Highly recommend

Cannot tell you how many times I have reread this series in the past 15 years. Easily on par with the Name of the Wind for writing skill, makes Game of Thrones look like a simple stroll when it comes to court intrigue and 50 shades as vanilla as virginity. Phedre is everything you could want in a female protagonist with complicated relationships with every antagonist simply by nature if her curse/gift of suffering. She is a woman's strength of intellect, patience, resilience and just plain pain tolerance. She uses that underestimation due her desire to please as a strength no one expects. #bdsmromance #complicated #consent #godblessed #godcursed

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4 people found this helpful

Complex and vibrant

A deeply planned story with intrigue and action. A strong female protagonist and a brilliant cast of supporring characters. The narrator provides the poise and grace I associate with the protagonist

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1 person found this helpful

Seriously decent story, with some depth

This novel appears to have started with the idea to create a culture where a BDSM submissive is a rare and valued thing. The main character is a person for whom pain elicits sexual pleasure. It is said many times in the text how this is a supremely rare gift, and how valued it is among the jaded members of the D'Angeline court. I had trouble swallowing this, and her ability to use this skill to manipulate world politics is another stumbling point for me. That aside, the story is compelling, I don't recognize the principal culture described by the author, but she draws in some pretty recognizable ones from European history.
The protagonist starts her adult life as an elite bed slave, and then, through politics, ends up travelling the known world and interacting with many cultures, making a huge impact on the political landscape of several nations. The narrator has a calm and elegant voice, doing a great job of conveying a serenity that isn't perfect for every situation the protagonist finds herself in, but overall is lovely to listen to, and elevates the protagonist in my mind.
Overall, its a great tale, and was engaging, if you buy into the premises I stumbled over - that sexual submission is a quality unique to only one person in three generations, and that her ability to have sex with the elite of several nations could save her nation, and change her world for the better. The sex part is done with a light touch, however, and this makes the story better, IMO. Additionally, there are more tenuous protagonists in many a tale, though, and it is worth the listen.

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Fantastic!!

This is one of my all time favorite books! As well as my first audio book listen! I wasn't sure if audio books would be for me so i chose a book i had already read and loved. I loved the audio book!! Im already addicted!

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A Masterpiece

Jacqueline Carey walks the delicate line between world building and storytelling. The story is set in a world that is just familiar enough to make the strange stand out.

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My favorite story

This is one of my all time favorite novels, so it was hard to get past the narrator's choice of voices and the pronunciation of certain names and places being so different than what I hear in my head, but it's still a fantastic story.

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2 people found this helpful

Great narrator, good book.

I enjoyed this audiobook. The narrator is fantastic. The story does run-on a bit at times but generally does a good job at covering a large enough scope to support it as a series....which I'll be continuing to listen to!

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French sex worker saves Europe

A very good story. Some sex. Some swords fights. Fashion. Political intrigue. Spoiler: the French are saved from the Germans by the English.

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feast for the ears and the soul and the heart.

Jacqueline Carey is an exceptional writer. you feel like you are there, the emotions, the scenes, the betrayals. sex, spies, battles, love and so much more. come for the story, stay for the sex, never leave for the love story will break you. the narrator does a fabulous job bringing it all to life. I hear her pronunciation of places and names in my head now and they sound even more beautiful that they were in print.

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Wow, slow start but ends up amazing 🤩

So this is a very long book and in the beginning I found it very slow and almost gave up on it especially because of all the made up names of people, places and everything else. But if you stick with it ( and maybe pronounce them however you need in your own head to make sense of it) it’s a very interesting concept.

You can always tell the difference between a fluff piece writer and a real world building writer. This was done by someone who can really write!

The lead character was so interesting I couldn’t help but get sucked into the story wanting to know what would happen next to her.

But the entire time I had this stupid thing nagging me and I was how did she not get pregnant? 😆
Usually in fantasy books the will talk about a herbal tea or medicine they take to not get pregnant especially because that’s what she did for a living, but then she was taken as a slave for maybe months so even if back home she had something she definitely didn’t have access to it then. Serving her masters every night and she was so young she would if eventually got pregnant. Ok end of rant it just was bugging me the entire book 😆

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