The End

It’s hard for me to move between worlds.  Don’t worry, I’m not claiming that I actually left good ol’ Terra today.  As a matter of fact, metaphorically, I was still on the same continent.  I was reading Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey, the last book of its series, and a good portion of the book takes place in North America, among a fantasy equivalent of the Aztecs.  The story—which is the conclusion of three trilogies of books, beginning with Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Scion, and Naamah’s Kiss, respectively—is a revised history of the world spanning from the late middle ages to the end of the fifteenth century, centered on present-day France.  This land, called Terre d’Ange in the books, is the homeland of a people who are descended from angels, their primary god giving them only one precept: Love As Thou Wilt.

The books are beautifully done.  The first series follows Phédre no Delaunay, a courtesan and spy chosen by the one-time Punisher of God to endure pain as pleasure.  She moves through a world of intrigue, art, beauty, and yes, gratuitous sex.  In the course of three books, Phédre becomes a great heroine, traveling all across the known world and saving her homeland multiple times.  She even manages to rescue a young prince, the son of her deadliest enemy, and it is this boy, Imriel, who is the hero of the following series.  He, too, journeys all across the world, more often missing than not, but he, too, finds love by the end of the series.  I had thought that his story was the last that would be set in this intoxicating world, but I was wrong.  Carey wasn’t finished, and in Naamah’s Kiss, she introduced a new heroine, the wild and beautiful Moirin mac Fainche, daughter of a d’Angeline priest of desire and a witch of the Alban faith that worships the Great Bear.  I know, complicated.  If you read them, I advise that you begin with Phédre’s stories, otherwise all the implications will be lost to you.

Moirin’s stories are filled with more magic than in the previous books, and to be honest, the magic put a toll on my ability to disbelieve.  Poor Moirin is put through a lot, more even than one tends to expect from the heroines of novels, without much of a chance to rest.  Still, the books are beautifully written, with Moirin an impulsive, loving, and sexy character who is easy to like.  And the books do have something simply wonderful to say about the value of all faiths and the commonality of the human condition.  Finally, it is simply fascinating to look at our world in a new light. 

It was out of this world that I rose tonight, reluctantly, on closing the covers of the last book.  I sighed, smoothed my hands over the cover, and went to put it back on the shelf, and outwardly, that was that.  But in my head I’m still caught by the faces of Moirin and Bao and Desirée and Thierry and Brother Phanuel, as well as the City of Elua, Bryn Gorrydum, and the true Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond.  It’s hard to leave them behind, hard to remember that there is no magic in the world I’ve returned to, or at least if there is, it’s only the ordinary, every-day kind.  It’s hard for me to move on, and in a way I don’t want to.  I want to nurse this painful softness to myself, to appreciate just a little longer the art of a good story.  This is the gift I give to the author, the tribute I pay to her work, and I know that even though she may not know of it, she is glad of it.  It’s all I hope for in my own future, that someday someone might do the same for my own books, closing the last cover and simultaneously exalting in and mourning the end.