So it's been a while since I posted and also a while since I posted a book review. Between school and work and moving my brain noped out on anything new, so getting this pre-order this week combined exciting--NEW BOOK--with wary, as Anne Bishop took a turn for the wtf in the Black Jewels series to the point I didn't even buy the latest book in that series.

Crowbones is the third book from her series The World of the Others, which is an offshoot of her series The Others.

The Others
Written in Red
Murder of Crows
Vision in Silver
Marked in Flesh
Etched in Bone
Summary: Urban Fantasy/AU Earth - Meg, a cassandra sangue (prophet whose prophecies are triggered when her skin is cut) escapes the equivalent of slavery to basically hide in a city's enclave of terra indigene, who are both a single species made up of many subspecies, the least terrifying of which are vampires, werewolves, werecrows, werebears, werepanthers, weresharks, etc; Elementals (Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall, Water, Air, Atlantica (yes, the Atlantic Ocean), etc); and ponies that are horses that are also Tornado, Hurricane, Fog, Tsumani...you see where this is going

Those are the less terrifying terra indigene; the Elders are worse. And then there is plot, disaster, predation, and a surprising amount of found family/mixed species family. I reviewed the first and third books (I am annoyed I didn't do the fifth; i could have sworn that I did), so you can check under the tag on the first to see if ti's your speed. I recommend; it's multiple pov, with primary povs from the protagonist, Meg, Simon, a very cranky werewolf/bookstore owner (all Anne Bishop's characters are voracious readers so book store owners really come into their own in the two Others series), Vlad, a vampire, and Monty, a cop sent to the city of Lakeside for punishment after saving a teenage female werewolf from a rapist (humans are generally going to suck). The cast will grow, so be prepared.

World of the Others
Lake Silence
Wild Country
Crowbones
Summary: This series is set after the first series and follows up on some tertiary characters and towns mentioned in the wake of the Great Predation (spoilers but the word 'predation' probably gives you a hint of something going terribly sideways).

Book 1 and 3 are about Victoria Devine, a recently divorced woman and DV (extreme emotional abuse/gaslighting/etc) survivor who gets a rustic hotel in her divorce settlement that is located near a terra indigene controlled village and is basically the border between human-occupied (but not human-controlled) land and wild country, where the most powerful and dangerous terra indigene called the Elders--who don't have human forms and sometimes don't have much of a form at all--live. Book 2 is about Jana Paniccia, who wants to be a cop but sexism, so gets her chance in a small town that's occupied by both humans and terra indigene (shapeshifters, vampires, basically the kind of terra indigene that both have a human form and also hold down jobs. Yeah) to be deputy to a werewolf who doesn't really like humans. It's great.

Link to my review of Lake Silence, but you can find everything Anne Bishop's done in the tags.

( lake silence: a very short recap )
( crowbones: the world of the others, book 3 )

This has been an essay that went on much longer than expected.

Just finished The Queen's Bargain by Anne Bishop, the latest installment of the Black Jewels series.

Okay, so.

So you know how in canon, if one half of your OTP gets with another character, even if you previously really liked that character, you sort of hate them, too, and you're conflicted as shit? And then you try to be fair and write fanfic about Member of OTP/Other Person to power through the conflict and as it turns out, your id gives no shits about fair but you don't realize that until you're in too deep but it's so satisfying you just can't stop and then you're writing your OTP again, the other character isn't recognizable even to you, and you just don't care, fuck canon.

Welcome to The Queen's Bargain.
( I still liked it except the parts I didn't at all. Also, incest. Yes, exactly what you've wondered for all those books )
I don't hate it and actually enjoyed it--though you couldn't prove it from this entry--but for the life of me, I can't work out why the hell happened. After I re-read, maybe I'll be less--wtf?--but I just can't get over the primary goddamn plot is one usually posted to AO3 three days after canon fucked your OTP and you had a lot of feelings to express about it and didn't sleep until you expressed them all.

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 )

Written in Red: A Novel of the Others by Anne Bishop. Okay, I'm reconciled to waiting for more in the Black Jewels series, because while the worldbuilding in that one is basically my favorite ever, this is probably Bishop's best work to date.

