This book is incredibly awful. It's embarrassingly bad. The characters (with their ridiculous names) and the world are poorly developed. The author gives us variations of the same scenes again and again - Daemon is a sexy threat, dear old dad Saetan is old and tenderhearted, Jaenelle is very powerful and young, everyone else is amazed and afraid and/or 110% evil, full stop, no nuance. The plot? Languishes.I never had a sense of where different "realms" existed in relation to one another, for all of the babbling about "webs" and "gates" -- honestly, as far as I can tell, each "realm" is like a city, and they all sort of float around in space and some of them are in Hell, where everyone's undead and they only drink blood, not liquor, except sometimes when they get totally wasted, also a horse vampire. ??? Some people can use magic, and some people are better at it or born with more power, but it's not really explained what the difference is, except that everyone we're concerned with is a) able to use magic, b) quite powerful or at least sort of special, and c) totally sexy. I mean, forget about any kind of description beyond "gold eyes" and "long black nails," (sounds SUPER sexy already right!) all you're going to get is how handsome and attractive and slinky and attractive and scary Daemon is, and Saetan has a bad leg, and Lucivar has wings. Maybe bat wings? Not sure. Plus Jaenelle has blonde hair, which she fluffs all the day, and blue eyes, but sometimes she has a stupid expression, and sometimes she's totally intense and wise beyond her years. Everyone who's bad is fat or doesn't have an impressive bosom or whatever, and they're always hanging out in shadows cackling about their wicked schemes and drinking blood. I'm not even kidding. This book is a joke. Daemon's always angry in a cold way, so he's always leaving frost where he goes. However, when he really gets his dander up, he's able to grotesquely torture and mutilate the people who are supposed to have control over him, so like... why does he allow them to boss him around and make him so miserable in the first place? Everyone's super passive-aggressive, like, I know you're awful and you're going to make me even more wretched, but I think I'll wait until you do and then I guess I'll retaliate. But until then I'm just going to be very sad and dark and call myself a whore and slink around being bitter and cold and sometimes putting on one earring and makeup, which apparently can make a man more androgynous AND frighteningly masculine at the same time -- and it's part of the extra sexy "frilly shirt and feathered hat" getup, saved for special seductions, because when I think about seductive men immediately I want nothing other than a David Bowie-Jack Sparrow one-two knockout punch, in heeled ankle boots. Which, actually, it sounds less ridiculous when I say it that way than it did the book.And all of that would be fine, if the author seemed at all in on the joke, but the narrative takes itself so seriously. Every page is absolutely dripping with melodrama. YOU'VE COLLECTED ALL OF THE GEMS AND POKEMONS IN EVERY REALM? HOLY CANOLA OIL BATMAN, NO ONE CAN DO THAT!! (hands trembling uncontrollably)The most egregious element of this book, I think, is the author's use of sexual violence, abuse, slavery, and torture, just write some kinky stuff and give her characters something to whine about. Everything fades to black or gets kind of hazy and abstract whenever something serious is going down, and honestly, instead of leaving it to the reader's imagination, I think it would have done the author some good to actually write the minutiae of the torment she piles onto her characters. By skipping the details, not only does Bishop not have to really confront the depravity she's imagined for us, she also doesn't have to deal with how unrealistic and bizarre so many things are. Furthermore, as several people have pointed out, Daemon is totally sexually attracted to Jaenelle, who's twelve. And I think this is supposed to be not only acceptable but ROMANTIC, because he really loves her, like her SOUL, not just her BODY you guys. But let's be real, pedophiles in the actual world where this kind of thing really happens? Are prone to thinking exactly that kind of thing. Kartane, who spends a lot of time thinking about how he's going to brutally rape young girls so that their lives are ruined, is a cartoon. This book isn't real, so he can think whatever Bishop wants. But Daemon justifies his attraction and repeatedly puts himself in a position to take advantage of Jaenelle in ways that he can justify ... which is not romantic, it's terrifying. Pretty much the last scene in the book is Jaenelle accusing Daemon of being like everyone else who just wants her body, so, to save her, he... uses his magical "seduction tendrils" to trick her into doing what he wants by destroying her willpower. If the book was like, yo that's pretty devastating, maybe this guy is not actually cool and a hero, maybe sometimes the bad guy really believes that he cares about you as he's destroying you - so we're going to deal with that by holding him accountable for his actions, that would be a neat twist that gave the story some kind of actual consequential meaning. But no, he just did that because he loved her so much omg!! Isn't he handsome and charming and tragic. Also, if you thought that the matriarchal society was going to have anything to do with competent, awesome ladies, forget that noise. It's full of stereotypically catty and vain caricatures, the author uses their sexual aggressiveness to paint them as villains, and one of the most common cusses is "son of a whoring bitch." This book is awful. There are so many problems that I could just keep going and going, but all I'm going to do is keep complaining about this disgusting, stupid book. I think a really serious editor could have been like hey lady this is a nice private fantasy but let's buckle down and write a challenging, compelling, and creative piece of literature, and this might have turned into something pretty interesting and powerful, but obviously that did not happen.
