Read As Thou Wilt
by Ilana Masad
I used to feel sheepish when I explained my first tattoo to people. It’s on my back, in between my shoulder blades, and although I got it when I was 18 and it was legal for me to do so without parental consent, I’d known I wanted this tattoo since I was 13. It’s an unremarkable first tattoo—a rose—unless you happen to recognize the specific design and where it’s from, which is the cover of Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey:
I wasn’t embarrassed to have been a staunch fan of this book from the tender age of 13 (probably a bit too young, honestly) but trying to describe it to people really did make me sound a little ridiculous. “It’s a fantasy novel,” I’d say. “Like, a really intricate fantasy world, and it’s about a courtesan who’s been touched by the gods and finds pain pleasurable, and also it’s about politics and she’s kind of a spy, and it’s set in a world where sex is sacred?”
Nowadays, all I have to tell people is that Kushiel’s Dart, which was published in 2001 by Tor Books, is proto-romantasy of the best kind, and even if they don’t read the now-ubiquitous genre, they’ll get what I mean. (I still dream of profiling author Jacqueline Carey for some big mainstream publication because she deserves to get so much more credit than she does, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Keep us breathing fire!
For $3/month you can read this whole post and get our weekdaily newsletter too!