Still waiting for my library to get a copy of Chalice...
From the Boston Globe:
These books are for anyone who likes novels that recall truths about human nature or suggest new ones. Without removing McKinley from the YA/fantasy shelves, I'd like to slip a few volumes into the adult section, so that readers willing to abandon their reliance on the utterly believable can enter one that's believable while in it. They will find that the themes are not "who marries the princess" and "who inherits the fortune" but are the nature of the state, the sanctity of work, the primacy of loyalty.