books: lake silence by anne bishop

I reviewed the first three books of the series The Others, which was Anne Bishop's third series, unconnected to the id-tascular beauty of the Black Jewels which if you haven't read, I don't know what to say, it's insane with canonical cock-rings used to control and torture men OR they wear because it honors their queen.

This has nothing to do with that series, but I take every opportunity to try and get more people to read Black Jewels (did I mention some of the main characters are named Lucivar, Daemon, Saetan, and Surreal? And leather pants for men to show off their goods are canonical? CANONICAL LEATHER PANTS).

Okay fine, getting back: The Others series is her third series and Lake Silence is a one-off in this world. I liked the series--though with so many wtfs, but I also like that, too--but this is one of those times if you're not feeling 'read a five book series first' then go to wikipedia because this is really fun.

Lake Silence has everything I liked about the series and all the stuff that got on my nerves isn't in here. Specifically, it minimizes Bishop's weird and inexplicable desire to make the reader believe superpowered terra indigene (earth natives who were created before humans and who take many forms like werewolves, elementals, and vampires) who own all the land and water and feed on humanity and mass kill them not infrequently are super, super oppressed by the bad humans because they...get made fun of and sometimes, humans fight back?

It's more complicated than that except everything I just said is also true. In other words, you have to be willing to go with it, and it's worth it, but you do at times stop and want to explain to the terra indigene what 'learned helplessness' is and also, where they learned it because it wasn't from humans. Because yeah, the humans do shitty things to the terra indigene but so do the terra indigene and also eat humans add to that do mass extinction events on human groups so really? Like, in book it makes sense for short periods of time and then you just stop and go "...oh come on."

Lake Silence does not make an effort to convince us of the non-existent institutional oppression of the terra indigene (they..are the institution for fuck's sake), but instead scales this back to one area and group and plots within plots and crime and so much fun stuff with what should have been the point: the coolness of shapeshifters and humans and human-adjacent living in towns, running businesses with names based on puns, and solving murders, wheee.

( lake silence )