Caveats

1.) If you don't like her style at all, you won't like this. But you may want to sample it, just to check.

If you do, she's leveled up in smoothing out a lot of her more annoying tics, and her structuring is better. It's also cleaner prose, and she's a lot, lot, lot better at giving the basics of her world early enough that you don't spend the first seventy pages in a fugue state of wtf. The story starts with a short but very informative history, which I'll get to next, and her baseline universe is both completely understandable and almost laughably simplified once you start reading.

2.) If you don't like her general characterization quirks at all, you won't like this.

If you do, her initial cast is slightly smaller and in the general types she likes, but with some newer additions. If you thought there was any chance there wasn't a major set of power dynamics play going on, dude, come on, this is Bishop. There are internal, external, world level, social level, and various pack level at varying degrees of detail. And she also does something new I'll get to in a minute.

3.) Anne Bishop is the closest thing to a fangirl writing fanfic for her own imagination out there. There are no cock rings. But eventually, there may be knotting. God, I'll honestly be surprised if there isn't.

Warnings

I thought about how to do this, because she's switched to Alternate History/Alternate Universe/Urban Fantasy with a vengeance, so what can be less personal in pure fantasy might hit differently in something not unlike reality. A lot of the stuff in Black Jewels I honestly would not have liked if it had been anywhere near real world conditions, and also, if the Blood hadn't obviously been the equivalent of alien. So below.

( trigger warnings, warnings, etc )

Review-ish

Right. Now review. This is going to be spoilery as hell, so there's your warning. And it's long, because I'm in that kind of mood. And I'm pretty sure there is no logical structure, because well, that would be like, work. I'll probably add some things and do some revision, but really, probably not going to be any more coherent than it is now.

( worldbuilding: terra indigene )

( worldbuilding: geography, short and confusing )

( character list )

( review: written in red: a novel of the others by anne bishop )

This is random, but I was re-reading Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop--and tried to decide if there was a colonial aspect to Cassidy going to Dena Nehele, and I have thought on this but most of them are mixed on the race issue, since from my first reading I assumed that the long lived races, or at least most of them, weren't white*, whereas the short lived races very much are, and nothing I've read since has contradicted that--okay, I went off topic, but people who read this, or hey, want to go read the series real fast? You can do that. I can wait for an answer.

( so this is odd )

Okay, now just regular squee.

( shalador's lady squee again )

Seriously, are the Blood bees? *blank* That can't be right.

In case you, too, want to know the answer, hey, Anne Bishop's page on Amazon! Yes, I really want everyone in the universe to read these so there are more people to talk to about them. THEY MIGHT BE HUMAN BEES!

Note

* I'm using 'non-white' instead of POC because I'm not sure it's appropriate in the way this fantasy series was introduced and developed, since it is really different in pretty much everything in how their societies are structured and arranged.

If using POC would be more appropriate or if 'non-white' is in any way offensive, please tell me and I'll make the change immediately. I had POC first, but since this fantasy doesn't follow anything even close to the white European medieval fantasy model (or the social structure of pretty much anything I've ever read or heard of in my life), and POC is, at least on LJ, a identification term that also has political/social history and connotations, I didn't want to take the term lightly or misuse its real life meaning in context of a fantasy series.

Recently, due to aforementioned sulking, I've been reading.

The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop, latest of the Black Jewels novels. Possibly, this is the least sexually violent of the books so far--I know! Weird!--and it's possibly my favorite (for totally non-related reasons, though I will admit a refreshing lack of flinching). The novel follows two separate plotlines; one about Cassidy, a Rose-jeweled queen who goes to Terreille to become a territory queen at the request of the descendants of the Gray Lady, as their Territory is a mess, and the second following Daemon and Saetan's continuing traumatic flashbacks. Okay, I love Saetan and Daemon and everything, but seriously, the Cassidy stuff is fantastic and I could have lived without the other, but of all the Jewel novels, I'm going to say this one is my favorite. Cassidy is awesome.

( a bit more explanation )

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William Cohan, which is self-explanatory on what it is about. I'm not done yet, and I do not even pretend to know how accurate it is so far, but I picked this one up because Fortune had an excerpt a while back and I really loved reading it.

