PhoenixFalls - , reviewed on 2/7/2010 + 185 more book reviews

The second book in the Black Jewels trilogy picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of Daughter of the Blood, then quickly starts jumping forward in time in intervals of days, months, and even years. The story makes these jumps throughout, and unfortunately, Bishop does not accomplish them smoothly. The jumps are necessary to keep the plot moving, but every time there was a jump forward in time I felt a moment of dislocation, as there are very few clues in the text about what happened in the intervening time -- I understand that the time was mostly irrelevant, but the author needs to be firmly enough in control that he/she can say "Over the next two years, Jaenelle continued to gain physical strength while her emotional well-being stagnated. . ." or something of the sort to smooth the transition.

Another jarring aspect was that Bishop doesn't seem able to handle having all three of her main male characters in the same book. Lucivar was nearly nonexistant in Daughter of the Blood, while Daemon and Saetan got all the screen time; in Heir to the Shadows it is Lucivar and Saetan that are the focus while Daemon languishes in limbo off screen. In Daughter of the Blood this didn't bother me tremendously, for even though his perspective was shown very early on, not enough had been established about his character for me to feel the lack. But in Heir to the Shadows Daemon is already a well-established character, one whom I eventually cared about deeply, so to have him essentially forgotten for the years that the book covers was frustrating.

Beyond those two things, however, Heir to the Shadows was more engaging than Daughter of the Blood was; I still have no real sense of the physical landscape, but at least the magic system gained a little complexity (though it still resembles an RPG too strongly for my taste) and all the people lusting after Jaenelle this time were bad guys, so it didn't raise my hackles. (Besides, she grew up, so it was less queasy-making.) I still objected to the fact that none of the characters ever sat down and hashed things out -- there would have been less conflict if they had, but that sort of conflict is cheap anyway -- but overall this was a stronger novel than its predecessor, and I am looking forward to reading the conclusion of the trilogy.

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