Fantasy - Anne Bishop - Daughter of the Blood (1998)

I mentioned before that the Black Jewels series is my absolute favorite, so it should come as no surprise that when I take a book vacation (defined here as a vacation into a favorite book), I default to these. This read-through, however, I went through every single word and actually discovered some points I always missed. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

I bought this book in 2004 at a used bookstore that no longer exists. This was another one of those times when my interest in what was going on on the cover led to a great find. The first time I read this, I blasted through it in a day because I liked it so much.

Daughter of the Blood, being the first book in the series, sets up quite a lot for the future to remark on, but let's just go through it like normal, shall we? A powerful seer named Tersa foretells the coming of a mythological being known as Witch before descending into madness. Witch is dreams made flesh, the wishes and desires of a people known as the Blood. Seven hundred years later, she appears: a child with more power on tap than any other member of the Blood ever before her ascension from her birthright. She is the joy and secret of many people, including a sexually brutal man named Daemon who believes he was born to be her lover, his brother Lucivar (who is featured more in the second book), and their father, who happens to be the High Lord of Hell, Saetan. But there are also those who wish to use her for their own purposes, and the fear that this may happen sows suspicion among her own friends.

Of the three books, this one is probably my least favorite, but let me tell you why. I love these characters. There is a lot here that really turns my crank: the human weapon, the brutality and violence, the wide and sparkling spectrum of color. This book has Jaenelle with her shitty family and occasionally in Briarwood. There isn't as much room for friendly interactions, or the fun of her whirlwind personality as it blows through the lives of these men and her friends. Sure, she spends a great deal of time with Daemon, but the danger of the so-called Light Realm (noted, the danger had to be increasingly present to provide contrast with the Shadow Realm of the other books) takes so much precedence that I don't really like this one. I don't like seeing my book-friends in trouble.

Now, to be fair, I still love it. The detail in the descriptions alone is sensuous and brilliant. But of the three, I dislike this one the most.

It occurs to me that I got a little lost in the details up there, but still. If you like blazing magic and brutal violence, diplomacy and relationships, get thee to your bookstore.

9.75/10

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Fantasy - Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind (2007)

I think Steve got me this book for Christmas. I tend to depend on him to tread those new fantasy waters while I deal with my backlog of unread books that fill my shelves, but I may have eventually picked this up on my own, but for a different reason. We didn't go to PAX this year, but Rothfuss was in the DnD Live Show this year, so I likely would have read it for that reason even without Steve's interference. The truth of the matter is, I had plans to read this after A Dance with Dragons, but then Nadia was kind enough to lend me a bunch of her books, so it got pushed back.

The Name of the Wind is a book one of a debut series, so it is covered in accolades that, for the most part, are well-deserved. The story starts out with some drunken bumpkins coming to an inn, encountering some razor-sharp spider creatures, and declaring them demons. That's just brushing over it briefly. Then a guy known as the Chronicler comes up and discovers that the innocuous innkeeper is a legendary hero by the name of Kvothe. It's a great hook, especially once Chronicler convinces Kvothe to relate to him his story. The majority of the book is just that: the first day of Kvothe telling Chronicler his tale.

I could totally see this in so many different media: DnD adventure, TV miniseries, comic serial. The book form is great for relating it in his own words, but I don't doubt that there is potential for more here.

There is one problem. He gives away some of the shit that happens with this method. Kvothe lists some of his accomplishments and failures before you even get started. Since most of this is about him trying to get to the University, and then stay, the fact that you say on the back that he has gotten "expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in" gives some of the story away, now, doesn't it? But that's a problem I tend to have with book backs. They always give too much away. But that line is embedded in the text as well, so there's really no avoiding it. It's just a nitpick.

Here's another: the world is great, the worries of a poor person spot on, and the main character a giant douche.

Don't get me wrong. Kvothe's story is interesting. But he is the MOST Mary of Sues, and if you don't know what that means, maybe you should look it up. This is wish-fulfillment at its most heinous. Why does he have to be some kind of super-genius? Why does he always convince his elders to do what he wants? There's so little opportunity really for Kvothe to fail. I wonder if it is the intention of the author to make Kvothe relate his story with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia in order to toot his own horn, or if the first-person POV got to Rothfuss when it came to his character.

