Kushiel's Justice

In Kushiel’s Justice the fifth book in the Legacy series, and volume two from Imriel’s is a tale of violence and divided loyalties. Phèdre nó Delaunay, the sexually adventurous heroine of the first trilogy, has become a placid foster mother to Prince Imriel, son of the unseen traitor Melisande Shahrizai. Carey's infamous explicit sex scenes now portray Imriel's illicit and often violent affair with Sidonie, daughter of Queen Ysandre.

Their romance is frustrated on many fronts, Imriel's is obliged to marry Dorelei, an Alban princess, and beget future rulers of Alba, as much as by the mistrust of most of the peers of the realm and the queen of him.

So he goes to Alba and in spite of his feelings for Sidone he falls in love with Alba and Dorelei, though not in the same way as he was in love with Sidone. Tragedy strikes and Imriel is sorely injured. For those killed he swears vengeance. His journey to find vengeance is an arduous and at times a very lonely quest. Carey brings Alba vividly alive with a multi layered plot and Imriel's complex inner life as he struggles with pain and loss in the present while trying to make peace with the past. That journey tests him and changes him in ways he could never have expected.

Imriel truly becomes a man in this story, struggling with many emotions and having to make many hard choices. During the course this book, we see him at his best and at his worst. The nature of the Shahrizai and Courcel blood in him, as well as the influences of Phedre and Joscelin all together forming the man he is becoming. see He loses himself and finds himself repeatedly, as his experience both past and present forge him into the powerful man who has finally come to terms with himself

In the book you also start to see Alais come into her own in Alba as she never could in Terra D'Ange.

The twists were many and often unexpected, but in hindsight they make sense, but many still took me by surprise as the public and private lives of people I thought I knew turned out to be different than I thought.