( bit more here )

I have not yet read every Georgette Heyer Regency out there, but I am trying. So far:

Cotillion, Grand Sophy, The Nonesuch, The Corinthian, The Convenient Marriage, Frederica, False Colours, The Reluctant Widow. *grimly* I am trying. I will say, Cotillion and The Grand Sophy are my favorite, and I seriously loathed The Convenient Marriage like whoa. Really a lot. Like, DIAF to everyone. They were that annoying. Except oddly, the heroine's reprobate brother. He's kind of dim and sweet. I LIKE THE DIM, SWEET IDIOT WHO GAMBLES TOO MUCH. I mean, that's not a good sign.

Still in progress:

Antony and Cleopatra: A Novel by Colleen McCullough. I sort of need to be in a melodramatic mood to read the Masters of Rome series. Mostly because it just gets. More. Crazy. With. Every. Book. And people? I've been reading this series since I was fifteen years old. I have been reading this series over half my life. I also need to replace my paperback version of The First Man in Rome because it is now in several parts. In the inside cover is my name and the date I bought it. I treasure that.

...actually, I need to replace most of them, come to think. My mother borrowed these nad well, yeah.

Earth's Magic by Pamela Service, the YA King Arthur in the Post-Apocalyptic Future novels. Actually, in progress is it's prequel, Yesterday's Magic. There was this--thing. Wiht my bed and timespace.

A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin. This one got lost for a while. it's a long and terrible story involving my bed and a strange series of events. (And timespace.)

Not Read Yet, Still Bracing Self:

Unmasked: An Erotic Tale of the Phantom of the Opera (I hate myself)
Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (Don't judge me.)
House of Leaves (Like, I keep scaring myself with this one. IDEK.)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (This is part of the terrible story involving my bed and a strange series of events. Possibly there is a timespace disturbance underneath? IDK.)

There is also a small pile of read Jane Austen sequels that make me hate myself, but I feel I should review them to warn people away. Some people have drugs. I have Jane Austen sequels as my kryptonite. Even when they are bad. Very, very bad.

Hey. Thought. As The Black Jewels aren't on the level of Harry Potter universal squee--anyone interested in a squee day after the new book is released in March?

...I do find it kind of comforting that at least in this, I will not have to be terrified of my flist for a week beforehand in terror of spoilers. *mulls*

Anyway, comment if interested?

So after setting svmadelyn free in The Republic of Pemberley, I suspected that it would not be the last I heard of Jane Austen fanfic. Further, I have been accosted with such gems of fanficcal giddiness that I cannot even describe.

A conversation now is not complete without a quote that is almost guaranteed to make me twitch for poor Jane, who probably had no idea that one day, a host of fangirls would variate the eternal love of Elizabeth and Darcy in ways that would make both author and characters blush exceeding.

I'm still waiting for Prostitute!Elizabeth and Whoremaster!Darcy living on the wild streets of Drury Lane. I hope.

But that does lead to my last book purchases, which is kind of half-embarrassing, half-amusing, where wandering through the A-B section, I picked up Linda Berdoll's Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy and Elizabeth: Days and Nights at Pemberley.

( the word of the day is *bawdy* )

Next up, Sebastian. From Anne Bishop, I have learned more about male castration than I ever wished to know. I am curious what she will do with an incubus who is bored with sex. For an author whose first three books were rife with sexual politics, sensuality, and lust, there was precious little actual sex. No, really, think back on the trilogy--how many times did anyone actually get naked and sweaty? Penises were around a lot, but not so much what they were used for other than torture of a male, which has to say something, though I'm not sure what. I'm wondering what she can make of an incubus. Reminds me of LKH's Narcissus in Chains, where two hundred pages of foreplay managed to produce barely one good sexual encounter, except Anne is, you know, *a better writer* and her Mary Sue is at least supposed to be one by virtue of how she was created, which was a novel way to go about it and still keeps the books at the top of my rotation for re-reading.

Um, yeah, stopping now. I'm kind of on a post Darcy and Elizabeth high. That was *fun*.