All in all, it's a great read, especially if you like fantasy. There are some annoying higher fantasy aspects toward the end, and the climax is, for lack of better description, somewhat anticlimactic, but I enjoyed it, despite Kvothe jerking off to himself the entirety of the book.

9.5/10

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Fantasy - George R.R. Martin - A Dance with Dragons (2011)

Jesus, I am terrible at this write-the-review-when-you-finish-the-book shit. Fuck. Anyway.

I picked this up the same time I did A Feast for Crows, but just didn't get off my ass to read it until now. Now I'm all caught up on Mr. Martin's Song, and now I understand a little better how the HBO show is going to handle it.

It's hard to talk about this book because even the mention of certain characters may result in spoilers, depending on what book of this series you're on or how far into the show you are. But, how Feast was about half of the characters, this book is primarily about the other half of the characters: what is going on with them concurrently with the events in Feast and their own reactions to events from that book. But that all goes out the window at about the halfway point of this titanic tome. At that point, the two spreads have met back up and you begin to see characters from the other book pop up more as they becoming interspersed with the characters this book was purported to focus on. So you will see a Jaime chapter. You will see some Cersei. And you will see some [REDACTED].

Damn it George, why did you have to make it seem like so many characters are dead while others are actually dead? You make it difficult to talk about your work without bringing down the wrath of the internets.

The moral of most of this story is that if the economy has been gutted for whatever reason, shit gets fucked real quick.

I can't even really tell you whether or not you should read it or buy it though. This being Book 5, you either are dedicated to the series at this point, or it's not what you want, or you feel it's too long to get into now.

8.5/10

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Fantasy - George R.R. Martin - A Feast for Crows (2005)

Obligatory haven't-posted-in-a-while blah blah blah.

I know I'm probably the last person on earth to read this installment in the landmark Song of Ice and Fire series, but I had gotten the first three books all together, so it took a while for me to get off my ass and read this one. Several years, in fact. Long enough for me to have forgotten most of the events of the previous books and be depending on the TV show to remind me of some of the shit that went down.

Without further ado, A Feast for Crows.

In the back, Mr. Martin informs us that to cut down on book size, he made an executive decision and gave us all the story for half of the characters in this book, and would do the other half later. Personally, I think that the readers would have been better served by having this information at the front of the book. Not because then readers would skip this book or whatever, but because they wouldn't have to flip through while looking for a Dany or Tyrion chapter to find this out. After all, this book is focused primarily on the southern reaches of Westeros, primarily the King's Landing machinations of the Lannisters. Cersei and Jaime are here in abundance, and their personalities and dynamism really shines in this book.

That being said, a lot of the content in this book felt like filler. I understand the need for all of it; the climax would not have worked out if we didn't have the rest of the book preceding it. But filler, no matter how tasty, is still filler. And because of that, I can't say that this is the best book in the series. Maybe A Dance with Dragons will be better.

Also, how are they going to handle that "all the story for half the characters" shit for the TV show? :/

7.5/10

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Fantasy - R. Scott Bakker - The Darkness That Comes Before (2003)

I clearly bought this book at a thrift store, but it wasn't a random pick-up like some of my brick-and-mortar store purchases tend to be. I actually had accidentally purchased the fourth book in this series because on the outside it was declared a first book, but told the truth within the covers, and I didn't notice until I was already home. When I saw the first book of this series at Deseret Industries, I had to get it. After all, used it only cost me three bucks.

Anyway.

I originally bought this author, I think, because my brother is a fan of his works. I think. I'm actually not sure. I may even be confusing this dude with someone else he likes. Either way, thick-ass fantasy novel? I'm all over it.

Or at least, I try to be.

It took me a month to read this book, and not really for length at 577 pages in this paperback version. It was simply tedious. I don't even mean boring. The whole book felt more like an info dump rather than telling a story. Thank god for the faction appendix at the end, or I wouldn't be able to keep track of all these Schools, religions, races, governments, and who is associated with what where. It was hard to even keep many of the characters' names straight, let alone who they worked for. And while I'm sure that things happened during the course of reading it, it didn't feel like anything happened at all until the second to last chapter, with the guy, with the face.

