The land of Terre d' Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good...and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phedre nó Delaunay is a woman born with a scarlet mote in her left eye and sold into indentured servitude as a child. Her bond was purchased by a nobleman, and he was the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one. Phedre's path has taken a strange and sometimes dangerous course. She has lain with princes and pirate kings, battled a wicked temptress and saved two nations with her courageous actions and sacrifices. Through it all she has had the devoted swordsman Joscelin at her side. He is sworn to her and by accepting who she is, Joscelin has never violated the central precept of the angel Cassiel: to protect and serve. But Phedre's plans will put his pledge to the test. Phedre and Joscelin travel a dangerous path that will carry them across the world, to fabled courts and splendid vistas, to distant lands where madness reigns and souls are currency, and down a fabled river to a land forgotten by most of the world. And to a power so mighty that none dare speak its name.

Kushiel's Avatar is the concluding volume in Jacqueline Carey's evocative novels about the enigmatic Phedre nó Delaunay; the third in a triptych of beautifully constructed historical fantasies that combine passion and danger, great battles of the sword and soul, deep eroticism, and mystical enigmas.