Daughter of the Blood (The Black Jewels, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Jul 18, 2010 Patrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, book-series

This is my second time reading Daughter of the Blood. The Black Jewels trilogy was a trilogy I’ve always wanted to get into, but for some reason, after reading this book, I just didn’t care much for it. Over a year later, I decided to revisit this book and see if maybe re-reading it would help me understand it more.

My main conflict with the book was that it wasn’t as straightforward as I had expected. Sometimes it would concentrate on Janelle. For the majority of the first half of the book, it This is my second time reading Daughter of the Blood. The Black Jewels trilogy was a trilogy I’ve always wanted to get into, but for some reason, after reading this book, I just didn’t care much for it. Over a year later, I decided to revisit this book and see if maybe re-reading it would help me understand it more.

My main conflict with the book was that it wasn’t as straightforward as I had expected. Sometimes it would concentrate on Janelle. For the majority of the first half of the book, it seemed to concentrate mostly on Daemon and his man-whoring adventures. There was also Surreal, a prostitute who is also quite hellbent on killing men. The story sheds some light on her when she shows up occasionally, but I’m not quite sure what her role in the story was. Same goes for Lucivar. Maybe I just should’ve kept more notes in the story line because the story jumps around everywhere. A lot of the time, Janelle isn’t even present because she’s off building some sort of magical bridge or whatever. To me, it just felt like it had a lot of filler and was often lacking the suspense or action I was hoping for. At about 400 pages, it feels deceptively long. I honestly do feel like the author could’ve trimmed off some parts of the story and make it more streamlined.

That being said, the characters are somewhat interesting. Janelle seems like a cool main character: a little girl destined to be a powerful witch. Gotta love that concept. Daemon is easily the most interesting character, in my opinion. I don’t really know much about his race of Eyerien people because it’s not explained much except that he’s about 1,700 years old and has dark skin. (Apparently Lucivar has wings, but I don’t know if Daemon does.) He’s rightfully earned his nickname of The Sadist and he is often used by women as a pleasure slave or sex object. However, he also uses that to his own advantage.

In fact, sex is pretty much everywhere in this novel. Not sex for love reasons of course, but sex for pleasure, sex for revenge, sex for torture, sex for money and sex for political gain. I don’t really like authors who are too horny (see Piers Anthony), but the sex seemed mostly okay here. It’s just that there are some scenes that are particularly uncomfortable, and they all relate to sex or sexual organs in one way or another. Apparently, the matriarchal society loves to emasculate their men with things such as the Ring of Obedience, something Daemon wears on his penis. Basically, the Queen can torture and control him by sending pain through the ring. There’s also the concept of shaving, which is torture by removing a man’s genitals. Not for punishment or anything silly like that, just entertainment. There’s also a drug known as safframate, something which makes the male uncontrollably horny, but makes him mad if left unsatisfied.

The names Saetan and Daemon are apparently the ye olde ways of spelling Satan and Demon. Saetan’s full name is Saetan Daemon SaDiablo. That’s three words meaning almost the same thing in one name. Not very subtle. Daemon seems totally out of place because he isn’t really a demon (I think). What makes it even worse is that, at one point in the novel, he gets a horse named Demon. Do you know how annoying it is to read Daemon and Demon in the same sentence? Also, I’m not sure if these two are supposed to look human or not. I’m assuming Daemon is because he often seduces human women, it seems, but what about Saetan? It doesn’t give too much description aside from his bad leg and golden eyes. Does he have red skin and horns? I’d like to know. Not to mention, Lucivar seems like an obvious allusion to Lucifer.

Continuing on that, I’m not sure what Anne Bishop is doing with the mythology here. I mean, it’s okay to change mythology sometimes to make it unique, but it seems strange here. Saetan is the High Lord of Hell, but other than that, none of them seem to match what we’ve been taught all along. Sure there are dead people in Hell, but I don’t remember hearing about how they’re suffering and burning for all eternity. Saetan doesn’t really seem evil here either, unless there’s some sort of hidden intention. He helps Janelle master her powers and cares a lot about her. Then again, he’s supposed to be the Father of Lies, so maybe he’s up to some sinister plot? Also, how does Janelle get in and out of Hell so easily? It’s because of her powers right? There isn’t much description of Hell, except that is has actual rooms and hallways. Many of the characters say “Hell’s fire” as an expression (along with “Mother Night”) in the same way someone would say something like “Dear God.” But we don’t really ever hear about the fire down there, or much else for that matter.

The magic was oftentimes hard to visualize. Some things make sense. For example, Saetan “black-locks” his door, forbidding lower colored Jewels to come in, I’m assuming. But there are things that I have trouble visualizing such as riding the Winds or when the characters “dive into their colors.” I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a mental or physical thing, but most magic involving the Jewels seems to be mental.

That being said, the magic is unique. While I don’t quite understand the limits of what one can and can’t do, it’s interesting. Obviously, the darker the Jewel, the more powerful the magic is. But what the magic can do seems so diverse. For example, Janelle uses her magic (called Craft) in order to pass one solid object through another. Daemon can set up psychic and physical barriers, it seems and also try and break through another person’s barrier. He can also send dreams through the Jewel. However, certain mistakes while using a Jewel’s power can cause someone’s mind to shatter. Using too much power can cause someone to revert back previous colors until they get to their birthright Jewel.

While Anne Bishop’s debut novel has a lot of redeeming qualities, and was somewhat of an enjoyable read, I felt like it was a lot more long-winded. I think I enjoyed it more the second time I read it, but it just doesn’t “stick” with me. It’s not the kind of book I look back at and recall all my favorite parts from. The premise seemed extremely interesting and it was one of the first books I had wanted to read ever since joining this site. But since about half the people who read this gave it 5/5, Anne must be doing something right. One of these days, I’ll get around to reading the second one. Maybe it gets better, who knows? I really want to like this series, but so far it hasn’t done much of a good job of making me want to read more. But the concept seems extremely cool and it’s one of the highest rated series on goodreads, so it can’t be all that bad right?

(Originally finished September 10, 2010.) ...more

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