This book is about a guy who has a long-standing birthright to become the king of... somewhere? I honestly I have no idea. This is what I mean about it being hard to follow. It's also about this savage dude that hangs around him but hates him and wants to kill his father. The prince guy's dad, not his own. And they acquire a former concubine along the way. But the book is REALLY about how there is this religion that is starting a holy war to acquire a holy city back from the "heathens" that control it, and how some of the first waves of their holy war didn't work out. And also there's a wizard who takes a long time to make notes on what's going on and the prostitute that loves him.

It's really fucking convoluted, but I think it's unnecessarily so. In a book series like A Song of Ice and Fire, convoluted intrigues are important because it's not readily apparent who is in the right. In this, it's not readily apparent either, but mostly because none of these people aspire to DO anything.

Despite all of my criticism, it's not the worst fantasy novel I've ever read, but I certainly hope shit gets going in the next book or I'm going to be mad.

Also, there was no god damn reason to have an appendix that detailed the origins and roots of languages and dialects that DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT IN THE BOOK.

6/10

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Fantasy - J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit (1937)

Aw jeez. Aw jeez. A lot of people are gonna hate me now.

I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm not a fan of Tolkien. I read the three LotR books a while ago and was bored to tears. I get that he pioneered the fantasy genre and that many authors look to him for inspiration and there's not a small amount of his ideas in Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn't mean that I have to like his writing.

That said, I enjoyed this book WAY more than LotR. That doesn't mean much in the grand scheme, however.

This book felt more "for kids" than Amazing Maurice did, and I can't really figure out why. I might have had something to do with the storyteller narrator that was driving me up the wall. I had the same problem with Chronicles of Narnia; the narration breaking the fourth wall by mentioning how you may not be able to imagine it, or how the narrator supposes characters' feelings rather than just telling us the fucking story. If the prose is not in first person, suddenly switching to that POV is jarring and makes me mad.

I think I actually enjoyed reading this BECAUSE we play D&D. I've noticed that it makes me more tolerant of the high fantasy that I hate so much. Fighting trolls, goblins, and giant spiders just feels like a series of modules I would run rather than cliche now.

I am glad that this book was not steeped in appendices and glossaries like LotR is. I may be able to reread that series now that I've reading the prelude.

One final note: why are these dwarves so inaffective? They are constantly getting captured and lost and almost eaten, but then when Bilbo saves them, they treat him like shit? Maybe stop being so useless on an adventure, dipshits. Maybe y'all need a respec.

7.5/10

Young Adult - Terry Pratchett - The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (2001)

Long time no see! Not much has changed. I just felt frustrated with reviewing the books I read before; I hadn't been enjoying the act of reading knowing that I had a blog post to write immediately after. But after this hiatus, I feel like I am ready to get back in the saddle again. And with a pretty good book too!

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is the first YA installment in the acclaimed (both in our home and beyond) Discworld series. Because it is YA, Bryan, who normally reads all the Discworld books, hasn't bothered with it. I read it because it should come after The Last Hero, which ironically is the last Discworld book I read (several years ago, sadly). I think Bryan got me this for some Christmas, but I could be wrong.

This book is about the eponymous Maurice and a bunch of rats that ate some magical refuse from behind the Unseen University and were granted intelligence and the ability to talk. Maurice comes up with a scheme with a "stupid-looking kid" to have him play as the pied piper, and lead these specific rats out for cash. And it works out, for a while. But then they go to Uberwald.

If the title sounds familiar, it's because the idea of an amazing Maurice and some smart rats were briefly mentioned in Reaper Man. It had been such a long time that I had to look that up myself, and I still haven't found it flipping through the book.

While this book is labeled as YA and is found in that section of the bookstore, I don't think it's really YA. It doesn't feel like it, at least. What it is is very Pratchett, very Discworld. There are only four things I can think of that make it YA, and two of them are just Discworldy: there are talking animals, the book is broken up into chapters, there are illustrations to show how rats write in their language, and the ending is pretty clean.

I enjoyed reading this book. I actually stayed up late two nights in a row reading this in bed. As I said, it is very Discworld, and while there aren't many characters from the main series here, save for the obvious ones, it doesn't really matter. It fits the method of Pratchett's stand-alone Discworld books (Like Pyramids and Small Gods), and is engaging. You won't be disappointed with time spent reading this book.

