Heir to the Shadows (The Black Jewels, #2) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Dec 05, 2012 Patrick rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-series, reviewed

As much as I wanted to enjoy The Black Jewels trilogy, I find myself to be less than satisfied at the ending of each book. When I had gotten back into reading, the trilogy was one that stuck out at me from the shelves of the fantasy section. A dark fantasy about a girl with mysterious power? Politics, corruption, a unique magic system and even Saetan himself? Hell yes! However, I found Daughter of the Blood to be less than spectacular the first time I read it. I re-read it a second time and foun As much as I wanted to enjoy The Black Jewels trilogy, I find myself to be less than satisfied at the ending of each book. When I had gotten back into reading, the trilogy was one that stuck out at me from the shelves of the fantasy section. A dark fantasy about a girl with mysterious power? Politics, corruption, a unique magic system and even Saetan himself? Hell yes! However, I found Daughter of the Blood to be less than spectacular the first time I read it. I re-read it a second time and found it more enjoyable, but I still felt like I wasn't getting the full experience I had bargained for.

Heir to the Shadows was a similar deal. The book felt much longer than expected and it honestly felt like it trudged on forever. Janelle doesn't even show up for a good 50 pages or so. It became hard to distinguish what was filler and what was actual story line. The story seemed to not go in a singular direction because it felt like there were too many subplots. There's subplots involving wolves, unicorns, marriage, child custody, art classes and winged creatures known as Jhinka. Some of these subplots felt rather unnecessary and undeveloped. Many of the events felt somewhat random and I feel like a lot could have been excluded from the book which would have made it a better read. The book felt rather uneven in quality. Sometimes it was absolutely great and other times it was downright boring.

The characters were rather excellent though. Janelle is one of my favorite protagonists. She's extremely powerful, but isn't on the verge of Mary Sue. Saetan is still the caring and humble father figure of Janelle much like the first book. Daemon and Lucivar are the two badasses of the book both of whom detest one another. Both of them have their own subplots which I found more interesting than many of the other subplots. Daemon spends much of his time searching for Janelle and stuck in the Twisted Kingdom. Lucivar spends much of his time in jail getting tortured. Of course, things do turn around for both of them, but I enjoy both characters as well as their personalities and rivalries. Despite all this, both of them care lovingly for Janelle. The characters I was interested the most in were Dorothea and Heketah, the two main villains of the series who wish to prevent Janelle from ruling the kingdom. However, I felt like I saw very little of them when they should have definitely gotten more screen time. There are numerous other characters as well such as Surreal, Katien and Smoke whom felt rather unnecessary to me.

The world-building and magic are as fantastic as ever. This series has one of the most captivating magic systems that I've seen. It does get a bit hard to visualize what exactly is going on sometimes. I sometimes wonder what it looks like for someone to “descend into Black” or what a psychic storm is like. Like many other series with unique magic systems, the author describes what happens and expects the reader to pick up along the way.

While I still have hopes for the series, I don't see myself tackling volume 3 any time soon. I'm a bit stuck on how many stars I should give it (probably between 3 and 4) because I do feel like I have a soft spot for a series with such a cool premise, characters, world and magic system, but at the same time I felt like I grew tired of it rather easily. My interest level ebbed and flowed several times while reading. I do think Anne Bishop is a very gifted and talented writer, but the series hasn't quite knocked my socks off like I had expected it to. Yet I will finish the series one of these days and hopefully enjoy it.

On a side note, I think I'd enjoy it better if it were a television show. ...more

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