Spirit Fox by Mickey Zucker Reichert and Jennifer Wingert
Spirit Fox is a high fantasy novel set in a world where heirarchy is determined by women (an aspect that is downplayed as opposed to turned into an endless power struggle or bondage game or any of those other things that tend to pop up in such fantasy worlds) and sometimes people "spirit link"(effectively, mix their souls with) animals at birth (it's like Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books only...kinda cool and fun.)
Kiarda, the firstborn daughter of a noblewoman, spirit links with a fox kit at birth. However, her father, Stane, not knowing of the link, kills the fox kit out of mercy because it's weak and it's mother has died. This causes the fox's spirit to enter Kiarda. Instead of one soul in two bodies, as most linked pairs are, Kiarda has two souls in one body. The fox spirit lies dormant inside Kiarda until she's sixteen, when it starts taking over from time to time. The first time it happens, Kiarda ends up alone and naked in the mountains. Maddock, a stableboy who loves her, finds her and saves her, but is accused of having kidnapped and raped her.
Maddock, who has trained in secret with an outlawed swordsman, escapes and flees before he'sable to tell Kiarda the truth, and Kiarda, not remembering anything, has no choice but to believe that he attacked her until she finally learns about the fox spirit. When she does remember, she sets out to find him, followed by Bevin, a healer and her friend, and her cousins-scarred Adan and Tynan, who is linked to a cat who changes its name every five minutes. Along the way they're joined by Gaer, the swordsman who trained Maddock. Maddock, meanwhile, has met and "joined"(they saved him and, unlike his own people, listen to him instead of persecute him) a foreign army from Gaer's homeland equipped with sorcerers and a well meaning but somewhat ignorant priest who are carrying out that world's version of the inquisition...except they wipe out entire towns instead of a few witches in each. Eventually, of course, Maddock and Kiarda find each other and Maddock has to choose which side to fight for even as the priest, Honesty, is given the chance to stop his people after having his eyes opened by Tynan and his cat.
I've been putting this one off for a while because the setup sounded a bit odd to me, but I quite liked it. It doesn't emphasize the fact that the women rule...it's simply the way things are. Stane is not the least bit wimpy or downtrodden because he is subservient to his wife...in fact, they seem to have a very equal balance of power. In fact, Stane, who is very intelligent and openminded, and devoted to his people, is probably my favorite character in the book. He often skirts at the edges of the law(he's also a swordsman, but having a sword is illegal, but he doesn't let that stop him from taking up a sword to prove the importance of the law to Maddock, and then he takes the punishment for breaking the law for both of them) and is far from a pushover. Kiarda's cousin, Adan, was forced to step down from ruling his ancestral lands because of his brother's marriage, but it's made clear that the problems that causes aren't because the new wife is a woman, but because she's a bad ruler, regardless of gender.
The magic is also underplayed, and is often barely there. It's mostly evident in the spiritlinks, show through the common(and fun) spirit link between Tynan and his cat, and the uncommon and disastrous link between Kiarda and her lost fox. I liked the book quite a bit. My only complaint is that I think it could have been a little longer to flesh a few things out, but at 440~ pages, I'm not going to complain.
Right now I'm reading Moongazer by Marianne Mancusi, from the Shomi romance novel line, which is fun but would likely be more fun to the gaming/matrix crowd. It is, however, a bit rough for me, as it's written in the first person, which I'm usually OK with but don't care for in romance novels, and in the present tense, which tends to give me hives. Still, the story is fun and I'm enjoying it.
ETA: Entry was rather rushed because there was free time before home time and I wanted to be productive.