10/10

Fantasy - A. Lee Martinez - Divine Misfortune (2010)

I have a confession. You know that saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? I totally do. What do you expect from me? The cover is on the outside. Sure, I judge a book after it's in my hands on the synopsis on the back, or maybe even the first page, but it's the cover that gets it into my hand. I'm not proud of this. But it's worked well for me over the years. And with this one, a giant fist descending from heaven to crush a tiny man, I had to pick it up.

In case you can't tell from the title and cover, this book is not for the religious types. Not ones who can't laugh at the whole establishment, anyway. And certainly not ones who can't read science texts if they don't preach your church's version of the creation of everything, or consume any media if it doesn't reaffirm your particular sect of religion to be the right one.

However, this book is just right for me, an atheist. Hearts!

The premise of this tale is that society is driven by a partnership between humans and the immortal gods they worship. People pay tribute in various forms to their god: blood, sacrifice, money, services, lodgings, food; and then the gods work within their own realm to favor their follower. The main characters, Phil and Teri, are in the market for a god, so of course they turn to a god-follower matchmaking website on the internet. They sign up for the services of Luka, a raccoon luck god, who shows up on their doorstep with a suitcase. Hilarity ensues. Also, there is a primordial god of oblivion and chaos who hates him and a goddess of heartbreak torturing some hapless girl.

Did I mention that this book is fucking hilarious?

During the course of the book, there were several genuine LOL moments for me. In no particular order:

• Hades losing at a ninja video game to Phil
• Horrors of hell resigning themselves to watching a baseball game
• Chaos god referring to his followers as douchebags
• Zeus in a tracksuit

Did you catch that last one? Zeus. White flowing beard, big guy, lightning bolts, wearing a yellow tracksuit. Fucking awesome.

There were two books in particular that my mind kept calling back to: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Good Omens was more set in modern times, like this book, so it matched up more for me. But it was Small Gods that gave me pause.

I've mentioned before the Black Jewels trilogy is my favorite series of books. What I didn't mention was that Small Gods, even being part of the Discworld series, is my favorite book. I won't get into it now, just in case there is a book drought for me and I have to go through and just reread the books I've already read, but it brought up questions of where the gods' powers come from, a question that is resolved in that book, and similarly answered in this book. It's a mechanic I love, and for that reason alone, you should get both of these books.

Divine Misfortune raises its own questions, which go mostly unsolved, but let for the reader to decide for themselves: in a world populated by humans and gods, who is responsible for what events? Oh man, it's just so delicious!

There is one, and exactly one, thing keeping this book from being a ten out of ten. The ending. Pfft. What utter bullshit. Have you ever heard the song by Lemon Demon, "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"? Here's a link to a video if you need a reminder. The part right before Chuck Norris gets defeated by fucking everybody on the planet? That was essentially the ending. What a crap, cheap climax. It was shit.

Still, you should get it and read it. I mean, it's still getting a good score.

9.5/10

Fantasy - Gail Z. Martin - The Summoner (2007)

I got this book a while ago. I don't remember when. Within the past year, for certain. I know that I bought it primarily because my little brother Steve suggested I read it. That should have been my first hint as to how my experience with it would be. Guy loves high fantasy.

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I occasionally stopped reading this book in order to play The Witcher. Not the new one, the old, buggy-as-fuck one. And this book inspired me to buy it. Why?

Because this book is a video game. Sure, it has pages and words and goes on a bookshelf with other books and was purchased from a bookstore, but it's a video game. A role-playing game, to be exact. There are monsters traveling the wilds, several groups of human baddies to justify being in the wilderness in the first place, and scenes of such high magic followed by a blackout that it may as well have been a cutscene.

"But Tabetha," I can hear you say, "a lot of high fantasy follows that formula. Isn't that why you don't like it?" That's true, faceless and nonexistent blog reader. I do tend to dislike high fantasy on the fact that it is formulaic. But the more I think about D&D and the campaign I'm building, the less I'm beginning to mind high fantasy. It has its place. Unfortunately, that place is more often in games. And this book doesn't even get to be a book. It's a game.

