Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
Started Reading: January 12, 2008
Finished Reading: Januay 12, 2008
The world in which The Black Jewels Trilogy takes place is dark, filled with sadists, masochists, sex, violence, and ambition. Thrown in this epic are a lot of characters - demons, slaves, witches, the undead, and other different races. It has a good plot but –
The characters are terribly generic and it’s easy to get bored with their reactions from time to time. Saetan is always surprised at the things that Jaenelle does when really, he should just get used to it. He’s always stopping himself from wringing her neck, it’s ridiculous.
And it’s irritating that Jaenelle is such an omnipotent Witch. She goes to places that none of the supposedly powerful lords have ever visited. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if she did have every kind of ability out there but please, shouldn’t her guardians and mentors at least have some experiences with the unknown? The older characters needn’t have the experience on everything but at least they should know just a part of what Jaenelle has seen, experiences evenly distributed among them so that they’d have enough knowledge and background to make their reputations believable. Their inexperience and, yes, ignorance makes them seem toddlers as compared to Jaenelle who’s always surprising everyone.
And the only thing that the males know are sex and violence. As if we haven’t got enough of that in Daemon.
Jaenelle was close enough to become a Mary Sue. There’s been enough drops of hints about her becoming a great beauty one day - another Ugly Duckling case. I’m just glad she had the capacity to hate. I mean, everyone practically loves her except her family. She has friends from every realm, most of which were considered myths and all very powerful. She manages to make powerful individuals her teachers and she is as good as them, if not surpassing them without any hardship, and the only things she could not do is basic Craft.
Daemon is the seductive, black-jeweled warrior therefore he is at once salivating-ly gorgeous and terrifyingly powerful. Ahem.
I am glad that these two underwent changes as characters, at least. Jaenelle started innocently but at least she knew what hate was. And Daemon. Kudos to him for trying to resist temptation.
Saetan was a very-much feared High Priest of Hell but suddenly becomes a doting, loving father towards a little girl. I would’ve appreciated some signs of character development, thankyouverymuch, instead of a sudden father-like figure popping out from the King of the Dead himself.
Jaenelle’s family reminded me of the kinds of families in V.C. Andrews‘ novels which added a lighter kind of horror to the story, together with the darker, sexual and violent themes. This is an aspect of the novel I liked, though not enough to make me really love the whole novel.
So although the plot is good (not excellent, mind, but good enough), the characters are too stereotypical that badly needs some development. A lot of people gave this five stars in Amazon but this is, again, one of the many cases where I realize I do not have the same taste as the majority.
Tags: Anne Bishop
January 15th, 2008 at 4:46 am
I take it this wasn’t your cup of tea then?
I love her Black Jewels universe, but you have some valid points about the Mary-Sue-ishness of it all plus Saetan’s sudden transformation into daddy! For me though, I just found the universe so compelling and I just loved the whole Jewels and Courts world she created. And Daemon. Heh.
I read her Belladonna/Sebastien duology and was disappointed in it, I thought it brought out all the weak points of the Black Jewels world, and none of the good. In fact, I thought Belladonna was a weaker version of Jaenalle.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
It’s not on top of my list, though it’s better than some out there. : )
The universe is something new - something different that’s exciting to read about, with all the different courts and the concept of Jewels, though it still missed something that makes me love a book.
I don’t mind reading about weak characters because there’s usually (because I’m aware this is not always the case. Some protagonists are just downright annoying) something that makes them strong somehow that makes them fit into that criteria of a heroine. And their weakness actually makes them more human, which works fine with me.