So much sexual violence, especially towards children. Also pedophilia being justified
Could not get past the first 10% because it felt so gross

Dnf 33% I just couldn’t get past a lot of the sexual aspects in this story. It just wasn’t for me.

*Reread*

It's been several years since I've reread the Black Jewels series, so I thought I'd revisit an old friend. What I loved best was still as great as I remember: the characters. Bishop can write characters so vivid, they leap off the page. They have rich backstories and well-developed personalities. And every character in this book is either tortured, brutal, or both.

A lot of readers will balk at the content--yes, it is disturbing, but that's not a fault to me. Good books should stir something in you--and this one did. In this book's world, murder, torture, slavery, sexual abuse, and even child abuse are common. (The truly gruesome details are rarely explicit in the text, however, thankfully.) Selfish Queens rule this world with magic, iron fists, and the "Ring of Obedience" fitted over powerful male Warlords to subjugate them. The Queens kill or disable any promising young witches to hold on to their power, and they torture men for fun. These brutal conditions emphasize just how essential it is for Witch to be born and set the world right.

And she is born, as Jaenelle.

This series subverts expectations--witches and warlords with the "darkest" jewels and magic tend to be good, and so too demons and the dead (and people with names like "Saetan," "Daemon," and "Lucivar"); women tend to make up many of the villains, chief among them Dorothea SaDiablo. (But there are good women, too--like Jaenelle, Wilhelmina, Surreal, Cassandra, etc.)

The book mostly follows Saetan, the High Lord of Hell (a dead realm), and Daemon Sadi, a black-jeweled Warlord Prince in Terreille (a living realm), as their lives revolve around the arrival of Witch/Jaenelle. Saetan sees her as the daughter of his soul, and Daemon sees her as *the one* for him, whom he's waited 700 years for. The only problem is, at the start of the book, she's 8. And when he finally meets her, she's 12.

Daemon's storyline is compelling: enslaved, he struggles to retain some sense of self and dignity, and rages against his subjugators. He anxiously awaits the arrival of the foretold Witch. And he struggles with knowing he's for her and dealing with her still being a child. It's mostly handled well--only a few squicky spots for me. But if the notion of two soulmates being separated by about 1700 years and the older waiting for the younger to come of age is too disturbing to you, you'll hate this book. (Twilight's Jacob and Renesme come to mind.)

Other characters fill in more of the story: Surreal, an assassin working as a high-class prostitute as her cover, who's grossly underused in the story (I would have loved to have seen more of her); Lucivar Yaslana, Daemon's brother and another Warlord, who also doesn't do much other than react in the book; and a varied cast of antagonists and supporting characters. Although they may seem disjointed, all of them come together somehow by the end, so just stick with them.

The book started off with a prophecy of Witch's coming, a cure for the ills of this dystopia and for Daemon's suffering, and then plunges into the horrors of Terreille. And they are truly horrible. We're introduced to Jaenelle fairly early through Lucivar, who realizes she is Witch, and then to Saetan, Daemon, and Surreal. I found Daemon's story very compelling, his desire to be more than an object, to help the helpless, and to destroy the wicked. Surreal's goal to avenge Titian's death was also very touching. And Saetan's return from the brink of wasting and his reconnection with his sons was good, too.

Somewhere in the middle of the book, I started noticing a couple peeves. One was that, after the initial pages, hardly anything ever *happened.* It was mostly characters just sitting around thinking or talking to each other. No one *did* much of anything. A lot of the action happened off page (which I wish we got dramatically) or in flashbacks, and what action did occur dramatically was on the level of magic lessons. Daemon's storyline suffered the least from this, but it too had a lot of visiting, chatting, and just internal narrative. There was a main plot--make sure Jaenelle survives to adulthood, which includes finding out what's harming her, finding a way to deal with that, and making sure she's physically safe. But the first 3/4 of the book are fairly action light. For me, that was annoying but acceptable, since all the characters continued struggling toward their goals, facing setbacks, and so on, just more internally than externally.

The other was a pattern... a lot of scenes seemed to go like this:
A: "Have you heard what Jaenelle did?"
B: "No, what happened?"
A: "This amazing thing."
B: "OMG!"

Since we never get Jaenelle's POV (the book is sort of omniscient with shifting POVs... not quite limited, but close to multiple POV), we only get people talking about what she does, how amazing/surprising/baffling it is, and how amazing she is. By 3/4 of the book, I was sick of it. I got it but felt like I was getting hit over the head with it. Jaenelle was the bee's knees. The cat's pyjamas. A special snowflake. A dozen chapters with "Wow, she's so amazing" got very repetitive and boring, and coupled with nothing really happening in the middle, the book sort of slumped there. I nearly put it down when Daemon and Saetan were discussing a spell Jaenelle cast that scared Daemon (late in the book), and it was another "she's so amazing!!!" moment (I would have much rather read Daemon's experience of figuring out it was a spell instead). But I didn't put it down because I knew there was a big finish coming.

And that really saved it. The ending was explosive, gut-wrenching, huge. The main plot is resolved, but the book ends on a cliffhanger, of sorts. It's hard not to wonder what happens in the aftermath.

I found the world, its society, and the magic system fascinating. Every little bit of lore was satisfying to me. I could read about Terreille, Kaeleer, and Hell, about the jewels, the Offering to the Darkness, the Birthright ceremony, all of it, all day long and not grow bored of it. It's no surprise I enjoyed this series so thoroughly and return to it. :)

The worldbuilding and the characters (especially Surreal, Saetan, and Daemon) also keep me reading and make Anne Bishop one of my favorite authors.

Anne Bishop has created a wonderful new world filled with interesting and likeable characters. I enjoyed this series because it was a relatable fantasy without over the top concepts or plots.