The gang's all here: the exiled prince-turned-mage, a roster of interchangeable fighters, a flamboyant bard, the grumpy female healer, the chosen-one princess-paladin, even a trickster thief in the form of Berry. And their travels and adventures are straight out of any game. If this had been written as a script instead, it would have been out on Steam for everyone's enjoyment with little changes.

But you people aren't here for video games. You're here for book reviews. And honestly, with that wall of text up there about how this book is high fantasy, you shouldn't be surprised when I say that I didn't really enjoy it. The cast was too big for this author, who often had characters fade into the background so much that, when three characters left the main cast to go do something else, I didn't even notice. I thought they were just being quiet.

Two couples are made in the course of the book, and they are so predictable I wanted to choke and die. Of course the two people who fight a lot will bone. Of course the female chosen-one and male chosen-one are going to do it. Also, how many Chosen Ones are you going to have in one book? It's ridiculous.

The thing I hated the most about this book is the fact that this lady doesn't seem to know how to end chapters properly. Surely you've read a book or two in your lifetime? You know that a chapter is a length of book to mark at least one change to the story, at whatever length the author wishes. You also know that they usually end on a cliffhanger, in attempts to tempt the reader into moving on to the next chapter without stopping. That is, of course, the gold standard for writers: a reader who would rather read the whole thing in one sitting then do something else.

This lady doesn't understand that.

Many of the chapters, especially the early ones, have the climax happen in the middle of the chapter, and the resolution finding its own conclusion before the end of the chapter. Then the chapters usually end when a person goes to sleep. As a result, the reader has no stake in what happens next. Nothing is driving them to the next page. That was another reason I kept putting this down. Because, why shouldn't I? Why should I care about these cardboard cutouts?

1.5/10

Fantasy - C.S. Friedman - Feast of Souls (2007)

I wasn't lying when I said that I read a lot of fantasy. It is my preferred genre, after all, despite how much I hate high fantasy. I promise that the next review will not be another fantasy novel.

I got this book and The Adamantine Palace during my last book shopping trip. It isn't super often that I get around to reading the books I buy so soon after purchasing them, but what're you going to do? With my job being gone now, I won't be going out to buy books as often as I used to.

Man, I am getting off track easily this morning.

I went into this book expecting to like it. Not love it; if you go into a book expecting to love it, you may only be disappointed. And for the vast majority of the book, I did like it a lot. I've read C.S. Friedman before, in the form of  This Alien Shore, which still stands as one of my favorite science fiction novels. This one had an author I liked and a premise I adore: the cost of power in a land with magic. That's one of the themes I seriously love in fiction in general, the cost of power.

The cost of power here is that magic feeds off life energy, and where that energy comes from depends on what kind of magic user you are. For witches, who can be male or female, that life energy is your own. For Magisters, who can only be male, that life energy is that of another person, usually one you don't even know. The story opens up to present this idea in the form of a dying witch, but also quickly introduces the main character, Kamala, a girl who is determined to become a Magister, despite her uterus. I don't think it would be spoilery to tell you that she succeeds: if she didn't, she'd be dead before the first hundred pages are up, and that makes a shitty main character.

The writing and premise got me reading for a while without pause, even though Kamala reads like a Mary Sue, with her hair and eye coloring reiterated often, along with her tomboyishness and desire to dress like a boy. All that plus the fact that she is the first female Magister makes one groan whenever the points in her favor are pointed out again and again. But I guess it's a good price to pay for some of the other characters, who are richly developed peoples. Colivar, Gwynofar, and Siderea stand out in particular. Especially the last: her set up where she has sex with Magisters so they will do her magical dirty work is an interesting concept that I wish could be explored longer.

About a third of the way into the book, the plot turns sharply away from Kamala trying to find her way as a Magister and her consort trying to find her to what is essentially a manhunt, because she accidentally kills a Magister, which is like the only rule Magisters have. I actually stopped reading for a few days because of this. It was not what I wanted to read.

But it just as quickly swung away from that plot line to that which included monstrous Souleaters, which look like dragons with dragonfly wings. They do exactly what they say, feed off life energy, but in hoards, like locusts. They quickly become the major concern for the rest of the book and probably the rest of the series. I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I didn't really like how the plot took on an inconsistent color that maybe a little more lingering on the transitions would have helped.

