Anne Bishop

The Black Jewels — (1998–2009) The invisible Ring is a prequel. Publisher: Seven hundred years ago, a Black Widow witch saw an ancient prophecy come to life in her web of dreams and visions. Now the Dark Kingdom readies itself for the arrival of its Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But she is still young, still open to influence-and corruption. Whoever controls the Queen controls the darkness. Three men-sworn enemies-know this. And they know the power that hides behind the blue eyes of an innocent young girl. And so begins a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, where the weapons are hate and love-and the prize could be terrible beyond imagining...

The first three are the original Black Jewels trilogy


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The Black Jewels Trilogy: "Joy and Pain, Rage and Celebration"

Imagine a fairy-tale heroine. You know the type: beautiful, kind, able to charm all the beasties of the forest into eating out of her hand. On the astral plane, she even has a unicorn's horn. Now imagine that she has enough magical power to move mountains. (Literally.)

You might think this is a recipe for the worst Mary Sue in the history of literature, but in Black Jewels, it works. There's a reason Jaenelle is the way she is. One of her titles is "dreams made flesh," which means that Jaenelle is the embodiment of the desperate hopes of all the downtrodden people and animals in the realms of Terreille, Kaeleer, and Hell. She is impossibly powerful because she needs to be, and because she was created to be. It also works because Jaenelle is not the point-of-view character. The story is told through the eyes of the three men who, each in his own way, love her.

As the story begins, Terreille is ruled by cruel and brutal Queens. The social structure was originally meant to work according to chivalric principles: Queens would rule, and men would serve and protect them for love's sake. But over centuries, power has corrupted the Queens. The most powerful men are kept as slaves and controlled by means of sexual torture. Young witches with the potential to become powerful are often raped at a Queen's command, so as to break them of their power and eliminate them as threats. Jaenelle's destiny is to cleanse the realms of this corruption.

I should probably warn readers about the heaps of sexual violence in Black Jewels. Rape, child molestation, castration, you name it, it's here.

If the whole series were like that, I probably would have stopped reading partway through the first book. What kept me going was the tenderness that developed among the principal characters, even in the midst of horror. That, and the humor. (I loved it when Jaenelle accidentally moved an entire fortress while trying to use magic to summon her shoes!) These bright spots give the reader an idea of what the characters are fighting for, and what a Queen's court should be. Black Jewels would not have been half as effective if it had just been one gory scene after another. I keep thinking of Janine Cross's Touched by Venom, which was often compared to Black Jewels, but which didn't have any brightness to balance the nastiness.

It can be difficult, at first, to navigate the complex universe Anne Bishop has created. I spent the first few chapters scratching my head over Queens and witches and Warlords and Warlord Princes and Gates and Webs and so on. I also had trouble getting a grip on what time period the setting of Black Jewels might be analogous to. There were times it felt like a medieval setting, and times it seemed almost modern. After a while, though, I was able to figure out most of it and to chalk the rest up to "it's magic, it works somehow" and sink into the story.

Black Jewels follows Jaenelle's friends as they attempt to keep her safe and sane until she can claim her full power. The story builds to a dramatic, moving climax that isn't the stereotypical Big Fantasy Battle. The plot sags a bit in places, especially in Heir to the Shadows. However, I enjoyed Black Jewels enough that I've reread it a couple of times. —Kelly   Comments

Daughter of the Blood

There was only one word for Anne Bishop's Daughter of the Blood (first volume of The Black Jewels series): Weird.

I was tempted to put it down several times simply on account of the grossness of several parts of it. Anne Bishop maybe doesn't care for the male gender all that much. If you ignore the grotesque scenes where men are brutally castrated or enslaved by having metal rings placed on their members which cause them intense pain, and can get through the extremely poorly written sex scenes, Daughter of the Blood was pretty good.

Through all of the negative points of Daughter, I really wanted to see how the end would turn out and was engaged by the main characters. Though confusing at first as the narrative jumps "worlds" or "realms," and after figuring out the links between characters and much of the terminology that is Bishop's style, the book does have a unique quality that, while gross and disturbing on many levels, was interesting to read nonetheless.

Overall, Daughter of the Blood was interesting, kept my attention, but definitely had a dark and sometimes disturbing or scary edge. A fast read that is not for kids.   —Julie   Comments

Dreams Made Flesh: Won't win any new readers

I enjoyed Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. I honestly did. And I liked the little stories in Dreams Made Flesh — especially the one about Lucivar. But if you haven't read Bishop's work before, I would not recommend picking this up. It's little more than relaxing, enjoyable fluff meant for folks who are already fans of The Black Jewels.

