entirely.)
Interesting, I had dismissed all of Donaldson based on “Lord Foul’s Bane,” so it’s good to know it is not representative of his other books.
Yeah, a lot of people have that same reaction. I found "The Illearth War" to be a huge step up from it - Covenant the character is still very much the walking pile of flaws he was in Lord Foul's Bane, but the story goes from boring to gripping and he's easier to tolerate as a protagonist.
Someone left a comment on another platform suggesting that it’s incorrect to refer to Cyteen as three separate novels, so I checked Wikipedia and it turns out that Cherryh prefers that Cyteen be published and viewed as a self-contained novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyteen
“In 1989 the novel was published in a three-volume edition:
Cyteen: The Betrayal
Cyteen: The Rebirth
Cyteen: The Vindication
Cherryh has expressed her disapproval of this edition, writing, "by my wishes, all future publications, will have Cyteen as one unified book."”