It also required a more careful editor. There were some obvious typos and formatting issues that the editor could have caught. It all kind of smelt like there was a looming deadline and it was published at the wire.

That isn't to say that the book isn't worth a look. For the magic system alone, I would recommend it. And I certainly will be getting the next book in the series.

8.0/10

Fantasy - Stephen Deas - The Adamantine Palace (2009)

Did anybody else catch Game of Thrones on HBO last night? I had been looking forward to that for like a year, and it totally did not disappoint. Mostly for hardcore Song of Ice and Fire fans, though. Not a lot of names for characters for the uninitiated. But Bryan liked it, primarily because of the sheer quantity of breasts. Whatever floats his boat.

Is that even here or there? Probably not. Anyway, The Adamantine Palace.

It took me a while to get into this. Which sucked because it was the kind of fantasy that I normally prefer: society and politics, plus how the fantastic changes the world. In this case, the fantastic takes the form of dragons, but if you can't figure that out from the cover, you must be reading the Braille version.

With as many ravings all over the covers about how awesome the dragons are, I was very disappointed at the outset because they were essentially fancy horses. There are hunting types and warring types, and they get stabled and traded and have zero personality. At first I thought it would just be like in Dragonriders of Pern, where the dragon-riders perform a service or something that allows for the dragon-kings and -queens to enjoy a heightened status. No. They're just dragons. Domesticated ones. What? You want something more? Fuck you, says Deas.

Until about a third of the way through with Snow and Kailin. It turns out that the domesticated state of dragons is a balance of drugs to dragon, and if the dragon tips the scales (see what I did there?) in his favor, shit hits the fucking fan. Snow "wakes up" and is hungry to kill. Mostly indiscriminately, I mean, she's really pissed, but later she focuses almost entirely on the alchemists that create the dragon soma that make them all the fancy horses they are at the beginning. She is also focused on waking up the other dragons she encounters.

Meanwhile, there are political machinations aplenty. An asshole marries a brutal queen's daughter, and they has sex with another immature queen. There is also the fact that the Speaker, kind of like a one-man UN for the nations, is retiring and has to choose his successor from among the kings and queens that are really just a hair away from warring. That's more like it. It even makes up for the sellswords that I hate, Sollos and Kemir.

Sollos and Kemir are lame. I'm not just saying that because they swear a lot, but they sound very modern. If their dialogue was placed in, say, contemporary New York, you would think they were just a little odd. Here, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's not good.

While the reviewers of this book loved how the dragons turned into vicious slaughter machines about halfway through, I was still disappointed by it. I may be a traditionalist in this way, but I like my dragons to be treasure hoarders, have distinct personalities beyond "I'm real mad!", and just a step below gods. I never really liked Dragonriders of Pern because why should dragons be ridden by people? People should be cowering before dragons. I especially like the dragons of Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of the Ages series, because they have that majesty and terrifying aspect, but they can also take on a human form that still betrays the draconic nature beneath the skin. Dragons should want jewels and precious things, not whole scale genocide because they were enslaved by drugs.

8.0/10

Fantasy - Anne Bishop - Twilight's Dawn (2011)

Before I begin, please understand: I love the Black Jewels series. For that reason alone, Anne Bishop is my favorite author. I don't particularly care for the Tir Alainn trilogy that much, I haven't read the Ephemera duology yet. But this is my favorite book series. So this book was a shoe-in for a ten... if it hadn't been for that last story.

I got the first Black Jewels book, Daughter of the Blood at a used bookstore. I read it in a day, and later got the rest of the trilogy and Dreams Made Flesh. After Dreams, I got every subsequent book in hardcover for my birthday, because the books would always come out in March, and my birthday's in April. In fact, it was a couple of days ago. So when I got this one, which I understand is the last one, because of that last novella, I dropped the book I was reading and read this one, in proper Black Jewels tradition, in a day. Yesterday, even. I used it as a reward for myself in cleaning the house and doing stuff. Awesome, right?

There are a lot of things I love about Black Jewels that I want to get into before I tell you about this book, mostly because then I can reference it. The series is, and has always been, unapologetically violent. That isn't to say that I need a story to be steeped in gore for me to love it, but I would much prefer truthful violence to vague squeamishness in a story. If that's what really happened, then just say it. Don't beat around the bush. And the imagery included in it... you can believe that a man's skeleton can be pulled out of him and lit ablaze while he is still alive. You can believe that a man can be magically exploded so the largest bit of him left are globules of frozen blood on the walls. It has its own beauty.