These are the stories that fans write fiction about because they desire so much to see them. Dreams Made Flesh isn't astounding literature...just good old, kick back, put your heels up, and munch on chocolate fluff stories.   —Beth   Comments

Tangled Webs: Warning: Spoilers

The Black Jewels Trilogy was and is one of my very favorite guilty pleasures. Yet I've been avoiding Tangled Webs (what is tagged book six in what is now called The Black Jewels Series — don't even get me started on that) for some time. To explain why, I'll give you a quote from the publisher's blurb:

"The invitation is signed "Jaenelle Angelline," and it summons her family to an entertainment she had specially prepared. Surreal SaDiablo, former courtesan and assassin, arrives first. But when she enters the house, Surreal finds herself trapped in a living nightmare created by the tangled webs of Black Widow witches...and if she uses Craft to defend herself, she risks being sealed in the house forever. But Jaenelle did not send the invitation. And now Jaenelle and her family must rescue Surreal and the others inside without becoming trapped themselves — and then discover who has created such a place, and why..."

My first reaction (and one I can imagine many fans of the series might have had) was "When did Surreal get that stupid?" I mean honestly, it sounded absurd. But this is in part because it's missing an important piece of information: The reason Surreal, a generally wary and suspicious character, walks into this trap completely unwarily is because Jaenelle was in fact preparing such a house for entertainment — a haunted house, basically, based on the ideas that ignorant landens (non-Bloods) have of the Blood. Of course I can see why this was left off the blurb; aside from just sounding utterly ridiculous, what it would do is warn readers that they're being sold a glorified Halloween episode. Because that's what this is.

As you might have noticed, I'm breaking my “start with the good first” rule — on account of this wall banger lacking much in the way of good. I don't even know where to begin here. The plot? A landen mystery writer who discovers he's really Blood and is so angry at other Blood for laughing at his erroneous depictions of them that he decided to pay Witches to help him create a murderous spooky house with thirty exits which close each time someone uses Craft. Why, it's a brilliant idea! Just ask the characters, who keep insisting that if it was a story, it would be "ingenious." Um, yeah, no. If I want Halloween episodes I'll watch old family sitcoms, thank you.

How about the characters? Never before have they pissed me off quite this much. Am I supposed to think Surreal is tough and cool for bullying landen children who she could easily kill with barely a thought? I don't. Not even with Anne Bishop painting them as the most one-dimensional, unrealistic little snots you can possibly imagine. I'm not impressed with the appalling disdain Surreal and numerous other Blood have for the landens and their ignorance — an ignorance the Blood themselves appear to have done nothing to correct (and in fact the spooky house Jaenelle plans to create is more taunting that ignorance than anything else).

And while I'm at it, if the only way you can make your characters seem smart is to make them brighter than children you yourself have written as having about the IQ of wet paper, you've got problems. I mean seriously. These children are stuck in a scary, unfamiliar situation and they proceed to try to throw their weight around and disobey their elders. Worse, after they see one of their companions disobey and open a door only to be viciously killed, two more of them do so later on in the book. Though not implicitly stated, it's quite strongly implied — through, primarily, the thoughts of the adult characters — that if these were Blood children no such things would have occurred. But since Blood are too smart for that and the only real way for something to be horrifying is to have it done to children, the children must be landens. Too bad that's more irritating than horrifying. And who are the adults to criticize? They barricade themselves in a room they're marginally sure is safe but considering what they've been through you'd think they'd be cautious and have someone keep watch. But no, they all go to sleep, and only avoid death by stupidity through plot contrivance.

And then there's the prose. Oh good lord, talk about stuck in the mud. Bishop's prose is generally easy to read and spare on extraneous details — though at this point that seems to be more because she's incapable of thinking up new, original details. Daemon is still more beautiful than handsome. Jaenelle still has a silvery, velvet-coated laugh or, when she's Witch, a voice full of midnight and caverns. Lucivar still has a lazy, arrogant smile. Men are still snarly. All of the descriptions you've already read numerous times are exactly the same; everyone even still says things "too softly" so often I'd be dead of alcohol poisoning if I turned it into a drinking game.

Things pick up a little towards the very end when Lucivar shows up, stops angsting about his relationships with his brother and father, and starts being seriously awesome in the way only Lucivar can be. I love me some Lucivar. But even that doesn't stop the forehead-smacking moments from pouring in. Lucivar can get into the house and back out again because he knows the Craft used to make it — Craft that neither Daemon nor Jaenelle (whose Craft teachers include, among others, The High Lord of Hell, the queen of a race of magic spiders who spin the most dangerous tangled webs known to the Blood, and the millennia old Queen and Prince of the dragons, progenitors of the Blood, to name a few) know. Then he puts on chain mail, which won't give most people pause but made me boggle — wouldn't flying warriors go in for something a bit lighter? And finally to stretch out the already thin plot and the so-called tension, there's a demon-dead Eryien warrior in the house, just so Surreal and her companions will be worried it's actually Lucivar and thus head in the opposite direction of their damn rescuer.

I guess there were a few moments I enjoyed. But mostly my pleasure came from the irony of the characters mocking the idiotic plots of psycho-writer's books and making jabs at the purple prose sometimes found in romance novels. The truth is, I could go on at length about the things that pissed me off, offended me, or were just downright absurd. But I think you get the drift. This is a joke, a farce. If it weren't for Bishop's laurels — which are in all reality rather slim — this book wouldn't have seen the light of day because it is, in a word, pointless.  —Beth   Comments

The Shadow Queen

My last encounter with Anne Bishop’s BLACK JEWELS SERIES did not go well. Okay, that might be a bit of an understatement. But I suppose even my inner fangirl is a bit hard-pressed to let go sometimes, so I decided to give the series one last try.