I really feel that this book should come with a warning that not everyone can stomach it. This is some really DARK F***ed up fantasy (and yes the caps and swear word is there for a purpose). I've been exposed to some really dark fantasy where pillaging, rape, violence, gore, incest, etc.... and it didn't bother me much as Daughter of the Blood disturbed me. I'm going to share with you (and maybe some minor spoilers but they're pretty minor) so you can judge for yourself whether you'd pick the book up. I like to think of myself as fairly open minded but seriously some of the themes in this book are downright disturbing. 1. Pointless sexual violence and deviances:It just seems that all the violent sexual acts were just for shock and awe. There literally wasn't really much of a reason for it to be happening. I understand that the author wanted to create this environment of fear but unlike other fantasy books where the rape and violence made sense, these characters were just doing it for entertainment and for no other better purpose and the violence was probably more trouble than it's worth. It just didn't make any sense at all. There's a very disturbing scene where the females of the court decide "hey let's dismember the privates of this random male for entertainment". It's almost as like a bunch of males saying "hey let's cut off the tits/clitoris of a woman for funnnnnn!" who the heck does that?! I understand if it's some kind of punishment but this is for the sake of entertainment? Really?! It's kinda messy, hard and troublesome to dismember someone's privates. Frankly speaking it sounds more trouble than it's worth. That's just ONE example of the many type of weird sexual punishments in this book. Frankly I couldn't stomach them at all because it just seems so POINTLESS.2. The main male character starts lusting after the 12 year old main character:Now there's some disturbing things in here involving sexually deviant adults who love to molest children. While I can stomach that no problems, it becomes a HUGE problem for me when the main character starts sexually lusting after the 12 year old Jaenelle! Now in the case of Lolita (which I frankly liked very much cause the writing was so gooooddd). In those cases you know that the main character is a perv and that whatever his doing is wrong... But in this case the notion that he is attracted to her is romantacize. I guess the author had wanted to possibly set up for some sweeping romance in book 2 and book 3 by dropping these hints. It would have worked except too bad she's like what 12!!!! Janelle swayed, bracing her hands on his thighs for support. She licked her lips and looked at him with slightly glazed eyes. "Do... do all boys kiss like that?" But she would remember that kiss and compare every kiss from every weak-willed Chaillot boy against it. He didn't care how many boys kissed her. They were, after all, boys. But the bed... When the time came, the bed would be his. I'm sorry but WTF is that????!!!! There's nothing sweet about a grown man perving after a 12 year old girl sexually. If anything I was super disturbed because it was written in a romantic sort of way but hey guys remember she's just 12. T___T3. An older male character hints to sexually lusting after the 7 year old main character: This is frankly quite disturbing as well because this older male character eventually becomes a father figure to her. While he never acts upon it, there's some hints that he felt some sort of a sexual attraction towards her even as young as a 7 year old! He held her eyes, letting his fingers travel slowly along her jaw and brush against her lips, all the way around and back. He didn't try to hide his curiosity, interest or the tenderness he felt for most females. This is probably not as disturbing as number 2 but the fact that the father figure in the storyline is also perving on the main character is making my brain ache.Those were the things that greatly disturb me about the book but I had some criticisms with how the book was written too. I had some major issues with the lore of the book as it was introduced so overwhelmingly fast. I couldn't catch up and a lot of things didn't quite 'register' in my head and I had to go back and re-read certain chapters to even understand what was going on. However, all is not bad as there were some good things about the book as well. Where I had to give props was having a fairly well thought out Matriarchal society where females had the power. It was interesting to me because the author had taken into account the nature of females and incorporated it into the book. I suspect if females were the super power, we'd run the world a lot more differently that males! (cause we're biologically wired to multi-task, communicate better and be more emotional) So these aspects really came out in the way the world was run so good job on that part for the author.Also when the main character wasn't sexually perving after Jaenelle, they had some really tender moments (like older brother and sister kinda moments) which I thought were sweet. And Saetan as the father figure to Jaenelle was really sweet too. The plot had its moments too (whenever I could understand it when the lore and world building confusion weren't in the way). It was interesting and engaging enough that I wanted to keep on reading but in terms of originality it wasn't spectacular. It was just the usual story of a gifted one trying to come into power being protected by her guardians against those who are in power trying to kill her. Overall I'd say the world building and lore of the Daughter of the Blood universe is very interesting despite having a conventional plot. However the disturbing themes kept me from truly immersing myself into the world and truly enjoying it.Though I have to admit, I liked the book enough that I quickly bought the sequel and read it the next day. So some part of me must have liked it enough despite being thoroughly disturbed.