Related to that is another aspect of these books I love. They go whole-hog with their magic. I know that some people shy away from making a person powerful in their stories out of fear of people saying the person is a Mary-Sue, but why have magic if you can't really show what it does. Black Jewels isn't afraid to have an all-powerful being that is still fragile. It isn't afraid to show you what can really, really do with magic. It isn't afraid to show you illusions, storms that destroy populations, the ability to remove from existence an entire land.

But with that comes a rigid society that I love. Primarily because it doesn't pretend that the Blood are no different from everyone else. They have their own castes and have to be ruled in layers of courts and Queens. And when that society extends in Heir to the Shadows to include kindred, magic-using animals, the politics involved are just delicious.

But what I love most about the Black Jewels series is the relationships between the characters. The trust that is built, crushed, and rebuilt, the interactions that just show how much they have all become an amalgam of relations and family... Even if there were no underlying conflict like an enemy and such, if there was a book of just these characters that I love going about their lives and visiting each other, and threatening each other while declaring that they would guard that person with their life, I would read the shit out of it, and love it forever.

All of that said, Twilight's Dawn. I'm going to do my best to not give away things, but it's probably only going to be a problem when I get to the last story.

Winsol Gifts is the first, and relates the story of Daemon and Jaenelle's first real Winsol. I say real, because it's their third, but during the first, Daemon was too far gone, and the second, Jaenelle was too far gone. In this one, they have to deal with parties, planning, family, and a hectic holiday season. It is essentially all that I want, relationship-wise. It sets a great precedent for the rest of the book, because it is, as I said before, delicious.

Shades of Honor is the second, and probably my favorite. It explores Falonar's chafing in his role as Lucivar's second-in-command, and the results thereafter. Falonar is super dumb. Lucivar was placed as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih by the Queen of Ebon Askavi. Just rallying a bunch of like-minded Eyrien's isn't going to depose him. It also allows for more resolution after the events of Tangled Webs than the actual book allowed for.

Family is the third, and takes place ten years after Shalador's Lady, but does not include any of the Terreille cast from that book. It primarily closes the book on Queen Sylvia of Halaway and her family. I'm guessing it was also an indulgence to fans, especially those of the relationship between Sylvia and Saetan.

The High Lord's Daughter is the last. And this is where my review falls apart. Up until this story, I loved it. Ten out of ten. This story explores what happens after Jaenelle dies at nearly a hundred years old. But not in any way that I was hoping. If you intend on reading this book and series, which I still highly recommend, I would suggest not reading the next paragraph. After the bold you can read again.

The last story was not very good. It felt rushed, and the way it spanned a lot of time without really acknowledging how much time between chapters was confusing. It was also confusing because they kept naming their kids after established characters. I didn't know if Titian in that story meant the Queen of the Harpies or the little Eyrien girl. And that shit with Jaenelle Satien and Twilight's Dawn? What horseshit. Trying to make her more than she could be. She's not Jaenelle reincarnated, for fuck's sake. But the primary shittery was how Daemon fell in love with Surreal. No. Wrong. It felt like an exercise to satisfy shippers, much like the epilogue to Harry Potter. Daemon waited hundreds of years for Jaenelle. He's not suddenly going to start boning other girls just so Surreal could get jealous and he's not going to love Surreal. At least it acknowledged how Daemon could never love anyone like Jaenelle. But that whole last story should have been more than an exercise for shippers. It should have explored immediately after Jaenelle passed. The scene in Queen of the Darkness when Daemon breaks down after the witch storm was the most powerful scene in a series full of powerful scenes. We could have had more of that. And what about Kaeleer without its Heart? More times should have been spent on that.

Spoilers over, sorry guys.

Don't get me wrong. I still love the characters and the series. I put it on the same mental shelf as Final Fantasy X and Watchmen. But that last story left a bad taste in my mouth, and the fact that this was what I assume the last book in the series makes me wish the last story wasn't included, for the same reason I hated the epilogue in Harry Potter.