The setup is somewhat different for The Shadow Queen. After suffering centuries of abuse and degradation under corrupt Queens, the territory of Dena Nehele is left without a Queen at all. Theran Greyhaven — the last remaining heir of Jared and Lia from The Invisible Ring — is determined to change that, but doesn’t quite know how. He calls in a favor from a powerful man who once knew his ancestors (sorry, fans, no points for guessing this one, it’s obvious) and manages to bring a Queen to his territory — but Cassidy, plain-faced, Rose Jeweled, cast-off Queen of a court in Kaeleer is not what he was hoping for. But Cassidy is determined to try, especially when she meets Gray, a man broken by the abuse he suffered at the hands of the old Queens. Yet with a court that barely trusts her and with Theran cutting her off at every pass, how can she hope to succeed?

If reading all that left you scratching your head and staring blankly at the screen then you’re probably not familiar with the series; in that case, this review can’t help you. Otherwise, feel free to proceed.

So the question is, did Anne Bishop bring the series back up to scratch with The Shadow Queen? Sadly, not quite, but it is far and away better than Tangled Webs and certainly a step in the right direction. For one thing, though the plot still isn’t quite as complex as the original trilogy, it’s strong and solid, and interesting enough for the reader to care about.

Cassidy is a fairly major change from Anne Bishop’s previous BLACK JEWELS characters. She actually is plain and she doesn’t have Super Duper Empress Mary Sue powers, either. This means she has a lot of her own internal strength. Sometimes she acts in ways that seem a bit melodramatic to me, but in the long run I find her eminently likeable. On the other hand, Theran Grayhaven is an ass, and remains so for most of the book. He does begin to develop as a character really late on, and part of me totally hopes some fierce little hearth Witch will appear in the next book to walk all over him until he pulls his head out of his ass. Please?

I’m not sure how I feel about the relationship between Cassidy and Gray. Aside from the fact that I am getting too old for the OMG! Love at First Sight thing, there’s also the little matter that Gray is a full-grown man with the mind of a 15-year-old boy. He’s not apparently walking the Twisted Kingdom (and this is the part where the few non-series-readers still left threw up their hands and stopped trying to decode this review) so I just don’t know what to make of the situation. Bishop does handle it with far more class than some authors might, keeping sex and most sexual references out of the picture. And even Cassidy approaches with some hesitation and misgivings, so at least we, the readers, don’t have to worry about walking the Squicky Kingdom.

On the other hand, the old gang of characters is back and (with the notable yet unsurprising exception of Lucivar) rather on the annoying side. The constant relationship drama between Jaenelle and Daemon is the worst of it. After two years together, Daemon only just now encounters the post-traumatic stress left behind by his years as a pleasure slave — only just now. So things go kind of kablooey, but not really, and then the reader ends up wading through conversation after conversation where first Saetan, then Jaenelle, then Lucivar explains to Daemon about his kinky side and how it’s okay. Aside from the fact that he’s really not that kinky, the whole thing grates. Even women don’t talk to each other in this overwrought, flowery emotion-filled manner, but we get bucketloads of it in The Shadow Queen. From the men. It’s not interesting and it’s certainly not attractive; it’s annoying. Add that to the fact that eighty percent of the scenes involving Daemon and Jaenelle dissolve into them having sex like bunnies, and it’s just kind of ridiculous.

And I think that’s mainly what detracted so much from my reading experience. I find myself a little wearied by some of the familiar attitudes and behaviors. The possessiveness, for one. Okay, it isn’t freaky, sparkly stalkeriffic vampire over-the-top, but it’s still a bit much. And I don’t just mean between the men and women. The way these characters want to kill someone for breathing funny in the direction of a loved one is getting old. And the way the Blood believe they’re justified in brutally murdering someone who, while not exactly a good person, has never actually murdered or physically harmed someone, grates. I don’t know, maybe I’m outgrowing all this. (Except for Lucivar. I will never outgrow Lucivar. Can you believe I had to wait almost half the book before he showed up and started being, as usual, completely awesome?)

Still, with the old gang returns a lot of the character dynamic that has made the BLACK JEWELS books so hard to let go of. Bishop has a real knack for making her characters feel real and feel remarkably human for people who definitely are not. The Shadow Queen is infused with much of the old humor and charm as well. Looking back on it, that’s one of the major factors that was missing from Tangled Webs. Nobody but nobody was actually likeable in that book. Thankfully, they are in this one.

The Shadow Queen is a huge improvement, but neither the fans nor Bishop herself are out of the woods yet. And for some, this simply won’t be enough improvement. Read it, certainly, but if you’ve been disappointed before, then rein in your expectations. For now, I’m keeping the BLACK JEWELS SERIES strictly on my guilty pleasure list. —Beth   Comments