What do You think about Daughter Of The Blood (1998)?
I’m going to do my best to avoid spoilers in this review, but a few minor ones might slip in. First things first, this book (and I expect the rest of the series as well) is not for the faint of heart. I got misled by the cover and thought it was a young-adult book until certain sex toys were mentioned. That got me wondering… until a little bit of full castration was thrown in along with other less desirable practices; be warned this is no YA book. Many parts I found downright disturbing and that's not a frequent occurrence for me book-wise.Thrust into this fantasy world, you’re left to discover the ins and outs of it on your own and rather slowly compared to other books. There’s no big info dump here. Everything you learn is through clues and intuition until at least halfway through the story. I both loved and hated this because I rarely could stop to reflect and try to decipher something because the plot had me hooked too well.I fully expected to hate Jaenelle. Something about an all-powerful character combined with the fact that EVERYONE wants her for one reason or another just annoys me. I’ll admit I got completely taken by surprise by how modest, cute, and just plain likable she ended up being. Maybe it’s because she was really young or naive or maybe Anne Bishop is a genius, but I loved this heroine and really cared/worried for her as things began to look more and more bleak as the book progressed. I even became convinced she deserved Daemon, but more on that sexy beast later.Another expectation that ended up being proven false is that these glorified dominatrixes Queens would be entirely two-dimensional “baddies” with a sadistic streak. Sure the sadistic streak was there in most of them, but it didn’t feel contrived. They actually had some personality and some of them weren’t entirely irredeemable. Saetan and his posse in Hell deserve a special mention. Another misleading thing about this book… you’d think a name like that would mean the guy roasts kitties on a spit for fun, but in reality he is just a big old teddy bear. Yes, he could decimate a castle in the blink of an eye, but that doesn’t mean he would! Really he just brought so much humor and endeared me to the story. And Daemon. Oh Daemon. I really couldn’t find flaw with you. Sure your cold rage was terrifying and you could probably level the city of Los Angeles… but when you showed your true self, the small bit we saw when you looked at Jaenelle or spoke with your brother, we caught a glimpse of what you could have been were it not for Dorothea; what you could still be if you were merely allowed. (And that questionable scene with your brother that I liked entirely too much) You had me praying for your release and drooling over you at the same time; much like all the other ladies in the book. I’d never put you in that Ring though, Daemon. Promise. Call me?Honestly, even if the whole story was shite it would be worth the read just for Daemon. But luckily that is not the case. The story is enthralling and the richly built world sucked me in completely. This is a good choice if you enjoy your fantasy with a heavy dose of darkness, complex and unpredictable characters, and just plain good storytelling.
—Nim
As they say, Mother Night…! I’ve never been this thrilled for quite a long while…I run the risk of sounding like a pretentious ass, but even though I never really understood the whys and hows of this fantasy world from the get-go, my god… I absolutely loved how the author relentlessly, unfailingly, commanded this reader’s attention. Made you near-slave to the emotions of the characters. Lulled you into a false sense of seemingly finally comprehending what the hell’s going on and how the fates of these characters would twine and intersect, only to smack you dead-center on the forehead with another mindbender of a twist.To say that this story pulls you in is an insult to good story-telling. I can only humbly describe it as nothing less than being hurtled into a fantastical world where you find yourself at a loss. And, from that confusion, having an unsavory sense of discomfort coupled with a premature wish to not even bother taking one step further to explore.That’s how I felt when I turned the first few pages. I fucking had no clue what was up. I couldn’t grasp what the eff were Blood Jewels (or how they come about), riding webs or spinning tethers, the Offering, or even what a Black Widow is. I couldn’t understand differences among high priestesses, dark priestesses, queens, and witches. Or why the dead were still the ‘dead’ but were very much different from dead dead. Or why, from within this fantasy world, there’s still such a thing as shopping, attending balls, or the need to posses the mundane physical objects when one apparently has telekinesis (or something akin to that) to accomplish almost anything – including being able to kill someone with just your mind or a crook of your finger.And don’t get me started on Saetan. His ‘existence’ and whole persona is still something I’m trying to wrap my head around in.Yeah, sure… all throughout reading this novel, I probably had my brow perpetually puckered in confuzzlement even up to the last page…but that’s just it. Despite that wish to not even take