The illogic of this fantasy world drives me nuts. Supposedly the women are dominant and in charge, but then there are Saetan, Daemon, and Lucivar rampaging about, making all these theoretically powerful women wet themselves from fear. If women actually ruled, there wouldn't be all these snarly alpha males hogging the limelight. It makes me grumpy.
This volume consists of four pieces of short fiction in the Black Jewels world. The first one was almost incomprehensible to me, so there's that. Then each of the remaining three centred around one of the three men mentioned above. Two of them (Lucivar's and Daemon's stories) are basically romances, getting Lucivar married to Marian and repairing Daemon's relationship with Jaenelle (and incidentally marrying them too). Despite all the referencing of Hell, darkness, spiders, venom, etc., they pretty typical romances, complete with jealousy, misunderstandings, and forgiveness culminating in happily ever after endings.
Several of my friends really like a couple of other series that Anne Bishop writes, so I'm hoping to like those better when I get to them. Despite all my eye rolling at the details that distract me in these books, I like them well enough to continue on. However, I completely understand those folks who find them ridiculous, I think I understand why some love them, and I would never critique either position. We like what we like. I probably wouldn't choose to continue if they weren't part of my reading project, but I don't hate them, so I’ll continue onwards.
Book Number 449 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project
No comments:
Post a Comment