Seductive Fiction: Anne Bishop

I hit a run of “eh” books. I’m not sure if that was about the books or my mood, honestly. 

I tried read­ing Blind­fold Game by Dana Stabenow. I love her writ­ing, most of the time. I could­n’t stom­ach anoth­er evil ter­ror­ist sto­ry, though.

So I picked up an anthol­o­gy that includ­ed an Eve Dal­las sto­ry by J.D. Robb, Dead of Night. I enjoyed that sto­ry, but could­n’t even make myself start the oth­er three. Two time-trav­el romances out of four sto­ries? Nah. The “mag­ic car­pet ride” line did­n’t catch my inter­est, either.

I think there was anoth­er anthol­o­gy that I picked up and tossed aside, too.

SebastianI’ve seen Anne Bish­op’s books many times over the years. Their love­ly cov­ers caught my eye, but I nev­er picked up the vol­umes, and I’m not sure why. Per­haps it’s because nobody ever rec­om­mend­ed her to me? The fact that I was com­ing in mid-series fac­tored in, as well. Any­way, I request­ed a bunch of her books recent­ly, and they were in the big batch we picked up last week.

BelladonnaThe Realms of the Blood series is much longer, so I start­ed with Ephemera to get a taste of Bish­op. Sebas­t­ian, the first book of that series, was very good. Odd, a lit­tle dis­joint­ed at times (which makes sense for that world), but good. I went on to Bel­ladon­na, and was tru­ly afraid near the end that I’d made a mis­take. I cared about the char­ac­ters, and I do not like unhap­py end­ings. Nosir­ree­bob, not one bit. That Buffy-sac­ri­fices-her­self-to-close-the-gate thing? Hat­ed it. Yeah, I know she saved the world. Not enough for me. I want the heroes alive and liv­ing hap­pi­ly ever after. I thought I was going to be tak­ing a whole bas­ket full of books back to the library untouched.

Daughter of the BloodI don’t like spoil­ers, but I will tell you that I start­ed read­ing the Black Jew­els tril­o­gy as soon as I fin­ished Bel­ladon­na. And I kept read­ing, so that I’m near­ing the end of book three in that tril­o­gy, Queen of the Dark­ness, and real­ly haven’t got­ten any­thing done today because of it.

Heir to the ShadowsThere are ele­ments of romance to Bish­op’s writ­ing, but she does­n’t pair every­body up two by two. Love hap­pens, or it does­n’t, with­out so much pre­dictabil­i­ty that it’s annoy­ing. Love ages, grows, with­ers or turns bit­ter, just like it does in real life. It works with the story.

Queen of the DarknessI did have to tell Sam, some­where in vol­ume two, Heir to the Shad­ows, “This plot could be sim­pli­fied great­ly by judi­cious assas­si­na­tions.” And, yes, it could. But the peo­ple who could car­ry them out would have lost their hon­or, which is of course a major plot issue, and they would­n’t be heroes any­more. (I’m more of a Giles than a Buffy, and I’m total­ly okay with that.)

I’ll be read­ing more Bish­op in the future. I may need to stop and read some­thing else, but I may plot right on imme­di­ate­ly. The only oth­er fic­tion that’s avail­able in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties at the moment is John Ringo, and the thought of mil­i­tary sci­ence fic­tion brings back the “eh” in a big way.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
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3 thoughts on “Seductive Fiction: Anne Bishop

  1. I haven’t read any John Ringo yet. I need to wait a bit longer, real­ly, or my opin­ion of his writ­ing will be very col­ored by my not lik­ing him much per­son­al­ly — he was a guest at the last Stel­lar­Con. He seemed to be a good guest, I just did­n’t much care for him — more a per­son­al­i­ty dif­fer­ence than any­thing else, I think. 

    I’m very glad you found books that appeal to you 🙂

  2. I enjoyed the books he wrote with David Weber, and the first few Posleen war books. I haven’t read any­thing past Cal­ly’s War. I’m NOT going to read the Ghost series–Sam is read­ing one of those and he said there’s a lot of big­otry in them. I picked up one of the books in his new­er series–something about a future where humans have trans­formed them­selves into ani­mals and mytho­log­i­cal creatures–and could­n’t get into it.

    I fin­ished the tril­o­gy after writ­ing that, and cried. And cried. Like, near­ly had an asth­ma attack cry­ing. That is NOT com­mon for me.

    It was that good.

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