a step further, I found myself reaching that last page (hence this garbled attempt at a review… erm, we’ll just compromise and refer to it as a ‘reaction’). And that was when I fully realized that, all the while, without even wanting to explore further, I was actually greedily turning page after page.I was surprised at how I was held in thrall at the promise of Jaenelle’s terrifying splendor once she finally ascends into Witch (and no, I do not know why it has to be capitalized). Or how the chillingly-stoic Daemon would finally serve her as her lover and protector once she holds court. Or how the sadly-underdeveloped character of Lucinvar would affect their futures. But, above all, the lure is in the tantalizing prospect of retribution. Perhaps that’s the element in this first installment that kept me turning the pages. In truth? This novel would make you bloodthirsty. The unceasing spectre of violence, perversion, and cruelty makes you positively(!) relish a smackdown of sorts. And the fact that the author deftly doles it out in increments is both maddening and gratifying.And Anne Bishop, I can now say, is a master in manipulating emotions. There’s almost a sense of ruthlessness in the way she will make you have a searingly-painful inkling as to how Daemon, in all those years of ‘whoring’ himself, is practically brutally maimed inside that you feel a little of that hurt even as frost creeps into his eyes, or how Jaenelle is heartbreakingly pitiful in her pre-pubescent innocence as well as awe-inspiringly magnificent in the many ways she is already more powerful than all the Blood, living or dead.The author would bait the reader with “heartwarming” scenes of Saetan becoming carefree or instances of Daemon falling more and more headlong into lustful as well as reverent love, and then, on the next turn will stun you with fear, horror, grim disbelief, and, yes, anger.My overall reaction? Why the hell do I not have the next installment within reach?!
—maricar
*Rating**Genre* Fantasy*Review* Anne Bishop’s Daughter of the Blood is the first book in The Black Jewels series. It tells the story about a prophecy that was seen by a witch named Tersa. The prophecy basically states that the forthcoming witch will be so powerful that she will be able to travel the three realms (Terreille, Hell, and Kaeleer) by shear will alone. She will also have the ability to reunite the three realms that are currently being corrupted by blood Queens and their jeweled hierarchy where the color of your jewel is the way to determine how powerful you actually are.This is a society that is highly female orientated, with males taking up the positions of the sexual whores that service the witch queens. Some of the characters even wear a Ring of Obedience around their private member to keep them in line. They are used for sexual pleasure and torture and if anyone jumps out of line, they end up shaved.There is one realm, however, that is still ruled by the Prince of Darkness Saetan, and it is the one place where the main character actually finds sanctuary and comfort when she travels there to learn her craft. That is Hell.I love Jaenelle, the foretold witch and her story. She has kept her Craft abilities secret from her so called family who continually sends her away to a mental institution called Briarwood because they believe she is deficient and insane. Little do they know that while she is away, she is creating her own friends, alliances, and as well as doing all she can to save the little girls who are left there to die by their unknowing families. They also don’t realize how very powerful Jaenelle actually is.The ending is a bit disturbing, but in the overall scheme of things, I guess it had to be done that way. Obviously, this is the first book of a series, thus the world building and character introduction was extensive. There are so many different characters, most of them very important to the overall story, that you need a blackboard to keep track of their progress.Bishop aligns various characters so that they end up in Jaenelle’s path: Daemon, Saetan, Surreal, Lucivar, and Cassandra are her allies. Naturally, there are those in power who will do anything possible to eliminate the threat that Jaenelle poses to their comforts and masochistic ways; Dorothea, Hekatah, Zuultah, Greer, and the queens who are aligned with Dorothea and Zuultah.Yes, this book is both twisted and dark. It has scenes of torture and abuse as well as putting children in difficult and heart wrenching positions of weakness. It is also the story about a hierarchy that is controlled by the color of the jewels you wear or are birth righted into. Jaenelle actually carries many jewels with her thanks to some perfect alliance with not only dragons, but with spiders as well. She just hasn’t been birthrighted to a particular stone yet since she is so young, but if she were, she would carry the most powerful one ever made.If you enjoy reading Dark Fantasy, you will love this one. This is my first endeavor into the world of Anne Bishop’s creative mind and world building and I am extremely grateful that this was recommended to me to read. Thank you GR friends.1. Daughter of the Blood (1998)2. Heir to the Shadows (1999)3. Queen of the Darkness (1999)
—Shelley aka Gizmo's Reviews
