The gripping bestselling dark fantasy novel you won't want to miss (The Black Jewels Trilogy)

An ancient prophesy fortells the coming of "Witch". A young girl suddenly displays strange powers. She is "Witch" and everybody wants to kill her. Miraculously she survives. (This plot is repeated through books 2 and 3).

The plot is the usual generic fantasy kind (which is not bad in itself... but I'm increasingly attracted to books that try and challenge the norms of the genre). The "rules" of the fantasy world that the plot occurs in are novel but not well explained and one gets hints of backstory without quite enough to explain things. At best, the plot is rather linear with few twists and turns: it often felt like just one thing happening after another with relatively little cohesion between them. E.g. would it have made much difference if Jaenelle had NOT appeared to Lucivar? No, I suspect nobody would have noticed the omission. In the end, I felt that the first book wasn't really a "book". Perhaps all three in the series constitute an interesting story, but in themselves, there isn't a sense of happening that bound book 1 together. To test this for yourself, why not ask: what actually happens in book 1? It's surprisingly difficult to summarize it in a sentence.

I also thought that the sense of "place" was relatively undeveloped. This is one of the few fantasy books that does NOT have a map in the beginning (which would be hard since the story takes place in at least two dimensions anyway) but I was left wondering how the worlds of Terreille, Little Terreille, Hayle (not to mention The Abyss) etc all related to each other. In a real sense, there was no relation between them since they were simply sets in which various scenes play out -- travel between places (usually an extremely strongly developed part of fantasy genre) was absent -- characters moved from place to place through portals, or, in the case of Witch... she just seemed to translocate.

With respect to characterization, I thought that the characters show promise (especially Saetan who is a wonderful creation) but many of the key characters remain enigmatic and sometimes flat and undeveloped. E.g. Hekat and Dorothea are just baddies. No more. No less. Other characters like Saetan, Lucivar and Daemon eventually develop through the series but only really come into their own by book three. (I have mixed reactions to the names of characters, by the way: while I enjoyed the obvious parallelism with Hecate, Satan, Lucifer, Demon etc, it remained exactly that: obvious and once the initial titilation wore off it just seemed mildly irritating.

In the end, I finished all three books. They were interesting enough, but not life changing.

Anne Bishop has created a world that is filled with drama an believable characters that I love. I have read the books in this series over and over and each time I find new sub-plots that keep pulling me back.

Picking a favorite book or series is difficult, but this series has a very special place in my heart. The world is rich and the characters are engaging. Even though I've read the series a half dozen times, some parts still give me chills. You won't be disappointed.

I could do with a little less violence! I prefer the relative simplicity of the Written in Blood series, which I have read about 3 times now. That being said, I'm on book 2 of this series and as I come to better understand the relationships, I am rather enjoying it. The humor is necessary and appreciated. In both sets of books, I like the sentient nature of the animal realm. That. Means a lot. Thanks!

My second favorite series of all time (the first being Harry Potter, duh)! The world and characters were crafted so well, you just fall in love with the whole book and can't wait to read the next one! I'm currently on the fourth complete read through, and there will be more in the future. I like to wait a couple years between reads so that it's like discovering the story all over again. LOL
Thank you Anne Bishop!

Bishop's imagery and use of language completely transport you to her created world and captivates you there. As an aspiring writer, this is the standard I hope to reach once I actually finish a story myself one day.

Oddly enough, I read books two and three, but not one, in this series when I was younger and stuck in bed for three days. My mom picked them out based on the book backs. I did not read one because our Barnes and Nobles never carried it. (I later realized that Barnes and Noble did not ever carry it in my town. There are reasons for that.) I liked books Two and Three, and how they hinted at book one, but didn't give it away. I imagined an intrigue plot very deep and very rich -- basically, I assumed book one would be rather good and therefore I bought it when it became available on Kindle.

No. Ick. Just no. It is very bad. It is a horror show, frankly. Janelle is creepy. Damien is creepy, Sataen is creepy. Everything that works in the later books because Janelle is a teenager is present here, and just squick-o-licious. Because I didn't have this framework for when I read Books Two and Three, I didn't get the full effect of what is implied in those books. With this foundation, the whole series is so dark, and so inappropriate, that I'll probably never return to the author's work.

A friend recommended this book to me since I enjoyed the Twilight series. It took me a while to get into it, about 100 pages or so,and for a while I enjoyed it. The names were sort of annoying and the world she created was irritating, the whole "ring of obedience" grossed me out, too. I still kept going with it, though, since my friend kept raving about it and asking me where I was in the book. Before I finished it, she gave me the next two so I go right into them. I'm not going to. The last 50 or so pages were soooooo distasteful and out of left field. I just found it totally disgusting. I agree with the other reviewers who found it repulsive and wonder what the author was THINKING. If you want to be grossed out and worry about children being ripped apart by perverted me, just open the paper. Why read a whole book that ends so appallingly? Gag.

For all those fantasy lovers, this is a must read. Very well develop characters and a fantastic story and magic installment, I started reading it because I wanted something a little more mature, not the typical teen fantasy and I wasn't dessapointed.

I read this book, following a recommendation from the store. I won't be buying book two.

While the main female character is interesting enough, I found others to be rather boring.

I never got engaged by the story and had no problems putting it down.

It's dark, yes, but not interestingly so.

Not recommended.

I actually couldn't finish this book! It was just terrible! It quickly just became dumb things that happened to characters I didn't care about and couldn't keep straight anyway. What a waste of money!

I have loved 'The Others' but the majority of characters in this book are so repugnant I was sorry I finished it. She is still one of my favorite authors. But I won't be buying any more of this series. I don't have the stomach for it.