The black jewels

The black jewels – Ann Bishop - ( av 5)

When evil gets really boring.
Don’t get me wrong here – I love a good Dark tale. In fact, I write those myself. And I don’t mind if there is sex/erotica in the story. But Bishop just does everything wrong in this hideous story. I mean rape, SM, incest, paedophilia, people getting their genitals bitten of, strange bondage rings around powerful males genitals to control them (there are no ‘men’ or ‘women’ in this story, just males and females) I mean jeezee! Calm down lady! Take a walk and get some fresh air. A story doesn’t become Dark because you pile atrocities on it. True evil requires some sort of twisted brilliance, not just the dull mind of orcs and sex offenders. (The difference? An orc would put a prisoner in a cage to watch them starve to death. A dark elf would put the prisoner in the same cage with some surgical instruments and see how long it take before the prisoner cut of their own foot and eat it raw. That’s evil.)

In this world most people have some magic powers and the amount of power you have are determined according to darkness – the darker jewels you get at your initiation rite, the more powerful you are. An ok idea, although not exactly new and fresh.
The story centres around a young girl who is extremely powerful – in fact, so powerful that she gets jewels in a new, darker shade then anyone ever has before. This means she is so powerful, she can wipe out the entire world if she chooses. Unfortunately (and this is unfortunate) she is on the good side. So why should I even worry, right? She is so powerful no one else even have a chance anyway. If she’d been evil, then there would have been an interesting story and a challenge for the good guys. It doesn’t help that everyone she meets either loves her immediately or are evil. In the end, she has every powerful being in the world on her side, and the two evil women she is fighting are barely (and I’m not exaggerating here) as powerful as her butler. Not the premises of suspense.
With this girl stands (among others) the triangle of the three most powerful males in the world – her ‘father’, her ‘brother’ and her lover. The last one has been working the last 5000 years or so as a pleasure slave for various women, despite the fact that he is impotent. Apparently he is such a wonder of sexy masculinity that he can satisfy women (and I am still not exaggerating, people!) just by looking at them.
Yeah right, and I’m the elf queen of Mirkwood.
This is crap, so don’t even go there. The Black Jewels is an experience that will leave you feeling offended, bored and confused. So why do I always get to take the kick-in-the-face of bad stories? Because you people wont write any rewievs (no offence Anna)!

Book quote: I honestly can’t be hedgehodged (no, that's not a quote. It's my oppinion)