Heir to the Shadows, Anne Bishop

[snarp]

I’M READING ANNE BISHOP AGAIN apparently I suffer from masochistic tendencies.

So I’m about 3/4 through this book. And there’s this guy Lucivar, and he’s explaining evil magical roofies to his zombie-vampire father, Saetan SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell. And this is the third time he’s talked about the evil magical roofies, and Saetan SaDiablo is shocked by the cruelty of mortals and has to sit down on his dark throne, and Saetan SaDiablo has been shocked by the cruelty of mortals and had to sit down in every single scene he’s been in. Except for the one where he was pretending to be a pedophile serial killer to trick the other pedophile serial killer into coming into his bedroom so he could kill him.

Not his bedroom in Hell, his bedroom in the Shadow Realm. The Shadow Realm’s someplace else.

Lucivar spent 2/3 of the book enslaved to a rapist, and his father Saetan SaDiablo (third-most powerful male wizard in the world) and his teenaged adopted sister Jaenelle Angelline (most powerful wizard in the world) know that, and stuff, but they kinda don’t do anything about it. I guess it’s not that important? So there are all these scenes where Lucivar’s being tortured, and then there’s a scene where Jaenelle shows up at Saetan SaDiablo’s grim palace with a unicorn or an adorable telepathic wolf cub and Saetan SaDiablo goes “OH MAN IT IS A UNICORN AND/OR TELEPATHIC WOLF CUB AND THAT IS NOT OKAY FOR MY IMAGE” and people smile and offer him a drink, and he’s sitting down in his dark throne again I mean I don’t know why he bothers to stand up. And then Lucivar escapes by himself and shows up, and they say, “Oh, hey! You made it!” And Lucivar hangs out with the unicorns and things are basically fine. He isn’t mad about how, you know, they didn’t rescue him! He knows they were real busy.

(I came up with a new way to describe Anne Bishop today: “Laurell K. Hamilton writes licensed Disney Princesses books.”)

It is because Anne Bishop is not good at remembering what the plot is. She also forgot how Lucivar has a brother named Daemon Sadi - alias, The Sadist, other alias, Hayll’s Whore - and Hayll is also a different place from Hell - who is a 1700-year-old Warlord Prince sex slave with the second-strongest magic powers in the world, and is impotent (and random people just up and start talking about his impotence because everyone knows - stuff gets around in 1700 years, it’s just a thing - even though people periodically forget that he generally kills the women he sleeps with), and who was the protagonist of the first book and spent half of it being sad that he was an impotent sex slave unworthy of the woman he loves (Jaenelle, his then-twelve-year-old adopted sister), and the other half being angry about the same issue, and killing people in many ways.

Anyway, she forgot Daemon was there. This book he went insane in a way that makes him weep all the time and occasionally refer to himself in the third person, mainly to keep him out of the way so we can get this big important The Unicorns And Telepathic Wolf Cubs Move In With Saetan And Wacky Antics Ensue thing established. There are also some scenes where Jaenelle goes clothes shopping and doesn’t get along with the other kids.

I totally forgot about how, in this book, there is an evil queen named Dorothea who wants Daemon to father her children. There’s also an evil priestess named Hekatah who used to be married to Saetan and wants to kill him. I think sometimes Bishop forgets which one of the two has which set of motivations.

I like how it’s possible to forget about things like that in this series.

-

Unrelated note to the internet: Nobody buy a Samsung Magnet, please. Dad bought one and I just spent three hours trying to get the drivers installed so I could sync up his address book. At least for Vista, there are no working drivers for this phone.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Comments

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, what?

[snarp]

ANNE BISHOP

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Wait, which was the impotent sex slave unworthy of the twelve year old adopted sister?

[snarp]

Daemon! Lucivar is actually also a sex slave, but he is not impotent and isn't in love with the twelve-year-old. So, rather than angsting about that, Lucivar instead angsts about the fact that he has wings but has an infection that is going to make them fall off.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I wonder if this or Dollhouse has more sex slaves.

[snarp]

I cannot comment on Dollhouse, but this series's population has an unusually high sex-slave density. I think Bishop originally stated that in one of the four or five alternate dimensions, all male wizards who aren't part of the royal family are sex slaves. (Or at least slaves, who seem to be forced to have sex a lot.) Except, later there's one who's not.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

In Dollhouse, every character is a sex slave or a slave trader. Though it sounds like Bishop is much more honest about it.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I was about to write, Seriously?? Then I remembered that Anne Bishop had rats eating someone's balls, so yeah.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I can't help but pronounce "Hayll" in a deep, deep Southern accent, which gives the impression that the SaDiablo clan are all swanning about like Scarlett O'Hara.

Which does explain why Saetan keeps getting the vapors.

[snarp]

Given that the setting is rarely described in any coherent detail, there is no reason not to assume that all these alternate dimensions are not, in fact, located in the Antebellum south.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I am also now going to assume that they are all dressed in clothing made from the drapes. Preferably this outfit.

[snarp]

I think that would be a wise practice.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Man, that looks so much like the outfits I used to make for my Barbie dolls when I was a kid. I was never much of a seamstress.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Ahaha! OMG, I read the first one in this series, and I was all "...there is no setting in this book. Seriously, it could be set in the medieval period, in the Antebellum South, in the 1940s...These people are going somewhere and I literally have no idea whether they are doing it in a horse-drawn carriage or an automobile or a magical flying pumpkin. What?"

Here from telophase, btw.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I had the impression that everyone was floating in a formless void as I was reading the series. Except for the lovingly-described teenage girl's bedroom.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

This is so over the top ridiculous awesome I think I might have to go find a copy.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

This makes me want to try Anne Bishop again...but then again your last review did that, too, and I got sixty-five pages in, swallowed a bug because my jaw was slack in amazed confusion, passed out and then woke up really, really wanting a mojito.

[devikun.livejournal.com]

Here via telophase on my f-list and I have to say, I think Bishop would make way more sense if there was a lot more sex in her books. Of all her narrative oversights, that's the one I really can't forgive...

Awesome, awesome commentary though. You almost made me go find a copy. Almost.

[marumae.livejournal.com]

Here via telophase too, gotta say I think she has okay/neat concepts but she really needs a new editor to help work on her execution. I love this series because it's soooooooooooooooo bad. XD

[lovepeaceohana]

Here via - I don't actually even remember, because I've been reading around and dying of laughter reading these takes on The Black Jewels. Those books will forever have a special place in my heart and I'm pretty sure you've just nailed the why of it.

It is true that Saetan spends an awful lot of time standing up, only to sit down again, dazed. I wonder how I never noticed it before?