Now a young woman, Jaenelle Angelline reigns as Queen of Ebon Askavi, but as isolated as she remains she still needs the help of her friends, her surrogate family, her protectors. Daemon, her promised Consort, will sacrifice himself if it means keeping Jaenelle from annihilation as she works her powerful magic to restore balance to the land.

I've already talked about character development and gushed about how much I love these books, so I'll just say a few words more.

I did see a few things that seem symbolic in this trilogy, and probably missed loads more. For example, and this is just the connection I draw, in Queen of the Darkness when the Terreilliens have been let across the border into the realm of Kaeleer and taken land belonging to the Kindred (animals of various species who are also Blood), on the understanding that the land is uninhabited - it reminded me strongly of the European attitude toward settling Australia. The land was considered terra nullius, allowing the white people to claim the land without recognising the rights of the Aborigines, who had lived there for hundreds of thousands of years.

Not that I needed any more reason to loathe the Terreilleans even more!

I'm a little unsure, at the end of it all, whether the three realms were on different planes or in different places. There is a difference, and while I got the impression that Hell was definitely on a different plane, I'm a bit fuzzy about the other two. Ah well, it doesn't really matter. All in all, if you like fantasy, and even if you are a bit squeamish most of the perverted stuff is more implied than described (which is an important distinction), you will love this trilogy. It has politics, scheming, magic, dragons (kind of), love, passion, a winged race and adventure.

And, the true mark of success ha ha, I did feel my eyes watering at the end of this book. Poor Daemon. He is a truly magnetic character, for everyone around him as much as for the reader, though if the reader doesn't think he's magnetic they would have a hard time believing anyone else did!

The pacing is tight and quick, yet it slows down when it needs to. Bishop doesn't suffer that annoying tick of some other fantasy writers of detailing everything, or taking you through every conversation and its repercussions. Sometimes you just arrive at the end in the aftermath, which is fine, because that's hard enough to deal with. It's dark, it's twisted, it's beautiful.