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.

I’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.

The 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.

I 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.

There 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.

I 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.