Kushiel's avatar - Jacqueline Carey

Ever since Phdre n Delaunay was sold into servitude as a child, her path has taken a strange, and often dangerous course. She has lain with princes and pirate kings and battled a wicked temptress still determined to win the crown at any cost. All this time Phdre has had at her side the devoted swordsman Joscelin, who has never violated the central precept of the angel Cassiel: to protect and serve. Now Phdre's plans will put his pledge to the ultimate test.

For she has never forgotten her childhood friend Hyacinthe, and has spent ten long years searching for the key to free him from his eternal indenture to the Master of Straits. To redeem Hyacinthe, Phdre and Joscelin embark on a dangerous journey that will carry them to far-off countries where madness reigns, and to confront a power so mighty that none dare speak its name.

'Carey dismantles standard notions of both magic and mortality to produce a long, complex saga worthy of the field's best writer on such a scale, George R. R. Martin' Locus

'I read many new writers, but few of them capture my imagination as Jacqueline Carey has. A writer to watch - as the clich goes - but more importantly a writer to read' Storm Constantine