I first read Kushiel’s Dart when I was too young for it, which was, in fact, the perfect age. I must have been about 14 when I picked the thick paperback from the shelf at my local Barnes and Noble. Most paperbacks were thick back then—there’s since been a shift to softcover—but this one was …

Kushiel’s Dart was published almost twenty years ago. In the decades since its release it has become a classic, spawning two sequels and half a dozen other books set in the world of Terre d’Ange. Full of the sinister, the sensual, the political, and the personal, Kushiel’s Dart centers on the remarkable story of Phèdre …