Again, don't take my hating one story as a reason to not get it, or to not dive into the series. I still love it. I occasionally even reread it, and I've tried to lend out Daughter of the Blood many times. Buy it, read it. After all, this book is still going to score high, and I am super glad I got it, if only for Shades of Honor.

9.5/10

Fantasy - Jacqueline Carey - Banewreaker (2004)

This review may seem kind of schizophrenic; please bear with me. There are a lot of pros and cons at work here.

I finished reading this last night, a couple days ahead of my personal schedule. (Listen, don't ask about my OCD-like reading schedule. It won't make sense and will only make you think I'm nuts.) This had more to do with the fact that I was in real need for some escapism more than this book being good.

For one thing, it's high fantasy. I don't know if I let this on heavily enough in the intro post, but I utterly loathe high fantasy. Fighting orcs in the forest works for video games and maybe even movies, but in books it's boring. That's the main reason that I, who really like fantasy, don't like the fantasy classics and mainstays like Tolkien, Jordan, or Goodkind. Because high fantasy sucks and is rife with archetypes and formula.

This book is definitely hurting from archetypes and formula. The story itself starts with a prologue that is literally their world's creation myth. Fuckin' A. For serious? You can't come up with a better way to establish your pantheon and main conflict than a prologue that talks about how the land was created, and the people, and all that shit? Listen, Jackie, I know you can. What the fuck, sweetheart?

"If you hate high fantasy, why did you read this?" For two reasons, Gentle Reader. One, it was written by Jacqueline Carey. She wrote the Kushiel Trilogy, and then the sequel trilogy about Imriel. Those books are among my very favorites. In high school, I got up at three in the morning to read more of Kushiel's Dart, and read it all morning, and all day, until I finished it. My hands were black with smudged ink from the pages. Very few books in my library have held me like that, and it was a combination of the language, the story, and the characters that held me all the way through.

The language in her writing is much the same here, even though it is in third-person for once. I still don't think that it translates as well from first-person POV to third. It jostles the reader in a way that it didn't in her first-person books. In the first-person books, you could just attribute it to the way that the character thinks. Now it just looks like she is trying to hide something in the multitude of words you have to look up.

BTW, this book is good if you want to get distracted researching what she's talking about. I learned a lot about plate armor and the reproduction of grasses. But I think it was Stephen King in On Writing that said that you shouldn't write fiction to teach someone something.

The story of Banewreaker is this: Lord of the Rings from the perspective of the evil guys. I wish I was kidding. The supposed good guys even have a character among them that is referred to as the "Bearer". He carries a Mcgaffin that has to be taken to the evil land to destroy the power of the evil guy. He has a group that protects him that is split up by an attack by the evil guys. Seriously. These are things that happen. The main characters are actually the people who are the right hand men of the evil guy.

One thing that Carey does seem to try to explore in almost all of the books she's written that I've read is an examination of sex and religion, and how they relate. In her Kushiel books, it's mostly how people use sex to essentially pray and give reverance to their gods. In this series, the evil guy gave humans the ability to fuck and reproduce, and the god Haomane wants him to take this away. Because Sex =  Bad!!! Even though Haomane's own sentient creations, the Ellyl, are dying out because they do not have the desire to reproduce, which is what Satoris, the evil guy, gave Men. There is an Ellyl woman the story surrounds also, who is naive to a goddamn fault. "The whole thing would be over if you just submitted to Haomane's wishes!" What if Haomane is wrong, you fucking cunt? The whole thing stank of blind faith and fundamentalism, and all it did was make me want the main characters to kill her even more. But they refused to, because they are dicks. You have to give the readers something, Jackie.

And for fuck's sake, we know they are elves and orcs. Why are you calling them Ellyl and Fjeltroll? You described a Fjeltroll in detail, and you would have saved space by just calling it an orc. Because it's an orc.

But on the other hand, I was craving escapism, and high fantasy is very good at helping you mentally escape. It probably didn't help that I was also doing a lot of D&D related research, even though our campaign setting isn't going to be high fantasy either... But still.

I don't know if you could tell from my previous statements up there, but there is another reason I read this: this was actually a reread for me. I reread this book, which has a lot of things that I hate. Why did I reread it?

Because I couldn't remember anything that had happened in it.

I'm sorry, but that's essentially a book killer.

5.5/10